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VOL. 4 No. 97
ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
C-SURYACUMARAN
ECONOMICS, ECONOMSTS
AND POLICY MAKERS SOME PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES
ARUN SOURIE
MEDICAL EMIGRAtion, NAPPROPRIATE EDUCATIO AND A DISTORTED HEA CARE SYSTEM ಟ್ವಿ LALITHA GUNAWARDEN
SOME DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECT OF ENTEGRATED RURAL
DEVELOPMENT | -
SŸ GODEREY GUNATALIEKE
AND SURANJETH. P.F. SENARA NE
BEYOND THE NCGE WHAT (continued from Marga Vol. 3 No.
| E. L. WIJEMANN
MARGA I

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M A R G A
N
Published by ME A R G A I N S T I T U TE -

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M A R G A
Vol. 4 No.
1977
C. SURYAKUMLARAN 1
ARUN SHOURIE 14
LALTHA
GUNAWARDENA 37
GOOFREY
GUNATELLEKE
AND
SURANTH P. F. SENARATNE 56
E. L. wIJEMANNE 83
ENVIRONMENT AND
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
ECONOMICS, ECONOMISTS AND POLICY MAKERS. SOME PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES
MEDICAL EMIGRATION, INAPPROPRIATE EDUCATION AND A DISTORTED HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
SoME DEMOGRAPHICASPECTS OF INTEGRATED - RURAL
DEVELOPMENT
BEYOND THE NCGE WHAT2 (Continued from Marga Vol. 3 no. 1

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Marga Volume 4, Issue No. 1
NEW CONTRIBUTORS
LALITHAGUNAwARDENA - Is a Senior Research Officer on the
staf of the Marga Institute.
SURANJITH P. F. SENARATNE - Is Consultant, in charge of the Rural/Urban Division of the Marga Institute. / C. SURIYAKUMARAN - Is Director, UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

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ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
PLANNING -
C. SURI YAKUMARAN'*
This paper attempts an introduction to the vital and inherently essential relationships between economic development planning, as an objective and a process, and environment. This relationship is a fundamental one and its principle and methodology should have been spelt out long ago. What is surprising is that such a gap should continue to exist.
In a sense, some of the reasons for this gap can be easily explained. For example, the observation that 'scientists from different disciplines do not yet know quite how to work with each other or with sociologists and economists' has been echoed in various forms and on many occasions. When a social dimension was initially introduced into economic development planning in a form that was not more than an apology for a few 'social projects, this writer had occasion to point out that "it was as necessary for the sociologist to know how the economic machine works, as for the economist to know that social change precedes development, accompanies it and follows development. Such an interdisciplinary basis was essential if the two concerns were to be carried within an organic framework, rather than as an "add-on of one to the other. In similar manner, one may still refer to the largely non-existent capacity to understand, plan and manage environmental problems in a truly multidisciplinary context. It has been remarked that traditional ecologists are not equipped to integrate primarily
* The views expressed by the author who is a United Nations civil servant
presently attached to UNEP, are his own and do not reflect those either of UNEP or of the United Nations. 4 : 1. R. E. Munn, in a paper entitled Environmental Impact Assessment for the International Congress of Scientists on the Human Environment, Kyoto, November 1975. 2. From the introductory statement, as Chairman of the UNESCOECAFE Secretariat Working Group for the Third Asian Conference of Ministers of Education and Ministers of Economic Planning, 1971.

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biological knowledge into specific social, cultural, political and economic contexts in which they must operate. The problems are so closely related to other socioeconomic, political and technological realities that it is difficult to take an environmental view in the isolation of a particular discipline. An oficial United Kingdom report went so far as to state that an advanced state of development is in fact also the means for ensuring many of the environmental desiderata. The economic declaration of the Fourth Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-aligned countries, held in Algiers, 5-9 September 1973 reaffirmed its concern to ensure that the extra cost of environmental programmes should not prevent the fulfilment of the most basic development requirements and regarded "economic backwardness as the Worst form of pollution'. It also recognised "that developing countries have their own environmental problems which differ from those of developed countries and which require the attention of the international community'.
All these are symptomatic: (a) of a highly concerned desire to establish satisfactory mutuality and relevance between economic development and environment, and (b) of the unfortunate lack of a scientifically formulated basis for such a relationship. Yet, there is no conflict conceptually between the two concerns of environment and economic development. On the contrary, there is a mutuality which should be capable of being established in specific data and methodology terms. Indeed, far from detracting from economic development, a comprehensive environment management dimension should complement and assist the overall development process-not at sub-normal equilibrium levels of national wealth and welfare but at levels presently desired by developing countries. Perhaps some clear re-definition of what is involved by the terms 'environment' and 'development planning could be a first helpful Step.
The concept of environment unfortunately-perhaps partly
because of its recent origin in the highly advanced economies and partly because, similarly, of its original espousal by natural scientists-has been too much associated in popular conceptions with pollution control (especially flowing from modern technology)
3. First report (1971) of the UK Royal Commission on the State of the
Nation's Environment.
4. ChapterXII-Environment.

3
and, from a different angle, with extreme conservationist ideas. The environment dimension however is not simply a pollution concept, much less the pollution as brought out in a developed i. society, nor is it a negative concept. Environment is concerned with the totality of resources-human and natural i.e. the total planetary inheritance-and the optimal management of those resources in their use (not their non-use). As in the immutable law of nature for all things, non-use, is stagnation/death-in nature (natural environment) as much as in society (man-made environment). Such use is therefore the only sense in which conservation is a valid term. Development, not preservation per se, is then a concurrent basic premise in total management, with both environment and development thus, a unity. Vital questions of planning the proper use of exhaustible resources, the vigorous development of the potential in innumerable renewable resources and, overall, the sustained maintenance of future resource levels, become key and, in many situations, dominant environmental subject matter. It appears also that these highly relevant environmental thrusts are at the centre of the main objectives in the New Economic Corder as declared by the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, and of course, at the core of the concept of self-reliance. ܓ
The specific bases for the recent upsurge in the concern for the environment have also tended to cloud some much older, more positive concepts. For there is an even older tradition. Environmental conservation and care are not modern; perhaps they are as old as civilisation itself, despite their manifestation within highly limited "local horizons. For example, the ancient inheritance of the farm cycle, round the land, the crop, the cattle, the green and waste manure lay in a well-designed methodology of conservation and living within the technological context of the time, in which
5. An environmentalist, as M. K. Tolba, UNEP Executive Director, often says, should never merely pass a negative judgement. His advice is sound advice only if he has also given alternative solutions.
6. A basic corollary, in particular for renewable resources use, is the planning for a system of indigenous technology, whether adapted or autonomously created. The role of a clear indigenous based technological capability for self sustained growth as understood in economic analysis, has long been a gap in economic ; for a brief outline of which see, for example, the author's Note (1972) on the Economic and Policy Implications of the Employment Mission Report for Ceylon (issued for limited distribution and to be published shortly by Marga).

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*4 it was well recognised that any departure from this well-knit cycle would lead to “ecological' disaster. There was as much evidence of this care in the past, as there was also of neglect. With the dazzling technological breakthroughs of recent centuries and the illusion of “unlimited' potential, a change occurred that helped in the disintegration of the old value system. Time caught up again, however, through the sheer scale of the use of world resources and of outputs, and created, in effect, out of the whole world a mere parish once more. Mentally therefore, and in a management and development planning sense, it should be feasible to find a ready response among societies to an integral view of the tasks that are before them.8 -
The understanding of economic development has also suffered partly due to its past association with market opportunity and "maximisation concepts. Yet, at the core of economic concern, and in fact as the rationale of economics there was the first principle in the discipline-which is that of unlimited ends and limited means. In the early post-war years, a strong school developed, which advanced the theory though not without controversy, that economics was "neutral' as between ends and means. This not only glossed over inherent defects, but also grossly overlooked the feasibility of alternative economic mechanisms in determining factor use in production, even in essentially capitalist structured societies. It was also a phenomenon of a particular phase of history, when a society could over-step its national boundaries to exploit. resources elsewhere. Even given the premise of maximisation and the market approach, classical economics was not committed to the use of resources to exhaustion point-for then there would be no resources to exploit. It is simply that resources were considered either as inexhaustible (for basic historical reasons) or at best that technology and the market process would generate alternative substitutes. With the far reaching changes in the global view of
7. It is said for example, that the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia passed away due to failure in handling the salt cover which spread over the entire agrarian land from an otherwise highly advanced irrigation system. In this century, a whole area in Asia has been threatened with loss of nearly 5 of the 15 million acres or so of agrarian soil brought into use through one of the most notable irrigation systems of recent times.
8. From an informal Note, by the author, of August 1973, repeated in a
later World Environmental Day feature (Bangkok Post, 5 June 1976).
9. Led by Prof. Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics.

5 the world economy, economics has come to recognise that resources could be exhaustible and technology substitutes such as through synthetics, may also increasingly be limited. Economics classically would then revert to its origin as concerned with ends and limited means and seek to optimise "over time' the use of exhaustible resources and stimulate technology towards renewable resources. This basically is also the input that the environmental concern would seek to give. A major confluence between economic planning and environment management emerges. w
In what follows an attempt is made in very broad outline to look at the essential development planning process and to identify the main environmental relationships, some of which surprisingly have already existed for long years and which economic planners have considered a natural part of their exercise.
There are perhaps two points of contact between environment and economics which may be taken as main linkages. One is conceptual and relates to the common concern of both disciplines, namely the simple premise of the existence of resources as the only basis either for economic development or environmental management. The optimal use of all resources alongside sustained maintenance of future resource levels, is then basic and common to both environment and development planning.
The second linkage is that of methodology and relates to almost the very first process by which development plan frames (perspective and medium term) are built. The first step towards a Development Plan is an assessment of total resource availability, in terms of given or posited demand. This is basic notwithstanding that, at varying times, the emphasis on resource assessments may be in physical or financial terms. The data base of various resources likely to be available to a society over a planned period is the foundation for the planning exercises themselves, leading to the various resource allocations by sectors and sub-sectors, as well as to assessments of overall plan consistencies. This wide ranging data base is conventionally derived in national planning bodies through the assistance of Technical Working Groups, or equivalents, designated for the sectors and major resource areas. The work of these technical groups is the product of all types of scientists, technicians and other specialists (not, at that stage, essentially of economists). The product of an environmental view of resource

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levels is again similarly the work of such specialists. The linkage between the environment specialist and the development planner in a planning process is then an automatic and inherent one, if established at this stage of assembling the data base prior to the stage of preparing a plan frame. More than trying to give an 'added look' through environment homilies to already formulated development programmes or projects, the most meaningful approach both environmentally and for development, is to consider the data base used in development planning as the first and major operational confluence between environment and development.
To development planning, resource data is a natural requirement. .
If the environment dimension is seen as a means to provide an
even fuller knowledge of this base-distinguishing between "effec
tive' and "physical' supply levels and capacities, establishing alternative means of sustenance of supply, in fact increasing total supply in several cases-the inherent concerns and needs of both development and environment find an organic relationship that also presents few management problems. The challenge then, at least in developing countries is not to limit growth, but to see how to enlarge planning methodology. GDP, Social Development, Employment,
10. (a) Maurice F. Strong (former Secretary-General of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and former UNEP Executive Director) at the UN General Assembly, October 20 1975;
as he called it, the inadequacy of the "add-on' approach to 'already formulated development projects'.
(b) “environmental impact assessments so far considered the major
environmental input which begin at the project level.... may lead to individually acceptable developments whicse combined effects are unacceptable'. R. E. Munn, Ibid.
11. One of the near impossible methods, though perhaps the most common.
in tackling many public questions, is fiat and administrative mechanism
12. A major problem is that of the high mass consumption societies and their being still wedded to the concepts of linear growth, without any compensatory “high level equilibrium planning model. In a sense this has tended to bring to nought the stablilisation of population levels in such societies and presented problems of scale of resource use, beside which the resource implications of the heavily populated developing world become less significant. In another way of formulating, it is as if the population of Europe were not 400 million but 8,000 million-on a most conservative co-efficient relationship of the volume of resources used and of the effluent "pollution' created for every individual's lifespan. For some positive suggestions on this problem, see Leontieff's Study on environment and development perspectives undertaken for United Nations, ESA (limited distribution at present).
On the question of the scale of resource use, the issue has been generally neglected even in otherwise excellent studies such as for example, the Survey by Fisher and Peterson on the Environment in Economics (Journal of Economic Literature, March 1976). The pattern of thinking has too often been very much of an incremental analysis type approach as opposed to a macro approach and its obvious implication for a global resource use view of environment.

7
Population, Environment, are all inter-related, with problems in one area depending often for their solution on another area, and it will be unwise to imagine that completely separate planning strategies may be developed for them, or that one planning strategy should over-ride another. After all, the Planner, unless he contracts out of his rationale, is a specialist in seeing the relationship between the work of other specialists and co-ordinating it.
At this stage, one may appropriately take a brief look at the presumption of unlimited growth attributed to the development process. Indeed, "maximisation'-of profit in the firm, and of national wealth-has been manifest in both economic declarations and in performances. Yet, there are basic principles on which the so-called maximisation performances have been built, which are worth considering and which could well point to the manner in which environment premises would also form a natural component. As we said earlier, there is no question of resources as a whole being used to exhaustion point nationally speaking. The policy of planned (optimal) use of resources is an old one, in concept and in practice, even if the dimensions were not comprehensive and all the distinctions between physical and "effective' supply had not been made. For example, in agriculture, land and forest management existed; in human resources, effective labour supply was "overnight' shortened by abolition of child labour and establishment of working hours; fair wages and a range of Welfare State Commitments and related obligations became part of the supply situation for planning; even capital (labour) intensive decisions in a peculiar way reflected conscious labour (capital) constraints; and so on. Such data lists or bases of "effective' supply constantly went into the perspective and medium-term plan exercises, which thence provided the options to the policy and decision makers and to the "maximisation' of output. Thus a whole range of conventional (scientific, technical, social) data were already fundamental, initial planning premises.
The environment input is precisely a complementing of the above type of bases, many of which are in fact already 'environmental' in character. In so complementing, as emphasised earlier, the environment contribution, based on the concept of sustained resource levels involves many areas of potentially expanded range and extent of future resource supply. In classical development planning, it so happened that the so-called contraints identified

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as potentially limiting growth were factors such as savings, foreign inflows and even labour supply; resources, as we saw before, were not considered to constitute a constraint and, mostly, factor mobility was felt to overcome any problem. Happily, for developing countries, the above-mentioned "classic' constraints themselves give a new urgency and importance to the problem of indigenous and sustained supply of resources; and in developed countries, given the rate of resource use, planned development has to confront the additional question of resource constraint. Either way, environment provides a main means to meet the resource constraint in fixing desired Plan targets; and the linkage between environment and development becomes a natural extension of the plan process. −
Apart from the confusion of environment with pollution, there has also been sometimes a simplistic identification of environment with sectors or areas-land, water, forests, human settlements, etc. These areas happen already to be ones of specialisation by their own disciplines and have been so for long years. A parallel specialist could, meaningfully, look at sectors of other specialists (e.g. there are agricultural scientists, agricultural economists and so on) but not do the 'same things' over again. Environmentalists themselves have understood their idea of environment in different ways according to their origins-geographers view it as geography, physical planners as urbanisation and planning, foresters as forestry, and so on. All this is of course confusing, even to environmentalists, and much more so to others. The central problem lies in seeing that the basis of environmental specialisation is not so much a list of areas perse (land, water, forests, what else)
13. Development economists themselves are partly at fault, tending always .
to view environment in development as cost equated questions, forgetting the deeper resource supply question; a counterpart being the view of self-sustaining growth in investment/savings terms, to the exclusion of real resources. w
14. Although it may appear unconventional, one does not see why maintaining a national park, whether with or without game cropping, may be called conservation in the sense of preservation. Maintaining of, say, a bushland and that of a stretch of asweddumised paddy land involves the same basic concepts of sustenance of a given resource in a form determined already by society. It is the nature of the relative use that has to be established initially and that is the intent of the linkages between environment and development mentioned earlier. The value judgements (the "ends' of economics, as of others) may be qualitative, but their final expression, whether in social or economic planning, is a use of a resource-a concept that applies as much for culture, as for social welfare or environment, etc.

