ACCORDING to the dictionary, ‘development’ means expansion or realisation of potential, or gradual advance to a fuller, greater, or better state. Yet this definition leaves questions unanswered. Who benefits from development? Does development always involve economic growth? Who controls the development process? What are the costs of development? Who pays those costs?

On a personal level, it is easy to consider development as simply making things better. Institutionally, however, development has to be defined before development policies can be implemented.

Different institutions follow different definitions, and carry out different policies. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has published lists of US foreign aid objectives. They have included “alleviate poverty… cut infant mortality… improve housing and urban infrastructure … improve policy environments in host countries… modernise agricultural policies in developing countries,” for almost 900 million people in the Third World.

The United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that development has halted, and their societies are back-pedaling into poverty. Average incomes in most of Africa and Latin America have declined. In the poorest countries, per capita expenditures have dropped 50 per cent for health care, and 25 per cent for education. After years of gain, the average weight for young children has again begun to decline in many countries. Each year, half a million women die from pregnancy-related causes, 99 per cent of them in the Third World.

Of the 15 million children under the age of five that die each year, the overwhelming majority are in the Third World.

The gap between rich and poor countries is large, and it is growing larger. The gap between the rich and the poor within individual countries is also great, and often growing.