9
but of environmental impacts (and potentials) in the use of these resources, in those areas and all areas together. The constituents of such action based on environmental concerns-i.e. the premises on which "environmental input' is based-in itself and in relation to development planning, may be set out as:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
Resource exhaustion-involving ideas on planning the use of exhaustible resources over time; developing feasible alternative supply sources over time; emphasising re-use concepts; ctc.
Resource degradation-(also sometimes leading to resource exhaustion in cases of irreversible damage)- particularly distinguishing between degradation (or pollution') arising from Affluence and that arising from Poverty. .
Resource sustenance and enlargement (natural and human)-developing renewable resources and technology concerning these; emphasising waste re-cycling ("conservation by retrieval); building "human capital’; etc.
Resource (ecological) imbalance-determining biospheric and specific area absorptive capacities and tolerance levels; formulating positive technical and organisational alternatives; etc.
Resource use planning for development planning
formulating positive data bases for perspective and medium-term plans, bases on the foregoing four constituents and in relation to development targets.
As will be evident, each of these constituent inputs of environment - action have positive capabilities for enlarging planning methodology, meeting resource constraints in development planning, and providing for sustained growth. For example, on exhaustible resources, a system of national balance sheets' is an eminently
15. Together, these serve to cover the three basic actions that any environ
mer (i) (ii) (iii)
The
t concern (as 'environment') would need to bother about, namely: Resource restoration (out of past mis-use). . Resource maintenance (in the process of using resources), and Resource use (multiple-fullest-use of resources, including wastes) coupled with "strategy' for use of resources as a whole. , message of environmentalists to planners would be--sustained resour
ces and enlarged resource supply. ''': ۔ ۔۔۔

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positive planning instrument that should help optimise national benefit and provide in advance for the types of alternative research and technology development and so on, that must form a natural component of sound planning.
In resource degradation, as we saw, a number of planning premises already exist in development plans based on ideas of soil erosion, afforestation, welfare provisions and so on. There are others, such as concurrent development of organic fertilizers, protection of fisheries from pollutants, biological control of pests and diseases and, basically, the strengthening of the 'social stock'. The last mentioned is not only reflected in the traditional housing and town improvement laws and regulations, health measures, education and the like; but has become a standard component of economic analysis under the concept of "human capital'. At certain levels of human degradation, namely, degradation arising from poverty, conditions of endemic disease, malnutrition, slums, zero sanitation, ignorance and mass under-employment (which is really inadequate resource use), the major, or even sole, 'environment action' at this phase could simply be the "increase of socio-economic, productive forces', and not sophisticated strategies related to the environment.
For "high mass consumption' societies (or similar 'enclaves' in other societies) "pollution' may be the foremost environment action priority, with greater importance given to the contributions by the industrial effluent technologists, pollution and monitoring specialists, urban and physical planners, and so on. On the other hand, as a developing country delegate stated at an international forum, the problem with them was not of white smoke or black smoke, but no smoke Thus, a sense of proportion is needed, and environment action blue-prints cannot be wholly carried across to countries as transplants. Indeed, one of the first major steps of any technical assistance or expertise in environment programming, and a major principle of action, should be initially to identify the proper priorities (areas and "weightage) as between types of environment action and relevance in the country. It is important to realise that
16. "Investment in human capital' became a well established concept since
the economic writings of the Sixties beginning with investment co-rela
tions for education and soon led to enlarged investment policies in World Bank and other financing.

l while there is a whole range of gór, possible
actions, the composition of a specific situation environment input as to be selected for relevance according to the particular stage 'of development or condition of the specific country or area.
Resource sustenance, or expansion, has wide and challenging possibilities. Traditional land use surveys could be expanded into eco-mapping; biological control methods, as mentioned, would strengthen other production areas; farmyard, municipal and industrial waste retrieval and re-cycling positively add to the stock of natural resources, renewable resources could, with a technology plan, redress the foreign exchange constraints in the development plans of many developing countries often more than the hitherto used instruments of fiscal and financial planning and so on.
Ecological imbalance of types that would threaten life supporting systems result from global climatic, ionospheric and similar changes. Local disequilibria in specific eco-systems touch many currently productive resources. Social disequilibria manifest themselves in extreme poverty and go to the point of creating environmental and developmental disaster areas.
Resource use planning, based on such environment-oriented approaches for development planning methodology, suggests enriched techno-economic programming for the development plan frame based more than before on practical concepts of selfreliance, and sustained growth.
*w Once the priorities are so set, one may go so far as to say that there is even nothing wrong with countries going for “maximisation'. Theoretically, the data list of effective optimal supply
17. The experience of the Chinese economy both in agriculture and industry, on the contribution of waste recovery and re-use, either within the unit or as inter-industry transfer, is one of a very sizeable contribution to GDP.
18. The experience of China, which could be a separate subject study, is one of a most noticeable unity between development and environment, with basic "policies and lines' even common to both these areas. To begin with, development is considered the premise for environment protection, development itself being based on "agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor'. Associated policies under development include rational distribution of industry, comprehensive development and significantly, high priority for use of all wastes. The environment policy invokes precisely some of these guidelines of planning (such as overall planning and rational distributio) and then enunciates complementary polic and lines such as multiple utilisation of resources and conversion of as wastes into useful products. Given these foundations, both development and e vironment action proclaim an objective of "maximum possible production.

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would have already gone into the premises of perspective and medium term planning. Naturally, one expects no perfection in anythingbut the beginning of the process of enlarged planning methodology would be sufficient attainment and would lead, more than any “missionary” declarations at the action stage, to increasingly realistic results.
By way of random illustration one may list some of the development planning points at which environment would bring to bear positive enlargement. The maintenance of GDP is one. Reduced output from a production category in a perspective period could be obviated in an environment and development planning process The investment (capital output ratio) concept is another. If antidegradation (or anti-pollution) investment does not figure in the initial planning stage in the preventive sense, it would lead to massive remedial investments over a perspective period. In resource supply, we referred earlier to the balance sheet approach to nonrenewable resource use, the direct contribution to GDP through re-use and the indirect contribution by technology planning for alternative resources. Also, for renewable resources susceptible to irreversible degradation (or pollution), the importance of the relationship between enrvironment and development for GDP maintenance was emphasised. Backward linkages have a lot to . gain, and a simple illustration is the concurrent expansion of organic fertilizer, with obvious long-term benefit, by control of chemical fertilizers, to resource sustenance. An illustration of forward linkage is the by-product utilisation concept familiarto economics.o
These environment and development planning relationships, can and should, of course, extend to sector, programming (sectors, sub-sectors and categories) and micro (project) levels. No attempt has been made in the foregoing to go into the details of that process, also because this can itself be the subject of detailed exposition. But the following observations of relevance to the main frame of thinking outlined above are made here. Firstly the same premises as to the view of environmental data in overall planning process would apply, in rather more micro and specific detail than in a perspective/national view. Secondly, quantifications of resource
..
19. At the farm level, energy from farm residues including animal and human ... labour has been compared in quantity to the flow of crude oil in the international market, of about 30 million barrels a day (Bio-gas Newsletter,
ESCAP, August 1976).

13
ဖူးဖူးူ; programmes (for resource sustenance and resource hse as referred to earlier) would of course become more detailed and operational in nature. Finally, once given the type of perspective environment/development planning link as outlined, the assessment of environmental impact at project level becomes more tenable, while being supportive of wider macro objectives as well.
The main emphasis of this paper however is not on quantification but on the qualitative improvement of planning methodology by incorporating certain critical elements related to environment. As an introduction to the subject, the paper emphasises the need for a comprehensiveness of approach and the close involvement of economic development planning in the subject matter of environment; the avoidance of the identification by specialists of their own particular specialisation with the totality of environment; a sense of discrimination and proportion in the use of developed country priorities and practices in environment-oriented development planning in the poor countries; the importance of including the environment dimension at all levels in development planning and programming. Any progress made in this direction will, it is felt, pay handsome dividends to overall economic and social welfare.

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ECONOMICS, ECONOMISTS AND POLICY
MAKERS Some Preliminary Hypotheses
ARUN SHOURIE1
Economists are a conspicuous feature of the Indian scene: their views are reported widely in the press, they adorn many a committee, they occupy many high offices within the government. Often they seem to exercise a considerable influence on economic policy: the basic strategy of the second Plan, the course of industrial licensing policies over the years and other instances of the kind provide ready illustrations. Yet, there is an uneasy feeling among many members of the profession as well as among many policymakers that most often the economist's influence on economic policy is minimal and-when perceptible-it is often deleterious. In this brief paper I would like to explore some of the reasons on account of which economists have a harmful influence on the formulation and execution of economic policy.
I realise that the role of economists and their conduct is part of a much larger picture. Economists, after all, are a part of the of the country, and for this reason their behaviour is no different than that of other parts of the elite-for example, the politicians, the administrators and the business entrepreneurs. Just as business men, politicians and administrators help each other live of the country, so do many economists help them all by legitimising the things they want to do. Just as the politician (in the name of socialism) helps the businessman set up a market that is completely protected from competition from without or within, so also the economist helps the politician by formulating fradulent plans. Moreover, the formulation of fraudulent plans is itself an illustra
1. The Author is a fellow of the Homi Bhabha Council. He alone is respon
sible for the views expressed in the article.

15
tiện of a general political system in which fĩấudulent slogans and documents are but one of the devices that the government must use to stay in power. In this set-up the government feels compelled to produce fraudulent documents and the same circumstances that compelled it to produce these documents disable it from implementing anything contained in them.
However in this paper I will abstract from the general picture and focus on economists as a sub-species so that we may view ourselves in a mirror.
. Economics
Economists operate almost exclusively within, what Marx called, "the realm of ideas' and within this realm they work only for each other's applause. Because of the role of the English language in the recent intellectual history of India, the Indian economist has worked for the applause of western economists--especially economists of the English speaking world. The principal vehicles for gaining recognition in the west have been to obtain degrees in western universities, to publish in western journals, and to obtain chairs on faculties of western universities.
When the evolution of western economics over the last three decades is viewed fifty years from now, it will be seen to have been associated with a self-satisfied stage in the evolution of capita
2. The latter expression is that of Professor Samuelson; cf: P. A. Samuelson, "Economists and the History of Ideas', American Economic Review, March 1962, pp. 1-18. He contrasts working for the applause of the populace and the policy-makers with that of one's fellow professionals and asserts that "our own applause' is "the only coin worth having'. But he leaves the question about the content of our work unsettled, though "Our map of the world', he tells us, "differs from that of the layman. Perhaps our map will never be a best seller, but a discipline like economics has a logic and y of its own. We believe in our map because we cannot help doing so.... Not for us the limelight and the applause. But that doesn't mean that the game is not worth the candle or that we do not in the end win the game. In the long run, the economic scholar works for the only coin worth having-our own applause'. To this he adds: "Lest be miss understood, I elaborate. This is not a plea for Art for its own sake, Logical elegance for the sake of elegance. It is not a plea for leaving real world problems of political economy for non-economists. It is not a plea for short run popularity with members of a narrow in-group. Rather it is a plea for calling shots as they really appear to be (after reflection and after weighing all evidences) even when this means losing popularity with the great audience of men and running against the spirit of the times'. But what if one can court "long-run” applause within the profession only by working on subjects that, though esoteric, have no Girl on the welfare of one's fellowmen?

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lism. Over the last thirty years, capitalist societies have been living in the faith that the basic values governing their patterns of life do not need to be questioned, that issues such as class conflict are irrelevant in societies where access to resources and technological progress can assure material comforts for all and in the belief that no basic structural changes are required in the institutions and power relationships that govern these societies. Therefore, Western economics has kept away from the large questions. For this reason, for example, it has taken unbridled consumerism as one of the truths that are said to be self-evident. It has not bothered to ask what it is that gives the population of these countries the right to their wasteful patterns of living in a world in which a vast majority live in deprivation and hunger. It has not bothered to ask what it is that gives the people of the United States a right to discourage the exports of fertilizers to developing countries facing famine so that 3 million tons of it may be used for keeping golf courses and garden patches in the U.S. green. For this very reason, the intellectuals in these societies are in no position today to ask what it is that gives a handful of families in the Arab world the right to extract an exhorbitant rent from the rest of the world.
As these societies have been by and large satisfied with the way their affairs have been, subjects like economics have become mere intellectual pastimes. Thus, the economist gets maximum applause when he works om something called “theory”. Anyone concerned with applying it to the real world or with working on real problems is looked upon as someone who did not make it as a theorist. The young economist soon learns that if he wants to publish in the leading journals of the profession he should not be working on low-cost housing, on power from the wind, on gobar gas, plants. Even if one of the leading journals agrees to publish an article on these specific problems it will do so not because the article says something useful about gobar gas plants or about low-cost houses, but because it uses a novel technique of economic analysis-information about the gobar gas plants or the lowcost houses would just be an incidental illustration used to show the way the novel technique of economic analysis works. The economist can afford to be cavalier about the gobar gas plants and the low-cost houses-after all, they are roped injust as illustrations; he must save his labours for the analytical technique.
 

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The inward-looking character of the profession has bred in us a cynical attitude to the world around us. When pressed, most economists will admit that the theoretical questions on which they are working are not important and many of them will ultimately admit that “we work on these problems because this is what we are trained to do and because this is what we are good at'. This attitude reflects a peculiar presumptuousness-the presumpticn that the world owes us a comfortable living so that we may go on talking to each other and working for each other's applauseand a very special brand of self-confidence-the self-confidence that we will never be found out. So cynical is the attitude towards the world that often, even in a narrow technical sense, we persist in using techniques that we know are bogus so long as the product is acceptable to the editors of professional journals. One has only to recall the numerous articles that continue to pretend that they are uncovering the secrets of development by regression equations that have one observation each for Singapore and India, Mali and Brazil.
The vocabulary economists use gives them away. We talk of alternative "scenarios', of "playing' with alternative specifications, of "fooling around' with a model. This is the vocabulary of people playing with toys. It is not the vocabulary of persons engaged in a struggle, of people who feel that the issues that they are working on are vital. In one of his essays, Mao chastises a kind of intellectual for adding stitches to a fine piece of brocade rather than carrying warmth to a man out in the cold. The stricture surely applies to us.
As a number of Indian economists have been preoccupied with making it in the western world, these inward-looking norms of the profession have affected the subjects that they have taken up for study. Thus, while Indian economists have contributed a great deal to "pure theory', little work has been done on a number of issues that are vital for our own economy: the extent, sources, uses of black money; the un-organised money markets; the character of speculation in the market of oil seeds, the main participants of this market, their sources of finance, their ancillary activities, the nexus of relationships that bind them with growers, administrators, politicians; the inner workings of ministries and the manner n which their organisational essence affects the formulation and

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execution of economic policies. It is indeed a telling comment. that in spite of having some of the most distinguished economists we do not have a single good textbook about the Indian economy.
We noted earlier that western economists had not addressed themselves to the large questions as they shared the basic assumption of their societies that, by and large, things were as they should be. Indian-economists have, of course, expressed much uneasiness with the state of affairs. They have been kept from the large questions by a different reason: they have shared the assumption of almost all sections of the Indian elite that while the state of affairs is far from the desirable one, given the country's size, sociology, cultural heritage and what have you, radical changes are impossible. For this reason, they have not formulated any alternative paradigms to explain the overall state of the country; they have all gone along with the something-of-everything, mixed economy paradigms. Even when they have addressed themselves to specific issuesthe response of agriculturists to price movements, the productivity of farms of different sizes, the ubiquitous violation of controlsthey have not combined the results into paradigms about the economy as a whole. The policy-maker's perception-a hazy one at best-about the work of economists in the country is that they have produced many papers on many specific issues, that they have not reached much agreement on most of these issues and that, in any case, he does not know what "it all adds up to". The last is not an idle complaint: if the detailed work had been built up as documentation for or if, from time to time, it had been synthesised in some large paradigms it would have enabled intellectuals and policy-makers to consider the pattern of the country's development as a whole, to understand the overall character of economic events and policies. As things stand, the detailed work-much of it of excellent quality from a technical point of view-has not had much impact either on the policy-maker or on the intellectual debate within the country.
It is idle to blame western economics for this state of affairs. It is idle to pretend that it is all a result of "intellectual imperialism'. Indeed, the expression "intellectual imperialism' is a misleading one; it places the responsibility on the wrong party. We are the ones who have decided to adhere to the inward looking norms of the profession; we are the ones who have judged our performance by inappropriate standards; we are the ones who have busied our

19
selves in insignificant questions; I believe it was one of the Ali brothers who pointed out during the independence struggle that the phrase “the British divide and rule' was a misleading one; the fact, he said, was, "we divide and they rule'. The situation is much the same for our profession today: we are the ones who disregard the obvious fact that our society cannot afford the rococo excrescences that have marked western economics for the past three decades. After all, nothing compels us to adopt the norms of western economics wholesale. Indeed, we have the example of a number of scholars from within our tradition-Professor Gadgil and others--who eschewed these standards.
By now the urge to make the discipline “more scientific' has completely overwhelmed the profession. This has reflected itself in four ways. First, we have confined ourselves entirely, to games within “the realm of ideas'. Second, we have felt compelled to purge our discussions of things called "value judgments'. Third, we have demarcated the territorial limits of our discipline with greater and greater sharpness; insisting that the discussion be confined to what Professor Phelps-Brown has called "economics as such'. This sharper demarcation has also been reflected in the progressively narrower specialisation in the training and education of new economists. Fourth, it has compelled us to go in for quantification in a big way.
I need hardly comment on the conservative influence of exorcising all value judgments from our subject. One has only to recall the conservative influence of concepts such as Pareto-optimality, of efforts to base social welfare functions on orderings of individuals and the resulting difficulties in constructing the social welfare functions themselves. The goal of abjuring all value judgments has confined the economist in a very narrow pen. This is especially so in an economy where the large questions-those of class, of structure-are far from settled. The conduct of economists in government suggests that they have convinced themselves that they have done their duty so long as they have spelled out the economics of the matter, so long as they have spelled out the conditions that would
3. The problem--and the consequential waste of intellectual resourcesis not confined to economics. Questions of vital concern to the country have been neglected in other fields too the technology for coal gasifica. tion, coal liquification, coal based fertilizer production, for tapping solar energy etc. are but a few examples that come to mind.

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be required for implementing a policy. Thus, for instance, economists in government did not hesitate to legitimise the worst instincts of the politicians when the latter decided to take over the wholesale trade in wheat. The economists felt that they had done their duty by beginning their report with the assumption that the political and administrative machinery would be able to cordon off the surplus areas, that the prices of grain in these areas would fall drastically and that the farmers would be more willing to sell their entire marketable surplus to the government. While calculating resources for the Fifth Plan the same economists felt that they had done their duty so long as they had spelled out the assumptions that the utilisation of capacity in the steel plants would rise steeply to 90 per cent, that crude oil would be available to the country at $3.50 a barrel in 1974-1975, and $4.75 a barrel in 1978-1979. The question whether any of these conditions was likely to be fulfilled in practice was dismissed as something that was for the policy-makers to assess; the question whether the kinds of steps that would be required for bringing about these conditions would not violate a number of norms by which the polity was governed was dismissed as a question involving value judgments.
The effort to demarcate the boundaries of our subject more sharply and the assumption that the principal objective of economics is to ensure advances in theory has had two consequences. As the principal objective has been to advance "theory' and as the principal way in which this could be done was to formulate refutable hypotheses, we tended to assume a larger and larger part of the environment "as given'. Now, this is essential when we want to formulate refutable hypotheses and, yet, it is not the correct stance when one wants to understand change or prescribe ways to bring about change. We now find that ceteris paribus has imprisoned us within avery narrow cage; that while we now have some refutable hypotheses, we are imprisoned within narrow "circles of certainty". We. are like the health planner who takes every feature of the environment-for example, the designs and lay-outs of buildings, the life-habits of the inhabitants-as given; who busies himself exclusively with curing the resulting ailments when, in fact, he should be viewing the man-environment transaction as a total system and assessing ways of remoulding it in its entirety. He treats the eye infections and other ailments as they afflict his patients and asserts that he will not prescribe that cooking be done in a

21
place other than the room in which his patients sleep, that animals be tethered outside the rooms in which his patients sleep, that rooms have more windows and better cross-ventilation. He abjures all this in the belief that this is the province of the architect, the family counsellor--anyone but him.
The leading theoreticians assert that for theoretical advances the boundaries of the discipline must be sharply defined. Apart from the fact that advancing theory should not be the sole and, some would argue, even the primary objective of the intellectual, the fact is that the plea of the theoreticians that all considerations which they dub as non-economic be exorcised from the subject is no different than the stance by which all priestly classes have maintained their hegemony within a theological tradition. It has been common over the ages for a priestly class to define a rigid dogma, to assert that all followers must believe in every aspect of that dogma. When someone who does not belong to the tradition has tried to comment upon the obvious shortcomings of the particular theology, the priests have dismissed these as the allegations. of a non-believer, as the fulminations of an outsider from whom nothing else could be expected. Similarly, whenever someone schooled in that tradition has tried to place it in a larger perspective, the priests have dismissed his commentary as being that of a heretic, of one who has sold out. In all these cases the tradition perpetuated itself and the priests maintained their hegemony by regarding as admissible only the commentary of people who were completely committed to the tradition itself. The position is much the same in economics now. When an economist draws attention to the overwhelming influence of political, sociological, institutional factors on some problem, he is dismissed as "not really being an economist". . . . .
The increasing emphasis on quantification has been a major advance within our subject. However, for various reasons, it has been less useful from the point of view of the policy-maker than it might have been. Consider the formulation of a particular model for a particular plan. Within the profession, the discussion focuses on the techniques used (for example, whether a model has one or two consumption vectors; the kind of investment functions it uses and so on) rather than on the data used. Consequently, the oftstated proposition that a model churns out what is fed in has not

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been given the same importance in practice that it has been accorded in classrooms. Moreover, quantitative studies have often done no more than to document the obvious. From the point of view of a policy-maker, economists arrive at the scene punctually late. They are forever "explaining' what has already happened. Consumption of fertilizers grow or does not grow in some areas, some farmers use or do not use fertilizers. Once this has happened, we rush in with our research proposals, questionnaires, and fairly simple-minded regressions to "explain' why what has happened has happened. After many sample surveys, after much fancy footwork, we end up telling the policy-makers that the higher or lower use offertilizer seems to be associated with the timely availability of ancillary inputs, the timely availability of fertilizer itself the net profitability of using fertilizers for a particular crop, and so on. The policy-maker is justified in lamenting that he has known this much all along. Thirdly, because of the compulsion to quantify, the variables which are not readily quantifiable are usually omitted. In an indirect way this reinforces the tendency that was mentioned earlier-the tendency of focusing exclusively on “economics as such'. Finally, the state of quantitative work in almost all fields of economics is still below the critical minimum that is required for settling even very basic questions. As these questions have not been settled thus far, the politician receives a cacophony of answers whenever he turns to economists for advice.
Economics has certainly provided the insight that fairly complex sets of conditions have to be fulfilled for even simple propositions to be valid. And it has also provided us with a number of counterintuitive propositions. But unfortunately, insights of both of these kinds have confirmed the inference that nothing useful can be said till the requisite data are collected for verifying that the complex conditions are indeed fulfilled and the inference that nothing positive should be done till all the potential conflicts have been resolved or till complex compensation schemes have been devised. In view of these difficulties and in view of the universal disagreement among economists on most issues, the politician reacts in three ways: (a) if he has made up his mind about acting in a particular way, he has little difficulty in summoning the economist who will legitimise his position; (b) in case he wants to do nothing he summons a number of economists and solicits their advice; he can always plead that, in the face of such contradictory advice and such

23
ferocious disagreement among experts, he should not act; and (c) on occasion when he is seriously looking for guidance he is paralysed because economists are unable to make unanimous, unambiguous recommendations. In none of these cases is the influence of the economist helpful to the country that he supposedly serves as part of the government. As is obvious, in the first and second instances, the economist misleads the policy-maker by rationalising, and in fact legitimising, his worst instincts. By and large this is the role that economists within government played, in the way they estimated resources for the Fifth Plan, and in some of the papers they produced in connection with the nationalisation of the wholesale trade in wheat.
The narrower specialisation in the training and education of economists has also tended to limit their usefulness in government. When one is in government, one has to give one's views on a very large number of very detailed questions and these views have to be given in a hurry. Contrast this with the fact that most of us know little about technology-the technology involved in agriculture, industry, irrigation and every other field. An economist sitting on the licensing committee, for example, would have to give his views on a project to produce a particular type of plastic material or a particular electronic component. In all probability, he would know little about the technologies in these fields-technologies that have made fantastic progress over the last few years and which are even at present changing at a breath-taking расе. Handicapped by this ignorance, the only contribution that the economist can make is the same as the contribution any other generalist makes
that is, some wise cracks, some grunts, some ambiguous shaking
of the head, some remarks picked straight out of Stephen Potter's
manuals on one upmanship.
The features I have stressed-the rigid demarcation of the boundaries of our subject, the pursuit of pseudo-scientification, the tendency to operate purely within the realm of ideas--have left us poorer even as academics. In spite of all the work we have put in as a profession, we know little about change. The reader who is interested in change will learn much more from the writings of people who have been directly involved in changing societies-- Mao, Gandhi, Paulo Freire and others-than he would from the pedestrian, though intricate, formulations of our growth modelers.

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He will learn much from Mao, Gandhi et al. about motivation, mobilisation, organisation-the real engines of change-than he would from the tracts on economic development. While the economist-when he condescends to make contact with the real worldwill be busy describing boxes on organisation charts and the formal functions and powers of each level in the hierarchy and urging, let us say, 'decentralisation', a Mao or a Gandhi is apt to focus on the ideological education of each member of the group whatever his station in the hierarchy and to point out that this is the precondition of "decentralisation'. And, even more important, he would be busy imparting this ideological, education. Just as our writings do not reflect much understanding of change they do not have much impact on change. In fact, the impact of a novelist-say, Prem Chand-is much greater: he identifies the values which are inhibiting progress in a particular field and then, through his writings, he consciously works on changing these values, practices or institutions. He talks directly to those whose values and practices he will change. The economist, working for the applause of his peers who in their turn are Working for his applause, is neither interested in identifying the factors that are inhibiting change, nor, having identified them, does he bother to work directly to change them.
It is hardly surprising then that when the economist ultimately comes up with some recommendations, more often than not these deal with symptoms: that money supply should be raised at a lower rate, that the shares of different sectors in public investment should be altered by a few percentage points, that agriculture should or should not be taxed, that electricity and water charges should be raised, that the dues on these should be collected and so on. These matters are symptoms, not causes: the fact that these measures are not implemented is due to much more basic factorsthe values the society lives by, the structure of power, the impact of institutions and so on-and these very factors will ensure that the superficial nostrums that the economist keeps repeating ad nauseam will not get off the ground.
The ultimate cost of operating exclusively within the realm of ideas is a psychological one: in the end we are left with the feeling of irrelevance and frustration. Even at the best of times the intellectual leads a derivative existence. He observes and writes about phenomena. He does little to participate in them directly or to affect the course of events. In the case of the economist the situa

25
tion is even worse for he often perceives that he is not working on the large and important questions and that, in any case, the situation in the country is such that writing and reading articles is a pretty useless exercise. Hence, individual economists are often a gloomy and frustrated lot. Often they project their frustrations onto the whole country and despair of anything ever happening in the country. If only they had followed Marx's counsel that they should step out of the realm of ideas, that they must participate in real struggles. If only they had asked themselves the question that Gilbert White has addressed to the geographers: "What shall it profit a profession if it fabricates a nifty discipline about the world while that world and the human spirit arc degraded'."
Once the professional economist has been taken through the kinds of arguments listed above, his final defence always is 'you may or may not be right about the relevance of the questions we consider, but, you see, it is an excellent exercise for the mind'. The sad fact, however, is that the well exercised minds of the leaders of the profession have not come up with any novel solutions or even observations about the predicament in which we now find ourselves. In fact, one can argue that the habits of mind that economics engraves most deeply are precisely the ones that disable
economists from being useful in a practical context.
The most conspicuous of such habits is the perpetual search for the best, the perpetual quest for identifying the optimum. The result is that we are unable to endorse any specific course of action and to participate in it. When Mao decides to tame a mighty river he deploys millions upon millions in two seasons, and, in fact, tames the river. Just picture what would have happened if the question had been asked of an economist. He would have under taken a number of studies. He would have tried to calculate the opportunity costs of moving millions to the river banks. He would have tried to calculate the benefits that might have accrued by dispersing the resources on other rivers rather than focusing them on one. He would have tried to calculate the marginal effective ress of flood control vis-a-vis other ways of helping agricultural production, and so on. The incessant search for the optimum plays into the hands of the politician who wants to postpone action. It makes
4. Gilbert F. White, The Professional Geographer, Volume 24, Number 2,
May 1972, pages 101-104.

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why economists were so agitated about a number: had the country, he is said to have enquired, ever achieved the rates of growth that had been spelled out in the Plans and had this ever affected the rapport of the government with the people? While economists were debating the realism of the estimates of resources for the Fifth. Plan, the Chief Minister of U.P., Mr. Bahuguna, dismissed the whole controversy saying in effect that the talk of realism could not be allowed to come in the way of the people's aspirations. The Prime Minister closed all debate on the matter by affirming her belief that the talk about unrealism was essentially defeatist and that the people who talked in that vein did not realise that "soon every dream will become a reality and every reality a dream".
- The economist who is surprised by an episode of this kind has not paid much attention to the general framework within which economists in government must work nor has he observed the
policy-makers with care.
The general framework within which the economist must
work has been well-described by Balogh as “two tier dilettantism":
both the generalist administrator and the uninformed minister being dilettants. However, because of the notion that his ministers are representatives of the people and because of the rigidly hierarchical structure of our government machinery, the economist cannot combat them in the open.
By and large, the politicians who have floated to the top in
our system have little ambition for the country. They display
little dedication to their assignments. Few of them display any pride-the pride that a professional has-in doing a job well. Most of our ministers are professionals in only one narrow sense: they
are professionals in acquiring and holding on to public offices.
A large proportion of them are cynical: they seem to have convinced themselves that our country is fated to remain mediocre, that there are no final solutions to India's problems, that not solving the problem is not going to leave the situation much worse than it already is, and, finally, that not solving the problems is not going to affect their tenure. Therefore, they seem to believe that all they can and need do is to stage elaborate drama and, occasionally, to prod civil servants so that, from time to time, they come up with proposals for tinkering with the margin. A seasoned

29
commentator has characterised them as ones who are interested in making an impression rather than in keeping a promise. These ministers are apt to dismiss anger and impatience as immaturity.
.,辐,
The basic attitude of our politicians towards economists has been well expressed by the Prime Minister. Sometimes ago she said that what we really needed in the country was an "economic wizard'. The implication seems to be that the politicians would want to be free to wheel and deal as they please and then to have a wizard at hand who would take care of the consequences.
Apart from the skills and aptitudes of the ministers as individuals, the economist must contend with the atmosphere in which the government is currently conducted. It is the accusatory atmosphere of parlour politics. Each minister is more preoccupied with saving his neck than with doing his job. And saving one's neck has become a full time job. It is only seldom, therefore, that the ministers will turn their attention to affairs of state. Moreover, even when they are busy feeding editors with damaging information about their colleagues, they will not comment openly on a subject that falls within the jurisdiction of another minister lest they give a licence to the others for inquiring into the conduct of their own ministries. Thus, when the ministers gather together for confabulations in cabinet meetings or in meetings of the higher councils of the party in power, there is a compact of silence. No one wants, no one feels bold enough, to upset anything. In this atmosphere, no single individual can get anything done on his own; however, each acquires a veto. This obviously circumscribes the rationality with which affairs can be conducted. To cite but one instance, when proposals are considered for cutting current expenditures,
it soon becomes obvious that no minister feels confident enough to urge a bold and drastic strategy; it soon becomes obvious that each programme has its own lobby, and that only across-the-board cuts are feasible. The economist cannot rush his latest revelations to his minister and expect the latter to convey it to his colleagues and masters. In a court you just, don't offer unsolicited advice.
In a system with strong hierarchal norms juniors must invariably defer to those occupying high office. Often views are weighed not by the arguments and evidence on which they rest, but by the weight of the proponent. A senior official or a minister may, and

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often does, reject a view without assigning reasons and without the least indication that he has thought the matter through. The handicaps of juniors are reinforced if bosses at each level make subordinates insecure by giving the subordinates the impression that they are vindictive, that they judge people's loyalties by the advice they give, that they attribute motives to what the subordinates say. In this atmosphere functionaries soon learn that ministers no longer look upon them as colleagues but as individuals to be badgered, as agents to "handle cases' for them, as agents to be used for personal aggrandisement, as tongue-tied dummies to be bullied at meetings. Functionaries soon learn that what they say is not assessed on the criterion, "Is it valid'? but by asking, "Why is he saying it, and how can it be used against him or his minister, now or later?'
III. - Economists
The reader who has been keeping up with professional economic literature and who has been observing the conduct of government will have been well conditioned to expect that the foregoing factors will limit the economist's usefulness in government. But little in his reading of the professional literature will have prepared him for one feature of economists in government; the enthusiasm with which some of them take on the role of legitimisers. In spite of the lessons of the Second, Third and Fourth Plans-that there is no worse way of perpetuating the country's dependence on aid, that there is no more effective way of sabotaging the goal of self reliance than to commence an investment programme with unrealistic assumptions about resources-they will make all sorts of fanciful assumptions while estimating the net import bill during the Fifth Plan: that no food imports will be required, that the utilisation of our steel and fertilizer plants will rise steeply to 90 per cent, that (in spite of what the Department of Supplies tells them) fertilizers will be available to the country at prices well below prices that the country has to pay even as the estimates are being made, that crude oil will be available to the country at $3.50 a barrel in
6. I have focussed on the political masters that the economist is liable to encounter and have omitted saying anything about his administrative colleagues. Some observations about administrators can be found in my 蠶 and the Current Situation', The Economic and Political Weekly,
uly

3.
1974/75 and at just $4.75 a barrel in 1978/79 and so on. When they notice that even with assumptions of this kind the net external gap adds up to Rs. 5900 crores they will just assume that further sums will be saved on steel, fertilizers, etc. and will decree that the gap will be no more than Rs. 4000 crores. They will strut around assuring everyone that self reliance is indeed within grasp, that all. the country has to do is to put its faith in their estimates. They will fabricate a model and refuse to inform fellow economists how the coefficients etc. in the model have been estimated. Their colleagues must discover on their own the mysterious calculations that convinced the model builders that in India (and not just now, but also in 1978/79) fertilizer will be produced almost entirely without any petroleum products as their basic feedstock, And so on and on."
Why do economists churn out such estimates to order; why do they lend their reputations of professional competence to such documents; why, then, do they continue to strut around defending these documents long after events have shown them up to be the frauds they are?
We must dismiss two pseudo alibis that are most commonly offered to explain away the conduct of these economists.
“You see, it really isn't their fault. They are brilliant at theory. It is just that they don't have a full grasp of practical realities. You can't expect a man to know everything'.
If all the documents connected with the formulation of the Draft Fifth Plan, for instance, were available, we would see that what these economists fabricate is not good theory either: the way resources for the Draft Fifth Plan were estimated, the way oil-based feedstocks for fertilizer production were wished away, the insistence that capital costs must be estimated in obsolete prices-none of this was good theory; it was magic. The very fact that we have continued to use a model that has remained unchanged in its essentials from one formulated twenty years ago
7. The number of examples can be multiplied manifold-ranging from the estimation of budgetary deficits to the accounts of crash programmes like the half-a-million-jobs programme. I have confined myself to recalling . one or two items that appeared in the press following B. S. Minhas's resignation from the Planning Commission in December 1973.

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has itself not been good theory. Twenty years ago when the model was formulated the Plan's outlays were indeed to result in substantial proportionate increases in the capital assets that could be Created. During the two decades that have followed a large capital base has indeed been constructed and one of the principal problems facing the economy today is the better utilisation of capacity that has already been constructed. Yet the Fifth Plan model continues to focus exclusively on new capacity. For if one of the major current problems-unused capacity-is just something to be taken care of by yet another assumption: that the unused capacity will be used. Moreover, practical reality is not such a demanding muse: it does not restrict its revelations to those who have some very special or rare faculties. Even a lay reader of newspapers would have known that the political and administrative machinery could not Cordon off the surplus wheat areas, that no miraculous improvements in the utilisation of capacity were about to break out over the country............
"But you don't realise that we are functioning in a democracy. The Ministers are our political masters. We must follow their (directions; after all, they are the representatives of the people. The real tragedy is not that we do their bidding-as long as we have a democracy we must do as they urge-the real tragedy is that they don't understand complex economic issues'. This assertion is at once too easy on the Ministers and too convenient for the economist. As for the Ministers not understanding supposedly complex economic issues; it is by now clear that the mistakes for which we are paying most dearly-the financial recklessness of the crash programmes, the uncertainties and procrastinations of industrial policy, the ill-prepared forays of nationalisationrequired no understanding of any complex issues, of any esoterie economic theorems or of any intricate lemmas. As for "the-economist-functioning-in-a-democracy' bit, it has been clear for quite awhile now that almost the sole objective of our politicians has been to stay in office and that they are prepared to travel every length to retain their ministerial seats. There is nothing in the democratic ethic that requires professionals to help the politician harm the country for his aggrandisement. There is nothing in the democratic ethos that requires each professional to be a party to ministerial mendacity, or to legitimise whatever the politician does for his short-term, parochial ends.

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The real explanations, unfortunately, are much less flattering to our profession. The harsh truth is that, like the rest of the elite we are addicted to cozy consumption standards and to institutional success. The one thing that our brand of socialism has aimed at and the one thing it has succeeded in doing is to centralise patronage in the hands of the government. Hence, as, we seek to benefit from this patronage--as we want to obtain funds for our research institutes, as we want to be on government committees, as we want to be on government sponsored delegations abroad, as we want to obtain a few chunks of patronage that we can dispense on our own, our own little jagirs-we must perform to the government's tunes. That we are indistinguishable from the elite is best seen in the fact that many of the doyens of our profession maintain their stranglehold over many an academic institution with as much doggedness as the politicians deploy to keep their ministerial chairs. Junior staff members are replete with accounts of the petty ways in which they are obliged to acknowledge their dependence on their seniors and to acknowledge the latter's superior status.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that when we are out of government we take care to behave well. (A slight show of independence, an occasional article criticising some detail of some policy is entirely consistent with being on good behaviour. After all, the government can have little use for out-and-out lackeys. Testimonials from them add no cubits to its height.) And when we are in government we conduct ourselves as everyone else in government does. We are as status conscious, as quick to invoke rules of precedence and seniority, as anyone else. The Indian Economics Service, for instance, is no different in this than the much maligned Indian Administrative Service.
We are as willing and as enthusiastic in playing the legitimiser. We work as hard to mask the true nature of official policies and we use the plea of official secrecy requirements with as much dog
8. The reader will be able to recall instances from his own experience. An
extreme one that I know-one that sticks in my mind as it seemed to be particularly humiliating and pathetic-was of a research institution in U.P. In this institution the director seemed to have decreed-among other things that the main entrance to the building could only be used by him and his family. Each morning when the director arrived the entire staff including the senior-most researchers-had to line up on the
ಖ್ಖ# of the corridor and greet him. This at least was the position in
1.

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gedness as anyone else. In fact, we go in for "confidential economics' in a big way and we do so for the same two reasons that compel the official and the minister to seek cover in oaths of secrecy:
because “information' is power over one's colleagues (an official economist releasing driblets of data to his colleagues--whose
research papers depend on gaining access to the data-is hardly distinguishable from an official dispensing licences) and because we realise that disclosures will show us up. It is indeed easy to propose a test case. Various technical objections have been raised to the way resources were estimated for the Draft Fifth Plan, and, prima facie, it would seem that some mystery surrounds the manner in which various coefficients (of the input-output matrix, of the two consumption vectors, the sectoral capital-output ratios, etc.) were estimated for the formal model used in formulating parts of the Draft Plan. As no defence secrets can be invoked in the case of these documents we should ask that the Report of the Reconstituted Group on Financial Resources for the Fifth Plan as well. as the documents describing the bases for the numerical values of the coefficients in the model should be released. We could then see who works most assiduously to keep them buried-the economists, the administrators or the politicians. Many administrators would want these documents released, partly because they will show up the economists and partly because a few of them surely record the fact that a number of estimates were adopted over the strenuous objections of administrators in the operating ministries.
Finally, we are as averse to team work as we allege ministers and administrators to be. Few economists who have held high office in government have built up a staff, few have shared data with and mobilised their colleagues outside government to find solutions to the problems that are the common concern of us all.9 This aversion to team work has particularly pernicious consequences for the advice economists can give to the policy-makers. Each policy issue requires a critical minimum of effort. The minimum before which work on the subject begins to yield operationally useful results is very substantial. All parts of a model, for instance, may have been estimated and yet, if a few crucial parts are inadequately researched, the best of us would hesitate to interpret its results
9. There are exceptions, of course. The late Pitamber Pant is one notable exception that at once comes to mind. Unfortunately, such exceptions are not numerous enough to negate the remark in the text.

35.
unambiguously. The government's almirahs are full of research that has been initiated but not completed or only a few parts of which have been done. As those of us who have had an opportunity did not build a staff and as we did not mobilise the talent in universities purposively, even these bits and pieces of half-completed research are not useable. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the quantitative basis for assessing short term economic developments and prescribing policies for dealing with them.
I have argued thus far that the economist is hardly distinguishable from, say, the administrator. But in two respects his background makes him a greater potential hazard than a seasoned administrator is likely to be.
The first is that the economist, when he is suddenly appointed to high office, brings with him an aura of expertise. His viewsat least on matters that are conventionally regarded as 'economic' -carry more weight than those of the administrator. Most policymakers do not realise that the economist's reputation has been acquired in an inward looking profession, by excelling on norms that, as was noted earlier, despise relevance. Nor do many of them realise that, as Myrdal has so often pointed out, there are no economic problems; there are just problems. And that the sharp boundaries that economists have drawn for their subject as well as the narrow specialisations that mark their training keep economists from acquiring the well-rounded experience that is required for tackling these problems. Finally, few policy-makers realise-or at least, few have the gumption to state publicly-that often the views of economists spring from as great an ignorance of technologies, of institutions, from as common place factors (the urge to project a particular image of oneself, personal animosities, favourite hobby horses) as those of any other member of the government.
The second feature is that unlike an administrator who will reach high office only after a great deal of experience in handling crises and situations of various kinds, in managing and assessing men, the economist often alights at his high office straight from academia. As he has little experience in managing men, in dealing with, say, politicians, he is easily charmed off his feet. He is much more easily manipulated than a seasoned administrator who, during his gradual career, would have seen many a politician come and go. Moreover, as he suddenly arrives at high office,

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the appurtenances of high office, the sudden attention of media, the sudden deference of officials, businessmen and the like go quickly to the economist's head. He develops delusions of subgrandeur, he begins viewing himself as one who is upholding the progressive line in the higher counsels of government, as the bastion of self-reliance, as a crusader. He begins to strike poses.
V, Inferences
The foregoing has many implications for the way we conduct ourselves.
The economic and political system is showing sufficient strains for us to abandon the convenient assumption that no basic changes are ever going to come about in India. We should start thinking in terms of alternatives to the present arrangements. We should work out the details of the type of society we would want India to be three decades from now. We should construct the large paradigms that best explain our present condition and best instruct us about ways to reach the desired state. In short, we should spell out our Utopias and our dogmas. Those of us who are familiar with the enormous amount of work that has been done on details should pull this together into a few rival paradigms so that the intellectual debate within the country can be lifted to a more fruitful plain.
We should abandon our preoccupation with the policy-makers and should address ourselves to the people. In particular, instead of drafting and redrafting documents for our policy-makers, we should educate the people about the true character of economic policies, the true causes for the present state of affairs. We must refuse to play the role of legitimisers.
We should venture beyond "economics as such'. We should step outside the realm of ideas and participate in real struggles.... One can go on adding to this list. But one soon confronts the basic problem that the values and attitudes of our elite are inimical to the welfare of our country and that economists and other intellectuals are an indistinguishable part of this elite. And one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that they will improve their ways only when the elite as a whole is taught a lesson, only when it is remoulded. If this is indeed the case then we must hope that the peaceful political movements that are now beginning to gather momentum in the country will help teach all of us the requisite lessons.

MEDICAL EMIGRATION, INAPPROPRIATE EDUCATION AND A DISTORTED HEALTH CARE SYSTEMk y
LA LITHA GUNAWARDENA
Until 1960 transnational migration comprised mainly of movements of semi-skilled and unskilled labour and capital. In the past 15 years there is a marked change in the character of international migration. One of the most significant features of this migration is the high proportion of those who belong to the professional classes. Apart from the character of migration, another factor that has contributed to the current international concern about the migration of doctors, scientists, engineers and other technically skilled persons is the destination of migrants. An increasing number of skilled personnel move from the developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa to the developed countries, mainly those of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Table I shows the importance of the outflow of professional skills from developing countries to the three major developed countries that are the world's largest recipients of professional skills. Central to the current concern of the implications of this perverse' flow from countries who need professional skills to those capable of training them, has been the international focus on development, particularly of the role of trained personnel as essential ingredients in the process of economic development and technical progress of a country. It is the implication of costs being incurred by, the country losing skills and benefits accruing to the country absorbing them that is brought out in the popular term the “brain drain' and the more recent technical coinage of the United Nations discussion of the problem-"The Reverse Transfer of Technology.'
This paper has benefited from a number of valuable comments at the drafting stage from Professor K. Seneviratne, Faculty of Medicine, Colombo. . . . ,م
1. The Reverse Transfer of Technology: Its dimensions, economic effects and
policy implications. UNCTAD TD/B/C6/F. 1975.

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In order to examine the outflow of professional skills from Sri Lanka it would be necessary to understand how these movements generally arose. They have arisen because industrial countries with rising incomes have recently developed an enormous need for medical personnel and scientists and other qualified personnel whose supply in these countries have not kept pace with the growing demand. The most striking example of this is the United States where since the mid-1950s an expansion in medical services, space and defence programmes created an enormous need for technically trained personnel. For instance, the percentage increase in expenditure in the Federal Budget for space research and technology rose sharply from 0.1% in 1955 to 0.4% in 1960 and to 5.1% in 1965. This pull created by the United States caused an outflow of technically qualified personnel mainly from the developed countries of the United Kingdom and Canada. In Britain this was looked upon with alarm. “The brain drain brings with it an additional threat to British industry as well as to British science. Not only scientists but technicians and engineers are leaving the country.' The manpower shortage created in the United Kingdom from the emigration of British scientists and doctors to the United States was soon filled by personnel largely from the developing countries of the Commonwealth. The emigration of skills from Sri Lanka to the United Kingdom is part of this general international movement. British immigration laws were the mechanism through which emigration was made possible.
The concern with the recent increase in emigration of professionally qualified personnel from Sri Lanka led to the appointment of a special committee to report on this problem. The report of the committee drew upon a limited statistical coverage maintained by the Department of Immigration and Emigration of professionally qualified persons who left the island between 1971 to 1974. The table below shows the gross outflow for this period by categories ofskills. m
2. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1962, 1967. ,
J. P. Bernal "The Brain Drain'. Labour Monthly April 1964 p. 180.
4. Report of the Cabinet Committee Inquiring into the Problem of Technologi. cally, Professionally and Academically qualified personnel leaving Sri Lanka. Sessional Paper No. X of 1974. ,
3

39
Trained personnel who left for employment abroad5
May 1971 Apr. 1972 May 1973 May
f
Category o to fo Јипе Total
Apr. 1972 May 1973 Apr. 1974, 1974,
Doctors 108 171 238 41 558 Engineers 54 113 94 14 275 Accountants 23 41 88 11 163 University Teachers wunny 15 24 i 41 Other Teachers 82 55 52 193 Lawyers 8 35 13 2 58 Technicians 20 27 1S 62 Nurses 14 11 2 1 28 Others 90 142 83 12 327
Total 379 603 62. 102 1,075
*Others include dentists, administrative personnel, economists.
We have, however, been able to use United Kingdom data to extend the emigration figures from Sri Lanka to the United Kingdom until 1968, for which the first classification according to professional categories is available. These figures are given below :
Professionally skilled personnel admitted to the U.K. from SriLanka. 1968-1974
Category 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 Total
Doctors and Dentists 27 14 28 43 101 99 118 430 Engineers . 7 26 48 75 71 25 8 260 Nurses 10 9 12 15 18 1. 65 Teachers 40 10 5 .. 5 29 10 4, 103 Technicians 1 3 6 14 8 arma 8 40 Accountants -- - - - - - - - - - 14 6 6 26 Lawyers - - rama 5 20 5 2 32 Others 5 15 16 21 Waarna 57
Total 90 77 115 178 261 146 146 1,013
The Causes of the Brain. Drain
The causes of migration of high-level manpower are complex, stemming from a combination of economic factors, political con
5. Ibid

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ditions and discriminatory legislation as well as educational factors. We will consider firstly a problem which is an outcome of
a centre-periphery relationship between Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.
One of the preconditions which facilitated the emigration of professional skills from Sri Lanka to the United Kingdom was that a professional dependency had been created between the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka due to the fact that professional training had been since the 19th century largely modelled on the pattern of the metropolitan country and not oriented to the needs
brain drain from Sri Lanka mainly to the U.K. Qualifications recognised by Britain had an international acceptance and gave an international mobility to those who possessed them. This feature of academic or professional dependence as a cause of emigration. in studies on the brain drain has been noted in countries such as India and some African countries as well. We shall argue that while secondary school education and a greater part of university education was initially modelled on the British system and was later changed and adapted to suit the needs of the economy, professional training remained geared to that available in Britain at the time. This is particularly evident in medicine, engineering and until 1959 in accountancy.
The imposition of political control on the island by the British in the early 19th century after the conquest of the Kandyan Kingdom was soon followed by a programme of education. The colonial government's concern with education was due to the expansion of British administration and commerce. In order to maintain political. stability and an expanding trade it was necessary to have an Englisheducated local population who could man the lowest ranks of the bureaucracy.
Some of the major policy decisions in reference to education which left an impact on the character of secondary education for a considerable time were the Colebrook-Cameron Reforms of 1833.7
6. Ali Mazrui, "The African University as a Multinational Corporation: Problems of Penetration and Dependency in Harvard Educational Review Vol. 45 No. 2 May 1975 pp. 201-202 and R. Jeffrey 'Migration of Doctors' in Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 11 No. 13 of March 27.
7. Colebrook Cameron Papers-G. C. Mendis Vol. I pp. 68-71.

41
shese reforms were mainly utilitarian. At this time the Civil Service in the island was recruited almost entirely from Britain. The principal advancement to the public service was to be selected by the government for education abroad in a British university, Colebrook made a strong plea to open the public service to all since extensive recruitment from England was not possible due to the low state of the country's finances. So it was recommended that a high standard of education in English be made available more cheaply in the island so that local persons with the required education could be selected for work in the colonial administration. Accordingly in 1834 the Colombo Academy was formed. Government-aided schools borrowed their curriculum from the English public schools. Examinations of Cambridge and London Universities were introduced by 1880. The possession of this certificate was a requirement for employment in the lower rungs of the colonial bureaucracy.
However, in the latter part of the 1920s there was growing dissatisfaction and widespread criticism by the Ceylonese elite of the secondary school curriculum since textbooks and teaching methods were imported from Britain which had little relevance. to the needs of the country. There was opposition also to the wide use of English and the neglect of the local languages in the schools in the island. The general dissatisfaction resulted in the appointment of a series of government commissions beginning in the late 1920s which sought to change the form and content of secondary education in conformity with the economic, social and cultural needs of the country. As a result, Sinhalese and Tamil classes were introduced in the secondary school and Ceylon History and Geography became part of the curriculum.
Later the demand also increased for higher education and the more vocal elements of the local elite pressed for the establishment of its own university. In 1921 an University College was established which was however affiliated to London University. Though many changes have since been made in secondary education as well as in the university curriculum to conform more closely to the social and economic requirements of the country, profesisional training particularly in medicine, except for minor changes, has remained until recently largely based on the British model.

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Since medical education and the problems of doctor migration are one of the most acute problems engaging the attention of the government, we shall discuss this problem of medical dependence not merely as a major factor facilitating the brain drain. but a major cause for the perpetuation of the distortions in the Sri Lankan health care system in general.
Medica Education
The Ceylon Medical School was the first professional school to be set up in the island in 1870. The prospectus of the school published in 1870 clearly pronounced the policy of the then colonial administration. It was designed "to impart to native youths of this island a practical, safe and sound knowledge of medicine and surgery such as will enable them to engage in private practice or fill subordinate posts in the public service.' By 1887 the licentiate granted by the school was recognized by the Privy Council in England as an institution authorised. to confer diplomas in surgery and medicine and holders of its licence were registered in the Colonial Medical List. In 1942 the School acquired university status, granting its own undergraduate degrees which continued to be recognised by the British Medical Council.
In fact, undergraduate training programmes in medicine based on the British model have been in existence for nearly a century. The recognition until a few years ago by the British Medical Council of the undergraduate degree meant that the local degree maintained a standard acceptable in the United Kingdom.
Nearly all of postgraduate training was undertaken abroad, mainly in the United Kingdom. The preliminary postgraduate examinations of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of England have been held in Sri Lanka since 1948. However, full membership of such British professional bodies requires residence in the United Kingdom and training in hospitals approved by the General Medical Council in the United Kingdom. These
8. The term 'doctor' in this paper refers to those who have graduated from
... the medical faculties of Sri Lanka. 9. Caria Fonseka “The Story of the Colombo Medical Schoci' in The
Colombo Medical School Centenary 1870-1970 p. 12. 10. Prof. K. Seneviratne "The Institute of Post Graduate Medicine in Sri Lanka'
1974. p. 1 (unpublished).

43
ostgraduate examinations were designed primarily to select candidates for further training in their specialities to achieve conultant status in the United Kingdom. The consequence of training raduates from Sri Lanka in the United Kingdom was that they cquired skills and training relevant to an affluent society. The riorities of health problems in a developing country are, however, very different.
The various British colleges of medicine have had an important influence in sustaining a medical colony within the ex-colonial countries. By recognising these training courses in Sri Lanka as in other Commonwealth countries they have influenced the general medical education in these countries. Their main influence has been the continuing prestige in their qualifications which in many Commonwealth countries are regarded as desirable if not an essential prelude to specialist practice especially in those areas where specialist training does not exist. What enabled the Sri Lanka doctor to emigrate to the United Kingdom was not merely the competence in language and his ability to adjust himself to a cultural milieu with which he had some acquaintance in the excolonial country, but the fact that the training system in Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom was broadly similar. In other words, the “technology of medicine as well as the pharmacopia was similar. Inter-recognition of qualifications while creating conditions for the emergence of a community of professional colleagues has had the unforeseen consequence of aiding the contemporary phenomenon of the brain drain from developing to the developed countries. Moreover, training in an affluent country in well-equipped hospitals implies that students are trained in the skills and specialities relevant in the context of a highly affluent society with increasing emphasis and expenditure on technical advances in medicine. Such training naturally orients the trainee to acquire a perspective of medicine relevant to the country where the student is trained -in this case the United Kingdom-and which alienates him from his own environment, where conditions are so vastly different. One of the factors that contributes to the emigration of medical doctors is the lack of job satisfaction-due to the non-availability of essential facilities for the practise of medicine, the absence or
11. T. J. Johnson and M. Caygill, Community in the Making p. 290, and E. M. Godfrey 'The Brain Drain from Low Income Countries' Journal of Development Studies Vol. 6 1970 pp. 234-247.

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scarcity of social amenities such as schools, electricity, and water services in the rural areas. This evidence has been gathered from a survey undertaken in 1975 which included interviews with 38 Sri Lanka medical doctors resident in the United Kingdom.' Though political and economic factors played a far more important role according to this survey in the decision to emigrate, unsatisfactory working conditions did contribute to the decision as well.
Secondary effects of an irrelevant training system
The system of undergraduate as well as postgraduate training in medicine linked closely to the British model, had the effect of perpetuating the existing distortions of the health-care system in favour of urban areas where a minority of the population lives, leaving rural areas with 80% of the total population with inadequate health facilities. This factor becomes evident when we examine the distribution of doctors in the different divisions of the island.
This maldistribution of doctors and hospitals is not accidental but reflects the structure and organisation of power within society. Those who enjoy the best medical facilities are in the urban areas. The technologically advanced hospitals, consuming a large proportion of health expenditure in physical as well as human resources are located in the towns while the best private hospitals are also located in the urban areas and serve those who can afford to pay. The system of medicine geared to the model of the metropolitan country reinforces the existing maldistribution in the health services.
In 1972 there were 3,251 doctors qualified to practise in the island. These doctors can be divided into three broad groups. Firstly, there were government doctors employed by the Ministry of Health who totalled 2,045 or 63% of the total doctor population. Secondly, there were semi-government doctors or doctors employed by other government departments and municipalities and thirdly non-government doctors. These two categories added up to a total of 1,206 or 37% of the total doctor population. The doctors in government and semi-government services represents
12. The author is grateful to the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex,
for Fellowship facilities which made this study possible. 13. Health Manpower Study. Sub. Study 'C-See also Interim Report on the National Health Manpower Study in the Republic of Sri Lanka p: 65. Table w * - 、 、

45
5% of the total. One indication of the imbalance in urban-rural halth-care is the concentration of doctors in the towns. This Sgraphic maldistribution of medical doctors by Superintendent of Health Services Divisions (SHS) is seen in Table II. As shown this table, the concentration of all categories of doctors is highest in the Colombo S.H.S. Division where the doctor population rajo is 51.5 per 100,000. Jaffna S.H.S. Division comes second with octor population ratio of 28.8 and Kandy S.H.S. Division third with 19.8. Kegalle S.H.S. Division shows the lowest ratio with 9.6 per 100,000 people. If the doctor-population ratio is standardized for the size of the geographic area (S.H.S. Division) these disparities become more evident as shown in Table III. A comparison of these figures with actual population figures given below in each of these districts in terms of the total population of the island will bring out more sharply the distortion in the distribution of medical doctors in the island. Moreover, 59% of the total number of specialist doctors live in the Colombo S.H.S. Division. Whereas urban areas have 25,254 hospital beds, rural areas have only 7,044, while the former costs ten times as much as the latter.
Percentage of total
S.H.S. Diyision Population population of the
Island
Colombo .. 45% 21% Kandy · · 10.7% 13% Jafna 6.7% 5.5% All other divisions .. 37.5% 60.3%
A factor which is closely interwoven with the inequality of the health-care system and reinforces this inequality is the system of medical training. Doctors trained by this system are more suited to working in technologically advanced urban hospitals than in the rural areas. "The same social system which creates a congregation of doctors in the urban areas despite the urgent needs of the mass of rural population for health-care also spends a high proportion of the resources for health-care on urban hospitals, uses a high proportion of the country's health workers to staff them and trains doctors and other health workers in the same form as in capitalist countries from which the models of such institutions have been derived.' ぶ* - - -
14. Interim Report p. 70. 15. Malcolm Segal 'The Political ony of Doctors Social Practice, Сад -
ciousness and Training. Under *:ே

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This British model of training is inappropriate for meeti the health needs of a greater part of the population in Sri Lanka who live in rural areas where the pattern of disease associated with rural poverty is different. For instance, a world wide survey of the incidence of disease indicates the different patterns of disease in developing and developed countries. In African countries, South East Asian countries and in the Mediterranean, the incidence of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, parasitic infestations, malnutrition, small-pox and cholera which are largely preventible are very high, whereas in W. Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan, cancer, chronic degenerative diseases, vascular diseases and mental illnesses are the most prevalent diseases.6
In spite of such evidence it has been erroneously argued that there is a similarity of diseases between developed and developing countries and that therefore the training of doctors in the two different situations should be similar. In support of this argument a recent paper quotes evidence from a study undertaken in Sri Lanka. "In a study of consecutive patients in the general outpatient department in Sri Lanka (who would be similar to those attending a general practitioner's clinic in the West) 2% had a tropical disease, 14% a doubtful tropical disease and 84% a nontropical disease. These figures emphasise the importance of nontropical disease in tropical countries." However, an analysis of cases of leading diseases treated in government hospitals shows a trend different from those in developed countries (Table IV).
In 1951 the three leading diseases were respiratory diseases with 46.58% of the total, diarrhoeal diseases with 20.07% and other infectious diseases with 14.73% of the total. In 1961 the pattern remained similar in respect of the first and second leading diseases, that is respiratory diseases (54.78%) and diarrhoeal diseases (25.99%) of the total, while anaemia and malnutrition came third with 10.64% of the total. Between 1969-1970 the order of the three leading diseases was respiratory diseases (40,74 %), diarr
16. J. Bryant'Health and the Developing World. Cornell 1969 p. 30. 17. Brian Seneviratne, V. A. Benjamin, D. A. Gunawardera, M. Kanagarajah Should undergraduate medical training in a developing country be different?" British Medical Journal 4 October 1975, pp. 27-29.

47
beal diseases (22.25%) and other infectious diseases (16.95 %). The cases of malignancies and heart diseases were by comparison vety low according to the Table.
This pattern of disease is very different to the evidence from deeloped countries which enumerate cancer, degenerative diseases, vascular diseases and mental illness as the major types of diseases. Disease and its complication, therefore, as the evidence points out is lot the same the world over. The categories of medical personnel therefore required by the two types of countries would be different. Diseases which are preventible need not require the services of a fully trained doctor. Different categories of medical personnel could be trained to look after preventive medicine and public health education. The British model of training resulted in the production of one category of health worker suited to their needs: that is, a fully qualified doctor.
Training in university teaching hospitals based in urban areas naturally equips doctors to work in urban areas. A result of this training is that it creates a desire on the part of these doctors to ... practice the type of medicine in an environment they have been trained in. Naturally, those who are products of such a training system are not merely unwilling to work in the rural areas, but they are often unfit for this task. Frustrated in rural posts where their training is hardly put in practice, where facilities are inadequate and social amenities non-existent, these doctors take the earliest opportunity to move to the cities or go abroad. In this sense the training system has maintained a heavy bias towards urban based therapeutic medicine.
Remedial measures
We will first deal with the problem of the brain drain. Given the existing structure of the society, one possible method of reducing the magnitude of the migration of medical doctors is to indigenise the system of medical training, or in other words to evolve forms of training suited to the needs as well as the resources of the country. This does not imply a lowering of standards of teaching medicine. Medical education has to be geared to the type of health problems experienced in the country. At present, the greater number of doctors in employment work in the field of patient care amounting to 79.1% of the total number of doctors. The second largest

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are health administrators with 7.8% of doctors. Preventive medicin accounts for only 5.6% of the doctors. Moreover, the medical
80% of the population is rural then 80% of the medical studehts should be educated accordingly.' A new undergraduate curriculum should therefore include training doctors partly in the rural areas who would adapt to the existing conditions and resources within these areas where the mass of the population lives. Such doctors should know the working conditions to be anticipated in rural areas, the diseases common in rural areas and their prevention in the rural areas. Preventive medicine and public health education would form a greater part of this experience.
“The crux of the problem is whether to train doctors to meet the needs of the mass of the population who are rural dwellers with low effective demand or for relatively few urban dwellers who have a high effective demand.' The real remedy would be to change the emphasis of the system of training from one only producing fully qualified doctors to producing doctors as well as categories of health workers or medical auxiliaries whose training equips them to provide basic health-care in an environment where largely preventible diseases predominate.
This does not imply that standards of medicine will be lowered. Since the resources for health care are limited in the country, such auxiliary medical staff, whose functions are limited and would be clearly defined and are not meant to replace fully qualified doctors would be less expensive to train and would be able to meet the immediate health-care needs of the mass of the rural population. Health problems outside their purview should be referred to qualified doctors in rural hospitals. The existing hospital network could be used, but what would change is the staffing pattern, with medical auxiliaries staffing the lowest rural units. Rural areas having adequate social amenities with hospitals equipped to provide basic
18. Interim Report p. 70. 19. O. Gish. “International Migration of Medical Personnel in Britain' Science Policy. Research Unit, University of Sussex 1968 (mimeo) p. 58.
20. Ibid. p. 59.
 

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health-care would have to be connected with better equipped hospitals where more complex cases could be referred, while University teaching hospitals would be at the apex of such a system. In a small country such as Sri Lanka with adequate roads, an ambulance system could link such rural units with town centres with better equipped hospitals manned by fully trained doctors.
Postgraduate teaching should also be oriented to working primarily on problems connected within the environment. The establishment of a new postgraduate medical school in Colombo suggests that the question of relevance of the curriculum is of primary importance in the new reforms. Henceforth, medical graduates will not be sent abroad for acquiring qualifications in developed countries but would primarily work within Sri Lanka. Training abroad for short periods to acquaint oneself with the developments in medicine is recommended without a need foracquiring qualifications abroad. A doctor with skills relevant to medical problems of Sri Lanka and less relevant to the needs of the developed countries would be much less prone to emigration.
The second problem arising out of inappropriate education is the strengthening of the maldistribution of health services. Restructuring the training system to suit the needs of the population would inevitably help to remedy the urban/rural imbalance in the existing health care system. Since the mass of the population lives in the rural areas, a system of training which places priority on their health needs by providing adequate health facilities would rectify the existing imbalance in the system of hospitals in the rural areas with no water services, no living quarters, and a lack of drugs and supporting staff. However, such a solution to improve health-care services in favour of the rural population is only a reform of a complex social system and leaves intact the basic privileges of the professions and the classes who hold power. Such a reform does not touch the fundamental cause of the imbalance in health-care in non-socialist developing countries. The major cause of this imbalance is determined by the class which controls the economic and political power in the country. The prevalence of disease, particularly in the rural areas and within the slums in towns stems from the conditions of poverty and a lack of development.

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S4
тАвцE п Standardized Doctor/Population ratio in Sri Lanka
Doctor Area in sq. Standardized Population miles in which Doctor|Popu
SHS Division Ratio per population of lation Ratio
100,000 100,000 live for 100 sq. miles
SRI LANKA w. 25.6 189.2 18.6 Anuradhapura . . 17.5 491.3 7.9 Badulla . . . 13.2 475.7 6.1 Batticaloa 13.1 396.4 6.6 Colombo 51.5 29.6 95.4 Galle a w 14.5 87.6 5.6 Jafna a 28.8 136.9 24.6 Kalutara 18.9 85.4 20.5 Kandy 19.8 84.6 21.5 Kegalle 9.6 98.5 9.7 Kurunegala 13.6 179.2 10,1 Matale 10.6 433.5 2.2 Matara 10.3 1595 8.2 Puttalam w 20.6 302” 1.8 Ratnapura w 16.6 1890 2.0 Vavuniya -- 12.1 1,377.6 3.3
Source: Interim Report National Health Manpower Study of Sri Lankap. 68
TABLE IV Annual costs of Treatment of the leading diseases in Sri Lanka in '000
- Cost of Cost of Leading Diseases indoor Ꭴutdoor Total %
treatment treatment Cost
1. Respiratory infections... 23,397.5 4,724.4 28,121.9 0.88 2. Malaria 4 20,686.2 7.99 3. Anaemias &
Malnutrition w 6,847.4 6,847.4 26S 4. Accidents & Suicide ... 16,859.1 3,865.4 20,724.5 8.01 5. Filariasis* · 2,580.2 1.00 6. Diarrhoeal Diseases . . 13,872.4 3,521.9 17,394.3 6.72 7. Leprosy 2,308.2 1.00 8. Tuberculosis' - 8,891.7 3.46 9. Infectious Diseases ... 10,572.2 2,147.5 12,719.7 4.92 10, Venereal Diseases 4 1,043.3 0.40 All Leading Diseases .. 57,676.2 14,259.2 121,317.4 46.88 All Government expenditure for Western Sector ... 154,429.9 28,632.8t 258,791.7
Source: Interim Report on the National Health Manpower Study in the Republic
of Sri Lanka, 1974.
*Including costs of prevention.
Including a part of costs of laboratory services and Administrative Services.

55
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SOME DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECTS OF INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT GODFREY GUNATILLEKE and SURANJITH P. F. SENARATNE
Patterns of demographic change-the contrast between developed and developing countries
It has been widely recognised among demographers that the prevailing patterns of demographic change in the developing countries are significantly different from those which occurred in the developed countries at corresponding levels of income and output. The rates of natural increase of population in the developing countries have risen to levels never reached in Europe in the 19th Century and pose an entirely new set of problems in regard to the balance between population and resources. Whereas rates in the developed world including Europe, America, and Oceana were in the region of 0.9% at comparable levels of output, in the developing countries they have risen to 2.5% and 3%. The major outlet that was offered to Europe through migration to newly colonised territories has not been available to developing countries. The spatial distribution of the population in the developing countries follows a pattern markedly different from that of developed countries. In the developing countries the urban industrial sector at even very high rates of growth cannot acquire the capacity to absorb an increasing share of the work force at a pace which can rapidly reduce the population engaged in primary production, i.e., the population in the rural Sector. The past, present and projected distribution of the population between rural and urban for East and South Asia is given in Table I. The projection for the share of the work force in agriculture in the developing regions by the year 2000 A.D. is shown in Table 2. Before we draw any tentative conclusions from the data it would be appropriate to comment on the broad demographic perspectives which emerge from these statistics.
* Paper presented at the FAO/SIDA Expert Consultation on Policies and Institutions for Integrated Rural Development held in Colombo Sri Lanka, 20-30 October 1975.

57
Over the next quarter of a century and even beyond 2000 A.D. the rural sectors in developing countries will continue to contain a major share of the population. In East Asia the share of the rural [[ဗုဇ္ဈါးo; will still amount to approximately 53.5% of the total; in South Asia (as given in Table 1) it will be as high as 65%. In absolute terms the rural population would have continued to expand and would be approximately 37% larger in size than that of 1975. Demographic forecasts seem to indicate that South Asia will pose the most intractable problems of population and poverty for the world community. In 2000 A.D. it will contain more than one third the world population and will still be contending with relatively high birth rates. On the other hand, East Asia including China would have moved into the demographic transition with birth rates below 1% and a rural population which would have began to diminish in size.
It is the demographic constraint inherent in these assumptions regarding the relative shares of the rural and urban population which is of the utmost significance for development strategies. A brief discussion of its general implications provides a useful entry into the more specific demographic issues which concern rural development. The demographic model which can be derived from the process of development in industrialized countries predicate a sustained and steady decline of the rural population both in absolute terms and its relative share of the total, a transfer of the workforce from agriculture and primary production to industry and an increasing concentration of population in urban centres. A relatively low rate of population growth prevailed during this entire process, in which the decline in mortality rates was more or less concurrent with the reduction of birth rates. The major advances in medical science their application and the resultant social gains occurred simultaneously with the technological and economic transformation of these societies and the rapid increase in their productivity. In the developing countries all these elements occur in graphically different combinations. In these countries, the impact of medical science is more immediate and widespread than the impact of modern technology on their modes of production and output. The dramatic drop in mortality rates precedes the decline in birth rates. The mounting pressure of population in the rural sector does not find an adequate outlet in the urban industrial sector. While these countries contend with a growing

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labour surplus, the transfer of technology that takes place from advanced countries is heavily biased towards capital intensive labour-saving processes. As a result, the urban sector performs its employment generating function inefficiently.
These changes, however, need to be set within the broader socio-political frame in order to avoid any over-simplification of the contrast between the processes as they occurred in developed countries and those occurring now in developing countries. First, the model of demographic change in advanced countries reflects a process which spanned several generations; it did not occur at the same speed with which developing countries are now seeking to engineer socio-economic changes. Second, it was a process which tolerated social and economic inequalities and domination by elites over a longer period than could be accepted by contemporary developing societies. The developing societies need to create conditions for wider mass participation while at same time striving to achieve rapid economic growth. Therefore, a strategy which seeks to reproduce the Western demographic model and concentrates resources on creating a modern urban sector which over time is capable of absorbing the major share of the workforce has to operate against overwhelming social and political constraints. Viewed in the perspective of the next fifty years or more there is no doubt that the structural changes and the technological transformation of developing countries will be in the direction of a society in which the share of the population in primary production will be progressively reduced and the major share will be engaged in the urban non-agricultural sectors. The problem, however, is one of managing the transition during the next two or three decades when the rural sector will still carry the greater share of the population. The main challenge lies in sustaining an expanding rural population at steadily rising levels of living. Given the demographic constraints it would seem that the choice of technology, the approach to the productivity of labour, the policies in regard to the spatial distribution of population, the type and character of urban growth, all follow a path and fall into a pattern which is significantly different from the Western model.
Therefore, the special characteristics of the demographic situation in the developing countries are a critical element in planning and evolving the strategies of development. The dominant position which the rural sector will command in demographic

59
terms during the next quarter of a century makes the strategies for development in that sector the crucial element in the overall development strategy. The demographic changes as they occur impose by themselves a whole set of constraints on social and economic policies and the choices among alternative strategies. In turn, the choice of these strategies has its impact on the demographic situation. The right package of socio-economic policies can engineer the appropriate demographic changes which stabilize and strengthen the development effort. The demographic policy framework for rural development will have to cope with the demographic changes that occur and fit the development strategy to the demographic pattern and in doing so simultaneously create the conditions in which the patterns of demographic change become more conducive to accelerated development.
The desired demographic changes have to be in the direction of declining birth rates, smaller families, a reduction in the rate of natural increase, and an age structure which increases the share of the economically active population and correspondingly reduces the burden of dependency. In industrialized countries these changes were associated with a massive process of urbanization and the structural transformation of the economy that accompanied it. In developing countries these changes have to be engineered within the rural sector itself. In the discussion in this paper it is assumed that these changes are essential elements for Sustaining a steady rate of growth in the developing countries. The effects of population growth on the patterns of consumption and savings on the one hand and technology and levels of productivity on the other are well known. One does not have to labour the point that a decline in fertility and a lower rate of population growth helps a country to increase its savings, raise its per capita productivity and divert scarce resources to investment and development. An analytical discussion and elaboration of these aspects at a general level are, therefore, not being attempted in this paper.
The Macro-demographic framework: Three demographic situations
We could begin to examine the interrelations between demographic factors and other socio-economic developments in the rural sector by setting the rural problems within the macro-demographic framework. In Table 3 one is able to distinguish three broad demographic situations in Asia. It is, of course, possible to make

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a further refinement and disaggregation of these groupings in
relation to the special characteristics of population growth, but for
the purpose of the discussion in this paper the broad distinctions made here would suffice. There is a group of countries in which both birth rates and death rates are as yet at a relatively high level, the birth rates ranging from 33-50 per thousand and the death
rates from 15-26. The countries in this group include Afghanistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Next, there
is a group of countries where the death rates have fallen sharply but where the birth rates continue to be high. In these countries
death rates range between 7 per thousand and 12 per thousand and birth rates are still above 35 per thousand. This group includes Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Korea. In the third group of countries, there is a steady decline in birth rates while the death rates have fallen to levels comparable. to those in advanced countries. China, the Republic of Korea and Sri Lanka are examples. In each of these three categories the dyna
mics of population growth would be evidently different. The age
structure of the population, the relative proportions of young and
old, the ratio of dependents to the economically active will vary
from category to category. In each of them the demographic pres
sures will exert themselves at different points of the socio-economic system. They will call for different combinations of population
Strategies and demographic planning. It is in the first category that
the potential for an upward movement in the rate of population growth is greatest. If past trends are a guide, mortality rates will continue to fall faster than birth rates and high rates of natural increase will follow. In the second group the rates of population growth appear more or less to have reached or approached their peak levels. It is likely that in this group the fall in death rates will contribute a diminishing share to the natural increase of population and that birth rates will begin to drop. The countries in the
third category appear all ready to have passed the peak levels of population increase.
. In each of these groups of countries the mix of population policies and the concentration and distribution of effort on the different elements of a population programme will be different. In the first category the coordination of family planning programmes, health services, health education will require a level of intensity higher than what is needed in the other groups, if mortality

61
rates and birth rates are to be concurrently reduced. The basic infrastructure for health has yet to be established and the way in
which the elements pertaining to medical care and population planning are integrated in the structure right from the beginning will have a decisive influence on the demographic trends. In the other two groups allocation of resources and concentration of effort will be different in character as the infrastructure of health services to a large extent have been already established. While the health services are a key variable in population policies, there would of course be other important socio-economic elements as would be seen later which would need to respond differently to the varying demographic situations.
The age structures and their relevance for age-specific planning
The variations in the age structures of the populations in these three groups, the different shapes of the age pyramid and the way in which the new age cohorts make demands on the socio-economic system will constitute an important aspect of development planning. In most of the developing countries in Asia the rapid upsurge of population occurred in the late forties and early fifties. Table 4 provides some data on the changing size and age structure of selected countries in Asia. In most countries with high growth rates, the first five-year age group 0-4 is the largest and there after the five year age components are progressively smaller in size. Examples are India, Indonesia and the Philippines. In countries where birth rates have begun to decline, e.g. Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, the three five-year components below the age of 15 have lost their pyramidal formation and are approximately equal in size.
These changing demographic patterns result in patterns of priorities and exert pressures at different points in the socio-economic system. In the first phase as the initial upswing of the population growth is felt, it is the needs and demands of the age groups at the base of the age pyramid which push themselves to the foreground. Health facilities and educational services have to expand rapidly to cope with the increase. Independent of population pressures, education and national health services have generally assumed high priority in the national development plans. The rapid expansion of population has called for radically different systems of delivery in regard to health and education and brought about or induced quantitative and qualitative changes in these services to

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cope with expanding mass demands. With progressively larger cohorts in the young age groups investment needs for schooling facilities have grown, the expansion of child and maternity health Services have had to expand rapidly and mass immunisation programmes have had to be organized more effectively. These demands have normally received high priority in the allocation of national TeSOCeS.
As these countries enter the sixties a new set of problems begin to emerge. In the countries which have begun to experience a slow decline of the population growth rate, as in the case of Sri Lanka, South Korea and Singapore, the pressure of the youngest age groups on services has tended to lessen. Existing facilities are better able to cope with the new entrants to these age groups, as the new age cohorts are not significantly larger in size than the preceding ones. The pressures shift to different parts of the system, to the secondary and tertiary educational levels as the population born in the initial stage of the upsurge advances in age. In the mid and late sixties the labour market begins to feel the pressure as the population enters the workforce. Problems of mass unemployment of the young begin to afflict these economies and reach magnitudes which are hitherto unprecedented. On account of a unique combination of demographic and other socio-economic factors in most developing countries youth unemployment has assumed characteristics which make it a new social phenomenon, producing an entirely new set of imbalances between the labour market and the workforce. Given a process of structural change in the economy which is incapable of shifting the workforce rapidly from the primary sectors to the urban industrial sector, the rural Sector has to bear the major share of the burden resulting from the expanding population and the increasing workforce.
These socio-economic configurations which are described for the economy as a whole are replicated in the rural sector. Rural strategies have to be evolved in relation to them. These configurations impose demands on development strategies which have to respond by adopting approaches which are more age specific than have been customary in development plans. Age structures of populations have to be taken more fully into account and reliable methods of demographic forecasting have to be used which help to disaggregate the population age-wise and regionally, enabling planners to allocate resources more efficiently and economically in response to changing patterns of age-specific needs.

63
Agriculture and demographic change
The response of the rural sector to the major demographic changes that occurred in the last quarter of the century have fallen within a limited range of alternatives. These are best examined in relation to the main resource in the rural sector, and the predominant economic activity, agriculture. One obvious response available to the rural sector lay in migration which could relieve the mounting pressure on available resources. Such migration was normally in two directions, one was rural to urban and the other to regions which still contained unused land resources. The size and importance of the two migration streams have depended on a variety of factors which exerted their push from the rural end and their pull from the urban end or from new agricultural settlements. The pattern of rural to urban and rural to rural migration has varied widely among the Asian countries. It has depended on such variables as the man-land ratio, the tenurial structure and expansion of urban industry. Countries with a relatively favourable man-land ratio and large extents of unused land-Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and to a lesser extent, Sri Lanka-have had rural policies which have relied to a significant degree on planned migration, while countries with low land-man ratios have had little scope for recourse to such policies. In countries where the outlets for movement of population are restricted, the adjustments to population pressures have taken place within the limited resource base and have resulted in land fragmentation, landlessness, increased under-employment and un-employment and change in tenurial StructureS.
The demands of an expanding population on a relatively stagnant economy inevitably had their disintegrating effects on the socio-economic institutions which had been evolved when there had been a better balance between population and resources. The traditional community has found its own equilibrium at the level of its poverty, through its diverse and complex system of production and distribution. Population pressure made it difficult to maintain traditional systems of harvesting, labour sharing, communal production and various forms of benevolence practised by the well-to-do section of the community. For example, the traditional system of harvesting in Indonesia slowly began to fall into disuse in several regions; communal forms of labour and cultivation in Sri Lanka receded in importance.

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It is difficult to isolate the demographic factor from other factors in assessing its impact on agrarian change, on the pressures it has generated for reform of agrarian structures, on the technology of agricultural production and the growth or decline of productivity. In aggregate terms there is no evidence to show that the increase of the agricultural workforce in its absolute size has led to a decline in per capita productivity. In most countries the increase in agricultural output has more than kept pace with the increase of the agricultural workforce and the rural population. This is borne out in the data given in Table 5. New advances in agricultural technology, the introduction of new varieties and the use of improved cultural practices have produced higher output within the prevailing structure of socio-economic relationships in the rural Sector, (although, of course, this statement should be immediately qualified by the further statement that the prevailing structures have created new disequilibria and imposed constraints which prevented the optimization of the new inputs.) In several countries planned migration to new agricultural areas has stemmed the trend towards fragmentation. At the same time, where new land resources were not available for migration, fragmentation has been accompanied by a process of enlargement of holdings of the owners who had better access to resources, the de-landing of small holders and increasing landlessness. Sri Lanka provides an interesting example of a sequence of agricultural policies which responded to the demographic pressures as they combined with other socio-economic factors. In the first phase, the emphasis was on 'extensive' agriculture in the sense of extending the land frontier and bringing new land under cultivation. The government planned for transfers of population from the densely settled wet zone to the sparsely populated undeveloped north-central and eastern parts of the island. In the second phase, the progressively increasing cost of land settlement among other factors, pushed agricultural policies towards more intensive use of the land already cultivated. The "package programme' for upgrading the peasant farmer, by introducing new varieties, improving cultural practices and OVerhauling credit and marketing systems, became the centre-piece of the agricultural strategy. In the next phase the steady increase in rural unemployment gave a new and irresistible impetus to land reform and changes in the structures of land ownership.

65.
The demographic situation in the rural sector of developing countries also placed new demands on agricultural technology and the system of production, with a factor mix very different from what was needed for the agricultural revolution in the advanced countries. The prevailing relationship of labour to land contained as it was within the macro-economic constraints which prevented a shift of the labour force from agriculture to other sectors, called for a mode of production and a technology which was able to improve productivity and raise household incomes and at the same time generate employment. In this sense, the demographic situation favoured the employment intensive, small-scale methods of raising the productivity of land. Traditional systems of cultivation such as the long and short fallow systems found it difficult to withstand and retain their efficiency in the changing demographic conditions. The same cycles could not be maintained as population pressed on the land. The pressures created inducements for new, more intensive and more efficient forms of land use such as plantation crops and annual cropping patterns with the use of chemical fertilisers. Where the appropriate technological inputs were available, the demands which were created for more intensive land use were satisfactory. But the responses depended largely on the prevailing agrarian structures and the way in which different classes of farmers had access to resources. The "green revolution' is a case in point. Its effects varied widely depending on the agrarian situation. Where wide disparities in access to resources prevailed, it reinforced the trend towards capital intensive technologies, as in certain parts of India. Where the disparities were inct so pronounced as in the case of Sri Lanka, the distribution of the b2nefits of the technological break-through were relatively more equitable. The effects of demographic factors on modes of production and income distribution cannot therefore be examined in isolation. They have to be seen in relation to the socio-economic structures in which they operated.
The mass consumer market and the rural econnmy
What other effects did the demographic explosion have cn the traditional systems of production? The subsistence economy provided a limited parcel of goods and services for which it had developed an adequate system of agriculture and crafts. The demo graphic changes and the enlargement of the market for essential consumer goods imposed new strains on the rural economy and

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its system of production. It destroyed the relative self-sufficiency it enjoyed at subsistence level and brought new elements of external dependence into the economy. Systems of agricultural production which were not geared to the production of a marketable surplus could not cope with the increasing demand for food from the expanding rural and urban population. As a result, many developing economies became heavily dependent on food imports including food aid, particularly in the early stage. This would be true of Sri Lanka, and to a lesser degree of Pakistan and India. In certain cases such as in Sri Lanka, which relied heavily on its imports of wheat flour, new patterns of consumption were developed which offered little scope for import substitution. -
In the non-agricultural sector, the crafts system was not or could not be improved, adapted or modernised to cater to the growing consumer market in thatural sector. Structurally, it was not adapted to cater to these markets, although even opportunities that could have been readily seized were frequently neglected on account of urban-oriented industrial policies. Two examples of such opportunities are first the textile sector, in which an appropriate balance between the handloom and mill sectors could go some way to strengthen the rural economy, and second, the production of agricultural machinery and implements for which the small-scale rural sector offered scope for expansion and technological improvement. The rapid expansion of the rural consumer market which accompanied the population upsurge, however, often created conditions favourable for mass production in the modern urban sector which was technologically equipped to make the supplies available. The structure of crafts in the rural sector, its modes of production and its capacity to transmit the skills and expand in response to increasing demand were inadequate to meet the new demographic situation. Programmes for transforming, upgrading and expanding rural industry to meet a part of the expanding demand for industrial goods, therefore assume an important role in an integrated rural development strategy.
The rural-urban balances
These interactions between demographic and other socioeconomic factors in the rural sector have their inevitable spillover for the urban sector. One of its manifestations which has relevance for the interrelations between rural and urban change is the process

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which has been frequently described as "over-urbanisation'. The push from the rural sector induced by poverty, landlessness, and unemployment has resulted in a rural to urban migration in excess of the needs of the organized labour market in urban industry and services. It has led to the growth of what is now identified as the urban "informal sector' characterised by low-income lowproductivity occupations largely in the services and small-scale sector and the proliferation of slum and shanty settlements. Nearly all the major primate cities of Asia-Calcutta, Bombay, Djakarta, Manila, Bangkok-have had to contend with this problem. Efforts to cope with this problem include on the one hand strategies within the urban sector which seek to maximize the positive elements in the low-cost employment-intensive "informal sector' and link it more efficiently with the rest of the urban sector. On the other hand, the effort have to be made in the direction of preventive strategies which reduce the push from the rural sector and attempt to preserve a rural urban balance in relation to the development and growth of the two sectors. These strategies include policies which attack the rural urban dualism and reduce the differentials in income and living conditions which go with it, which seek to decentralize industrial growth and which disperse urbanization in a large number of small localities in contrast to a few massive urban agglomerations. Such policies will therefore consciously pursue a pattern of technological change which is within easy reach of a developing rural sector and which can find expression in smallscale units using appropriate employment-intensive technology. The approaches based on a significant degree of rural self-reliance as in the case of the Tanzanian Ujaama and the Chinese Commune are efforts in this direction. -
The impact of socio-economic changes on demographic trends
There has been a growing volume of literature which has attempted to establish the correlations between levels of social and economic development and fertility and the natural increase of population. The U.N. study on this subject concluded that, in a developing country with a high birth rate, improvement in socioeconomic conditions will initially have little effect on fertility until a certain social level is reached, and that when this level is reached there is a clearly recognisable downward turn in fertility. Facts, however, do not seem to support a view which identifies this critical transition with a particular income level or stage of social well

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being. There is evidence to show that the transition can occur at various levels and can be induced through appropriate packages of socio-economic policies. Countries with per capita incomes below 200 U.S. dollars have had a pattern of demographic development which already begins to indicate that they have entered the period of transition-e.g. China, Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan. This transition seems to be associated with well-distributed and advanced services in health and education which provide access to the mass of the population, low differentials between rural and urban incomes and living standards and a structure of income distribution which is relatively more equitable than what is commonly prevalent at corresponding levels of per capita income. The structure of income distribution reflects the distribution of the benefits of growth, and the access to resources enjoyed by the different sections of the population. The low differentiation between rural and urban incomes in ten indicates that the rural sector has decisively assumed its place as a growth sector in the country's development strategy and has been given high national priority. The distribution of health and education services has combined with these developments to improve levels of living in the rural sectors which have been conducive to maintaining a rural-urban balance. The national health systems have provided the infrastructure for well-conceived family planning programmes. Access to education has drawn increasingly large numbers of the female population to the school system, enlarged their aspirations and made them more receptive to changes in attitudes towards marriage, size of family and birth control. Some of the elements of this composite strategy can be observed in the countries that have been mentioned.
Table 6 puts together some of the relevant data for a few countries which provide a comparison of the demographic profile with selected socio-economic indicators of development. The figures illustrate that the economic indicators by themselvessuch as per capita income-cannot explain the differences in the demographic profiles. The differences seem to be more closely associated with some of the elements that have been described above-health, income distribution, education. High levels of literacy among females and increasing participation of women in the workforce appear to play a key role. We saw in the early part of the discussion in this paper that developing countries in Asia have to deal with the dynamics of population growth in situations

69
with different combinations of death rates and birth rates. The situation which poses the greatest challenge is that in which high birth rates go with relatively high mortality rates. For the reasons which have already been discussed demographic policies in the developing countries in Asia have to concentrate on the rural sector and be effective in that sector if it is to have any significant impact on the population problem. In the countries with high birth rates and high death rates, there has to be a concurrent reduction in fertility and mortality so as to result speedily in a decline in the rate of natural increase. Available data point to China as being one of the countries which has achieved success in this situation. It can be reasonably surmised that one of the "resources' which is ignored in the calculations of economists and demographersthe resource provided by ideology-has played a critical role in changing attitudes and motivations in the direction of the desired population changes whether they be the rural-urban balance, reduced birth rates, late marriages or other similar elements in the package. Sri Lanka and South Korea offer other examples of relative success within different models. These examples of moderate success need to be carefully studied and analysed in any attempt to evolve the appropriate population policies within a strategy of integrated rural development.
Demographic responses at the micro level
Thus far this paper has sought to identify the issues which constitute the substance of the connection between demographic factors and development policy. Developing countries present different demographic profiles and demographic circumstances. Each set has its own consequences, its own possibilities and its own imperatives. In more particular terms, it has been seen that a variety of adjustments is possible to increases in population-some when the resources are static, others when the resource base can be altered. The effect of increase of population on institutional structures, on production and on productivity has also been examined.
This analysis has led up to the critical issue of demographic transition. In what circumstances and under what conditions does fertility take the desired turn? Can a particular set of policies or packages bring this about? These are the crucial questions to which answers have to be found, for policy and population change are inter-acting elements. They are set for the purposes of this paper within the framework of integrated rural development.

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At the level of concept, integrated rural development implies an organic view of the rural unit, while at the level of strategy it implies a set of measures consistent, one with another, and logical in the context of the position of the rural unit in the national entity. It is, therefore, to the rural or. micro unit that attention is not directed, for it is here that the questions which have been posed will achieve behavioural meaning. In addition to the problem of fertility, another question must be discussed; under what circumstances do people decide as a matter of choice to continue residence in the rural unit? These two questions may be said to constitute the population dimensions of an integrated approach to rural development. It is through the analysis of the processes to which they refer that the societal constraints on policy can be identified.
First, the problem of the downward turn in fertility. For this purpose, micro units can be rogarded as being on a continuum. At one end is Type A. Productionis almost totally for consumption, there being hardly any surplus for sale to the outside world. The unit is limited to internal resources, neither external employment nor trading opportunities being available. Involvement in a wider economy is at a minimum and technology is rudimentary.
Type Z, in contrast, has very different features. It is well on the way to being a satellite of a market town and will soon cease to be a 'village'. It has substantial access to resources outside its boundaries and its needs cannot be satisfied by its own production. Many derive their income through employment away from the village. Technology is relatively more sophisticated and land is both scarce and costly.
These differences of resources are reflected in patterns of relationships. In type A, economic relations are likely to be dominated by neighbours and kinsmen, and by the more powerful in the village. The family, perhaps in its extended form, will figure significantly in productive activities. Services and facilities provided by the state are limited and in times of crisis, security is found in relationships of dependence (with those of higher status). Type Z. is of course different. Services and facilities are provided not only by the state but also by organisations whose commercial function it is. Cash payments replace reciprocity and dependence.

71
In type A, therefore, the individual finds security in a network of direct face-to-face relations with reciprocity and patronage as their base. It is "people' who are important in both economic and other contexts. It is the man who can "rally' people who can farm large extents. This potential is also significant when rituals are performed when domestic events are celebrated, in the event of illness and funerals, and so on. It is not so surprising, therefore, that in communities of this type the significance of numbers is given continuous ideological stress. Large families are good, kinsmen are valuable, neighbours are important. This position is reinforced by the fact that up to a generation ago, the problem faced by these communities was an insufficiency of numbers. And, even today, while they may be told that smaller families (and smaller communities) are desirable, the pressure of numbers in political and power contexts is inescapable. It can be said, therefore, that as long as these communities are limited to a particular complex of resources and where these in turn give rise to an associated pattern of relationships, the ideological support for larger numbers will continue. In these circumstances, a noticeable decline offertility is unlikely.
The concern so far has been with Type A. In Type Z the advantage of small numbers is apparent. Family resources are depleted if the numbers are large (without any corresponding advantages). The large majority of villages in developing countries take their position between A and Z. As such, in most villages there is a sector whose behaviour is conducive to the decline of fertility. This is the group whose set of relationships has veered away from the 'microcentric'. That is, the totality of the relationships of this group is not circumscribed by the boundaries of the village. Their most important economic and political relationships are likely to be external. It is in these terms, rather than with reference to an absolute level of income that this group can be identified. It is no doubt possible to fix a range of income for those who enjoy this set of relationships if the area under reference is the specific region of a particular country.
The problem of rural-urban migration and the achievement of a satisfactory rural-urban balance have to be examined against the background of a long urban-rural connection. In the first stage a small village surplus is sold for urban consumption and in turn, urban goods become village luxuries. The quantum of this

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exchange then increases progressively with urban goods becoming village essentials. A point is, however, reached when village demand outstrips village production and income. What consideration enters into the decisions which are taken at this point?
There is every reason to think that there are sanctions against migration in the overwhelming majority of rural communities. The goal is to live in the village to enjoy sufficient income to satisfy the consumption demands of status, to be cushioned by the systems of reciprocity and patronage and to have access to amenities so that a particular quality of life is possible. This is preferred because migration and settlement in a new community involve a status lossone starts at the bottom. The step is only taken when an even greater status loss is imminent in the home community. At that stage, an added push in favour of migration is the status potential in the new community despite the initially disadvantageous position. All this does not apply to one category of migrant-those who migrate from a position of strength. That is, he feels strong enough to migrate to, and settle into, an urban community at a satisfactory level of status. And even if he takes a slight drop, he is confident that he has an adequate base for further advancement. Migration is, therefore, a step in upward mobility.
The majority do not of course operate from this position; they migrate because they have little alternative. The calculation of alternatives is in terms of status, not income, even though income is an important component of status. Status is the expression of an overall position whether the concept is explicit in a particular community or not. As such, the advantages and disadvantages of a whole set of relationships are taken into account. Thus, those from a particular income level in a community which enjoys good amenities will not be as ready to migrate as others from the identical level in another community where the amenities are of poorer quality. Similarly, syŠTerms of patronage and reciprocity have modifying effects on the quantum of migration.
In this necessarily brief discussion, the attempt has been made to do no more than to focus attention on the central features of the two major aspects of population change which have relevance for rural development. The necessity for an integrated approach will have become evident. The goal of the population component of any major development programme is to reduce both family

73
size as well as the rate of rural-urban migration, that is the aim is to change behaviour. It has then to be recognized that behaviour is related to ideological systems, to patterns of relationships and ultimately to complexes of resources. An approach which encompasses all these elements is, therefore, essential.
These are the basic issues. A fundamental question remains: does a programme of Integrated Rural Development need to concern itself specifically with population change and, in particular, with its fertility aspect? The changes that are likely to take place during the relatively short period during which such a programme is in operation are minimal. This is not of course to argue that the reduction of fertility should be no concern of the programme. It is merely to assert that the reality which has to be taken into account is not a rate of increase but a demographic profile which is the cumulative result of the increases in the past. A concern with rates of increase can easily obscure the real problem which is the inadequacy of resources.
The central issue is whether there is the desired relation between population change and resource change. While governments, international agencies and the communities concerned may differ about the precise nature of the 'balance', there is little disagreement about the fact of imbalance. The restoration of balance may require the reduction of the rates of increase, the increase of resources and, in special cases, the increase of population through migration.
It is clear then that the critical focus is not population change but the relation between population and resources. The adjustment of this relation to the desired balance is achieved most through the manipulation of resources than through a frontal attack on the rates of changes of population. Indeed the weight of empirical evidence leaves us no option but to conclude that there is little hope of altering the rate of change of population while all else remains constant.
Summary of Conclusions
At this point it would be appropriate to summarize the broad generalisations and conclusions contained in this section of the paper. To begin with, it is clear that the demographic models derived from the changes in industrialized societies as they occurred in the initial stages of their industrialization have little relevance for

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developing countries. The demographic trends in developing countries in the next quarter of a century indicate that the rural sector will contain the predominant share of the total population. The transformation of developing societies will, therefore, vitally depend on the elimination of mass rural poverty, raising the levels of productivity in the rural sector and upgrading its technological capacity.
In regard to population growth, these countries are in different demographic situations calling for different combinations of policies and strategies. In some countries, the strategies have to be designed to achieve a concurrent reduction of prevailing high birth rates and high death rates; in some they have to be directed at the reduction of high birth rates; while in others they need to accelerate a process of slow decline in the birth rate which has already begun. With the broad strategy is selected, development planning and programming need to take full account of the specific demographic characteristics of the rural population, Programming of this.type has to be based on a disaggregation of the population into its age components and a clear identification of age specific needs and the changing pattern of those needs in response to demographic changes. The changes in the age structure as a population passes through the initial upsurge and approaches a relative equilibrium will exert different sets of demands in relation to health education, employment and so on. Reliable tools for demographic analysis and forecasting are therefore essential for the formulation of adequate rural development strategies.
The unique combination of demographic and other socioeconomic factors have given rise to two major social phenomena. which have a critical influence on the development process and the choice of development strategies. These are mass youth unemployment in the rural and urban sectors and the rapid and often disorderly expansion of an informal urban sector.
The demographic changes in the rural sector naturally have their most pronounced impact on the social and economic relationships which are based on agriculture. Countries with favourable man-land ratios have sought an outlet for the population pressure through schemes of planned internal migration. Where this outlet has not been available, the expansion of population on a limited resource base has resulted in land fragmentation, landlessness,

75
unemployment and a rural to urban exodus. On the positive side demographic pressures have helped to bring land under more intensive use, accelerate improvements and reduce inefficiencies in the traditional agricultural systems. The demographic situation in which the rural workforce will continue to expand rapidly, calls. for rural development strategies which rely on technologies which have high capacity for generating employment while at the same time raising per capita productivity and income.
In the case of non-agricultural goods, the traditional modes of production in the rural sector were not able to cope with the population upsurge and have had to give way to supplies from the urban centres which included both new goods as well as goods which replaced the output of traditional crafts. While the expanding rural markets created conditions favourable for mass production in the modern urban sector they pushed the craftsmen engaged in small-scale production to the margin.
While the demographic changes have helped to burst the bonds of the self-sufficient subsistence economy, they have brought new elements of external dependence to the rural economy. Sustaining the expanding rural population at steadily rising levels of living requires strategies which diversify the productive capacity of the rural economy, expand its non-agricultural output and impart a degree of self-reliance to the rural sector at a higher level of productivity. The Chinese commune and Tanzanian Ujaama are efforts in this direction. The success with which the population pressures are contained within an appropriate rural-urban balance may depend on strategies of this type.
If internal migration is to be contained within an orderly process and an appropriate rural-urban balance maintained during the period of transition, a wide range of interrelated Socio-economic policies is required. These have to be directed at reducing the differentials in incomes and level of living as between the rural and urban sectors and providing the rural population with access to at least some of the amenities of urban living. These broad objectives imply on the one hand profound structural changes within the rural sector which promote fair income distribution and better access to resources. On the other hand, they require a shift from the urban-centred development strategies to strategies which make room for dispersion and proliferation of small-scale industries and 'small-scale urbanization' of a type which grows organically within and out of a developing rural economy.

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As the population trends in the rural sector will be the main determinants of the overall population trends in developing countries, demographic objectives and policies will form a critical element in an integrated rural development strategy. Policies which seek to engineer demographic changes in the desired direction have to be adapted to the different demographic situations. The demographic trends in countries like China, Sri Lanka, South Korea, seem to question the assumption that the demographic transition can occur only when certain levels of income and economic well-being have been reached. It seems possible to achieve a concurrent reduction of mortality rates and birth rates from prevailing high levels through a composite strategy aimed at the simultaneous improvement of social and economic conditions of the rural poor.
When the demographic responses are observed at the microlevel within the small rural community, it is possible to regard the micro units as being on a continuum to distinguish at one end the responses of a typical rural unit which is at the subsistence level limited to internal resources and where production is almost totally for consumption-Type. A. At the other end there will be the rural unit which has substantial access to resources outside its boundaries and is on the way to becoming a satellite of a market town-Type Z. In the former, the pattern of economic relations is dominated by kinsmen and neighbours and in times of crises security is found in relationships of reciprocity and dependence. In such communities largeness of family size is given ideological value and conditions are unfavourable for fertility decline. In the rural unit at the other end, the kinsmen and neighbours have limited economic importance and external relations have become decisive. The advantages of small numbers becomes apparent in such a situation.
Population policies aimed at changing behaviour which reduces both family size and the rate of rural to urban migration need to take account of this 'socio-economic continuum' in the rural sector from Type A to Type Z. It has to be recognised that behaviour is related to ideological systems, to patterns of relationship and compexes of resources. The critical focus is not population change but the relation between population and resources. The adjustment of this relation to the desired balance is achieved more through the manipulation of resources than through a frontal attack on the rates of change of population.

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BEYOND THE N.C.G.E. WHAT 2: E, ILMVILJEMANNE
s Mr. Nanayakkara pointed out although the seminar carried the theme “After the N.C.G.E. What?', most of the day's proceedings, particularly the new ideas put forward by the principal ဗြုံးနှီ Mr. Aelian Fernando, were suggestions coming within the stage of schooling that precedes the selection of pupils to the new Senior Secondary grades. This is true even for his proposal to have a new Grade 10 with a heavy component of Project Work for all pupils after sitting the N.C.G.E. examination. Although it comes after the N.C.G.E. examination, the performance in this new grade would count in the selection of pupils for Senior Secondary education, and therefore, it rightly belongs to the Junior Secondary segment of the new schooling sequence.
In fact, Mr. Fernando's set of proposals amounts to an alternative 5-year programme of Junior Secondary education containing some significant points of difference from what is on ground. These are:
1. Disallowing the second and third attempts at the N.C.G.E
examination.
2. Adding a new Grade 10 with a heavy component of Project Work for all students after they sit the N.C.G.E. examination.
3. Eligibility to proceed to Senior Secondary education
being determined on the basis of -
(a) performance in all the tests given in Grades 6 to 9;
(b) the performance at the final examination of the Junior
Secondary course which will be held at the end o Grade 9, i.e. the N.C.G.E. examination;
* The first part of this article appeared in Marga Vol. 3. No. 1, 1976.

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(c) performance in achievement and apptitude tests giyen
in Grade 10;
(d) performance in Grade 10. (It is presumed that this refers to both the "project education' compohent as well as the six academic subjects taught in Grad 10).
Let us examine these proposals a little more carefully.
Disallowing the second and third attempts at the N.C.G.E. exilmination −
The present position is that if a pupil fails to qualify for entry to the Senior Secondary course of study of his choice in his first attempt at the N.C.G.E. examination, he may repeat a year in Grade 9 and sit the examination a second time. A third attempt, after another year in Grade 9 is to be allowed for those who would still be under 17 years of age at the end of that year. Mr. Fernando's contention is that this provision, together with the stipulation of two Bs and four Cs as the minimum a pupil should have at the N.C.G.E. examination in order to qualify for entry into Grade 10 would impair the efficiency of the total Junior Secondary programme in Grades 6 to 9 from the point of view of imparting a balanced comprehensive general education.
For purposes of clarity it might be helpful to take up the two issues, disallowing repeat attempts and the stipulation of the minimum requirements as two Bs and four Cs, separately. In regard to the first of these, Mr. Fernando complains that the repeaters will prove to be such a distraction, particularly in four out of the ten subjects they would by now have decided to neglect, that it would be almost impossible to do any worthwhile teaching. He further questions, if this is a terminal course on what grounds can one defend, allowing repetitions.
Teachers with experience in teaching the G.C.E. (O.L.) classes with repeat pupils do know that this complaint is not without foundation. Moreover, unlike in other grades, in this examination grade, the proportion of repeaters would be very high. The Commissioner of Examinations has already announced that this year (1976) the number of candidates for the N.C.G.E. examination is about 250,000. Last year (1975) it was 130,000. Applying the

85
dropout rates and the repetition rates on the 180,000 that were
in Grade 8 last year, it could be estimated that, of them, about . 50,000 have come up to Grade 9 this year. Of the 130,000 that t the N.C.G.E. examination last year (1975) 24,000 qualified tò go up to Grade 10. It looks as though, of the balance 106,000 that failed to qualify, only 6,000 have dropped out from school ad a 100,000 have stayed back in school to repeat the examination. is means on an average, in this year's (1976) Grade 9, in a class of twenty five as many as ten are repeaters. This is in marked coltrast to the situation in Grade 8 where, on the average, in a of twenty five pupils, only one or two would be repeaters. In the larger schools, with several parallel Grade 9 classes, heads of schools adopt different methods to cope with the problem of repeaters. Some heads of schools put them separately into what are called repeaters' classes while others mix them up with the first year students. In either arrangement, the disrupting influence they have on school discipline, etc. cannot be denied: We have to admit that repeat students of the N.C.G.E. are likely to prove as much a problem on the hands of the school authorities as are the G.C.E. (O.L.) repeaters. Whether the problem would be worse in the case of the former because they would be inclined to neglect four out of the ten subjects taught in the class, remains to be seen.
In regard to the third year in Grade 9, that is to be allowed for those under 17 years of age, the magnitude of the problem posed by this group would partly depend on the numbers that would be entitled to this concession. Going on the age-grade distribution of pupils in government schools as revealed at the 1975 School Census, until 1982, i.e. until the pupils admitted to Grade 1 at the age of six in 1972 come up to this point, the proportion that would be entitled to this concession would be 35-40% of the enrolment in each of the lower grades. This would mean that the number of pupils in Grade 9 would increase by 60-70,000 as a result of this concession. This certainly is not a small number and would not only create problems for the heads of schools because of the type of pupil but also increase the educational budget.
What would be the consequence of adopting the suggestion to disallow the repeat years altogether? This would make the one single attempt at the N.C.G.E. examination a now or never life chance for the pupil. In the eyes of the pupils, parents school

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authorities and everybody, the examination will come to loom even larger than at present and as a result, their anxiety will b greater. In England, when the 11- selection test for Secondary Education became the subject of public debate, one strong arg ment urged against its retention was the phsychological dama it was doing, particularly to the child from the middle class home. Some families were so possessed with the desire to get their child into the Grammer school stream that the entire family was caught up in the anxiety and the children developed neurotic tendences. In our own country, the anxiety that prevails in certain fami at the time of the G.C.E. (O.L.) and (A.L.) examinations is too well known. This is in spite of the present provision of two atterpts from school and an unlimited number from outside. What an ordeal it would be to the child and the parents as well if the repeat attempts at the N.C.G.E. are altogether eliminated one can just imagine!
There is also the question whether it would be fair by the individual pupil to decide once and for all his suitability for Senior Secondary education based on a once only examination. In selection examinations, it is the general practice to allow at least two attempts. In Mr. Fernando's scheme of things, the performance at the N.C.G.E. examination would be only one of the factors considered in the selection of pupils for Secondary education—vide 3 in the second para above. This suggestion is taken up for comment below. It may be stated here that such moves in the direction of continuous assessment for the purpose of selection for Senior Secondary education would certainly be changes in the right direction. Finding ways and means of introducing these in a manner acceptable to the public is, of course, the main problem.
How requirements to proceed to the H.N.C.E. grades may affect the work in the N.C.G.E. grades M
To come back to the second issue that was raised earlier, Mr. Fernando's complaint was that the requirement that a pupil should get at least two Bs and four Cs at the N.C.G.E. examination in order to qualify to proceed further would disrupt the main goals of the Junior Secondary education reforms. In what manner and to what extent do teachers, pupils and even parents respond to the presence of this stipulation? It is a hard fact that in our country each segment in the educational ladder is viewed by the pupils and parents, primarily as a route for entry into the next.
 
 
 
 

87.
These values of the "clientele' naturally influence the order of priorities among the school authorities. Therefore, stipulations laid down for crossing a hurdle are likely to have a backlash effect on what goes on in the segment immediately before. Thus, the popular reference for the science stream in the Senior Secondary stage ives rise to an emphasis on Science and Mathematics in Grade to 9 because one has to achieve a B in one of these to qualify for try to the Science stream in Grade 10. Apart from this type of rélative emphasis laid on one subject over another, would the school authorities together with the pupils and parents, go to the extent of picking on six subjects and neglecting the other four deliberately? In some schools with poor facilities the possibility of this happening in some subjects cannot be ruled out. However in a centrally directed and closely coordinated school system such as ours, this kind of aberration is not likely to develop into a serious problem. Particularly so, in view of the fact that the different subjects are being taught by different subject teachers and each teacher knows that her work would be assessed on the results of the pupils in that subject. From the point of view of the pupils too it is natural for them to have their own likes and dislikes in varying degrees for the different subjects in the curriculum. Taking all these facts into consideration, it would be reasonable to conclude that, while one needs to pay heed to Mr. Fernando's fears and be generally vigilant, the position does not appear to warrant any immediate remedial action.
Adding a new Grade 10 with a heavy component of “Project Work for all students after they sit the N.C.G.E. examination
The new Grade 10 that Mr. Fernando proposes is for all pupils but he suggests that it come after the N.C.G.E. examination. Why this unusual arrangement? It may be that in framing his proposals Mr. Fernando did not raise this question explicitly and seek a clear answer to it even in his own mind. But there would have been some issues at the back of his mind and this unusual proposal would have emerged as the intuitive solution to these problems. I venture to suggest that the two main problems to which he sought solutions were the need to minimise the constraints imposed on the instructional programme of the school by:
(a) external examinations and (b) the school organisation with its subjects, periods, etc.

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To counter the first, he suggests this grade beyond the N.C.G.E examination and to meet the second, he brings in Project Work Formal education at the Secondary level in most developing cou tries suffers acutely from these two constraints. Although they a two independent factors in the sense that one can exist without the other, when they occur together they act jointly supporting each other. The following extract from the Marga study "Nonformal Education in Sri Lanka' on pre-vocational studies brings out the operation of these factors forcefully:
"Another aspect that deserves comment is the manner in which the nature of the organisation of the school affects this new entrant to its curriculum. This is most instructive to observe. One main problem is that teachers who are used to conventional teaching content, detailed teachers, guides, class textbooks etc., are at a loss when called upon to teach about the vocations. As already noted, some ideas are emerging about a possible structure in the content of Pre-vocational Studies as conceived in this programme. But it will be quite some time before the teachers are able to handle this subject with the same confidence as they show in other conventional subjects of the curriculum.
The structure arid the organisation of the school with its grades, subjects, time table, 35 pupils in each class etc, set serious obstacles in the way of introducing into in this unconventional new entrant. Live work stituations in vocations where a class of 35 to 40 pupils can engage themselves in meaningful work for just one or two periods in the time table are very difficult to find. The situation gets worse as the number of parallel classes in the grade multiplies as is the case in large schools. Therefore, even in rural areas, the organisation of the school with its time table, classes and grades sets serious limits to the extent to which pupils can participate in real live vocational situations.
Examinations are perhaps the biggest obstacle in the way of successfully introducing a programme of this nature. However, if a subject is left out from the public examinations it will not receive the attention it deserves from either
- 1. Non-Formal Educatión in Sri Lanka. Marga Institute, 1974. (Marga
Research Studies-No. 1)

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the pupils or the teachers. Therefore, examinations have to be accepted as a necessary evil that the school system has to cope with. The original idea to divide the four years into two cycles of 2 years each, as well as the modular approach to the location and development of the teaching content and the suggestion to start on the scale of a pilot project were given up because it was felt that right from the beginning if the inclusion of this subject in the all-island public examination that comes at the end of grade 9 was not stressed schools will not pay much attention to it. Therefore, right from grade 6 testability at the public examination coming at the end of grade 9 was a criterion in locating teaching content and organising teaching methods. For this same reason preparation of syllabuses of 12, 6 or 4 terms duration had to be brought in so early in the programme.
In conclusion it may be stated that our attempt to bring the simple vocations into the school or to take the school out into the vocations has brought out in a forceful way some basic incompatibilities in the organisational structure of the two. Slowly and steadily attempts are being made to resolve these.'
Project Work
To get back to the proposals under review, in Mr. Fernando's
own words, 'three days in the week will be used for Project education in out-of-school, actual work-places as observers, apprentices and understudies. It is to be organised by a separate Department within the Ministry of Education but with the active involvement of several other Ministries namely, Labour, Agriculture, Industries and Planning & Economic Affairs'. The implications of this proposal are very heavy. Firstly, even if Mr. Fernando's proposal to
disallow the repeat year in Grade 9 is adopted (this is very unlikely to be accepted by the public), the total enrolment in this grade will be of the order of 150,000. If one repeat year is allowed, it will be
around 250,000 and if the second repeat year is allowed to those
under. 17 years of age it would be over 300,000. For such large numbers to find actual places of work i.e. farms, factories, workshops, markets, construction sites, etc. would be quite a problem. These have to be not far from schools. Furthermore, the work has to be such that it can fit into a time scheduling of three days a

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Week. It would make a big difference to the organisation, the lear ning outcomes, as well as the evaluation and assessment, as to whether the "Projects' undertaken by the pupils are such that they fit into the normal run of work in the farm, factory, construction site, etc. or whether they would stand separate although of course augmenting the programme of Work at the work place. In either case, if the Project Work is to be carried out in 'actual work places' it would be a tremendous undertaking. One has to be warned that if this type of programme is implemented without adequate facilities and organisation, the outcomes i.e. the attitudes instilled into the pupils can be just the opposite of what is intended. It can result in a positive dislike for this kind of work in the pupils and a cynical attitude in both teachers and pupils towards proposals of this nature coming from the authorities..
Project Work in the H.N.C.E. course
The Ministry of Education has introduced "Project Work as a compulsory part in the new Senior Secondary stage i.e. Grades 10 and 11 leading tothe H.N.C.E. examination. This will utilise 10% of the total time in the 2-year course and will count in the final H.N.C.E. examination although details about how it will be reckoned for purposes of selection for University admission have not yet been indicated. In a foreward to a Handbook for teachers, Dr. P. Udagama, the Secretary to the Ministry of Education says:
“Project Work is an innovation in the H.N.C.E. programme. It is accorded the highest priority in the new curriculum.
Project Work has been included in the new Senior Secondary Education Programme for many valid educational reasons. The school and the community should come together for mutual development purposes. If the youth are able to Work as groups for improving the community and also for learning from the community it would enhance the development programmes in the country.
This kind of community based Project Work will help the students to engage themselves in some useful practical work where their knowledge could be put into practical use. Similarly, the knowledge of the community will also be
2. Project Work--a handbook. Ministry of Education, March 1976. Memeo.

91
available to students for understanding their own society and the problems facing that society. Knowledge therefore, is put into practical use and the education of the student will therefore be more comprehensive than before. This programme, should provide a more comprehensive education at the Senior Secondary level.'
The Ministry of Education was pleasantly surprised at the great enthusiasm shown by the teachers and pupils of schools where pilot projects were tried out in 1975/76 for the purpose of obtaining the experience needed for introducing Project Work in the new H.N.C.E. grades. This was in spite of the fact that the pupils engaged in this pilot work happened to belong to the old G.C.E. (O.L.) and (A.L.) stage and therefore this Project Work was not going to be a part of their regular studies. They were only being used to run this pilot trial. There was no motivation derived from examinations influencing these students. Or can one legitimately raise the question, 'Was it not this very fact-that it would not count in deciding who would get selected for admission to the University and who would not-that permitted these pupils to set about this work with such enthusiasm and work as one team without unhealthy rivalry?.' The answer to this 10,000 dollar question has to wait a few years experience with this-work in the H.N.C.E. grades. How and to what extent will it be affected by the weightage given to the grading in Project Work in the selection for University admission?
Academic work in the proposed Grade 10
When three days in the week are utilised for Project Work, two days remain. Mr. Fernando's proposal is that this time be utilised for teaching six academic subjects. They are Sinhala/ Tamil, Mathematics, Science, English, Social Studies and Economics. This would mean ten hours of study for the six subjects which works out to one hour forty minutes per week per subject. Not much content can be covered at this level with this time allocation. When Social Studies is already included, it is difficult to see why Economics is brought in again as a separate subject. In fact, criticism has been levelled at the Social Studies syllabuses and text books of Grades 6 to 9, that too much of Economics has been packed into them. It is alleged that several topics included under Economics in the Social Studies syllabuses in these grades are well

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beyond the grasp of the 12-15 year old age group. Factors of produc
tion, supply and demand curves and prices are being mentioned as instances. Mr. Fernando apparently is one who holds views entirely opposite to these.
Entry to Senior Secondary grades to be determined not solely on the results of the N.C.G.E. examination but on the pupil's performance in Grades 6 through 9, the N.C.G.E. examination, test scores (both achievement as well as aptitudes) obtained in the proposed Grade 10 as well as the assessment of the Project Work done in Grade 10.
Educationally, this is a very valid suggestion. For purposes of selection of pupils for Senior Secondary education, this proposal seeks to add a component of very thorough continuous assessment to the N.C.G.E. examination. This would certainly be a shift in the right direction. Educationists for a long time have recognised the superiority of comprehensive programmes of continuous assessment of this type over single examinations conducted at the end of courses running into several years. The problem again is how do We move from where we are to this very laudable target set by Mr. Fernando. The Ministry of Education has already taken a small step in this direction by including 'school marks' based on the pupils' performance over the years in pre-vocational Studies for the purpose of awarding the grade in the subject at the N.C.G.E. examination. This small step has already brought out the basic problems that confront attempts at continuous assessment of pupil performance as a part of a national examination. Firstly, there is the need to make the gradings comparable across the thousands of schools. What can one do to make sure that the performance that gets a C or B grading in one school does not get an A in another where the standards are lower? Unless the numbers in each school are large and the average standards comparable it would be difficult to avoid this. Secondly, there is the problem of maintaining records of these continuous assessment gradings over the years in the thousands of schools and getting them over to the Department of Examinations without leaving room for tampering and interference.
However, we have a long and well established tradition of external examinations at the Secondary school level. It would be no exaggeration to say that, even today, the two sole rulers in the “kingdom of schools' are the N.C.G.E. and the G.C.E. (A.L.) examinations. Their hold over what goes on in the schools is very

93
tight indeed. The constraints that external examinations impose on what goes on inside the schools have already been dealt with. They are not however an unmixed evil. The age old adage that examinations are a necessary evil still holds. Apart from certifying the competence of pupils in their various subjects on a scale (however restrictive in scope) valid across the whole country, external examinations perform other useful functions. In a large centrally directed school system such as ours, they serve an important function as effective controlling levers and regulators in the hands of those that direct the system. What external examinations do in invoking a sustained effort from all segments of the educational enterprise, stretching both pupils and teachers and thereby getting the most out of them, of course within the scheme of the examination, cannot be equally well done by even a large army of supervisors. Furthermore, by providing an objective basis of selection (however defective the selection may be from the point of view of validity) for both employment as well as further training, during the last two to three decades they have made a major contribution towards the lowering of certain disadvantages faced by youth from middle and lower socio-economic levels. Had there been no common external examinations for all schools, phenomena such as the 'old school tie' and all that goes with these in the matter of selection for employment would have continued. Therefore, the large majority of the public view examinations as very much their friend. The extent to which, in our country, external examinations contribute to the operation of the formal education system as a medium for social mobility would be a most revealing study. Studies done in many other countries, both developed as well as developing, reveal that, in spite of sustained efforts at equalising access to education, the socio-economic status of the family persists as a major determinant of success both in formal education as well as in obtaining employment. In this respect are things different in Sri Lanka and if so to what extent have external examinations been a contributory factor? These are questions worth pursuing.
Need for formative evaluation of educational programmes
Mr. Fernando’s proposal for this expanded scheme of continuous assessment refers specifically to its utilisation for purposes of determining entry to the Senior Secondary grades. But I am sure he is not unaware of the tremendous beneficial influence that such

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practices can have on the working of the Junior Secondary programme of education itself if they are also used to evaluate the latter. The great importance of and the crying need for this type of formative evaluation in formal education has been stated by Marvin Grandstaff thus:
"Everyone recognises the importance of evaluation, whether of education, investment, fertilizer or worker productivity. It is a commonplace that any educational program should have a built-in evaluation and that evaluation should provide a data base for constant revision of programs. In fact, while, evaluation is almost a universal in educational practice, it does not figure very importantly in the reassessment and redesign of formal programs. There are a number of reasons for this. First, evaluation in formal systems is applied to the client, rather than to the system itself. What we wish to discover, for the most part, is the ranking of individual. learners in comparison with either his peers or with agreed upon norms. The revision impact, if any, falls upon the learner, Second, the periods over which evaluation takes place in formal systems are typically quite long. In their most binding form-the school-leaving certificate and the diploma, by the time evaluation occurs (by the time one class leaves the system) a whole set of new clients have already progressed some way along through the system and revision in the light of evaluation becomes very difficult. Third, the “educated man' bias of formal schooling places the ultimate evaluation in the adult-life activities of the learner, where the discrete effects of formal education can no longer be isolated for inspection. Finally, the entrenched character of formal education makes it resistant to alteration and there is just not much interest in using evaluation for purposes of systematic revision. The idea of evaluation that is undertaken for purposes of revising and refining educational practices is basically alien to the concept and practice of formal education. That sort of evaluation, here termed "formative evaluation,' requires different kinds of contexts in order to play a significant role in educational planning.' 3. Alternatives in Education: a summary view of Research and Analysis
on the Concept of Non-Furmal Education. Marvin Grandstaff, Michigan State University, 1974.

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Chinese experience
This healthy practice of keeping educational programmes under constant review through formative evaluation taking place at the periphery, as one would expect, is a striking feature of the educational reforms in China. Robert S. Wang in a recent paper gives the following account of how it works in China:
"Evaluating Educational Reforms
Before delving directly into the methods of evaluation, it may be useful first to describe and explain the structural
and functional contexts within which the evaluations were conducted. In this way, many of the specific aspects of the various methods of evaluation may be made more comprehensible.
Structure and Function: Evaluations of the educational reforms occurred at three basic levels; the local withininstitution level, the regional level, and the policy-making level of government. Each of the levels conducted investigations for slightly different purposes.
In absolute terms, the bulk of evaluations occurred within each school in as decentralized a fashion as the educational reform program itself was carried out. In fact, the "Revolution in Education' Committees instituted at each School were also responsible for assessing the effectiveness of the reform measures they themselves designed and implemented. Thus, the task of planning, implementing and evaluating all belonged to the same body at the local level. This is quite understandable when we remember that each local unit had been encouraged to experiment with different methods of implementing the educational reforms. In searching for the best method available under local circumstances, the cadres obviously had to conduct some form of evaluation of the local program. One could hardly expect the central or the provincial government to send an evaluation team to each educational institution in the country. Before the “Revolution in Education' Committees were set up,
4. Educational Reforms and the Cultural Revolution: The Chinese Evaluation Process. Robert S. Wang in Asian Survey, Vol. XV no. 9, September 1975, pp. 765-767.

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most of the local evaluations were conducted by representatives of Revolutionary Committees or other Party-related organizations within the various schools. Individual students and other school organs also contributed their evaluations in some cases."
Structurally and functionally attached to the local program, the local evaluation unit was primarily concerned with the operational problems of its particular situation rather than with the broad theoretical questions of the general reform policy. Local evaluations sought answers to the questions raised by local administrators; after all, the evaluators were usually the administrators. As such, the purpose of evaluation on the local level went beyond that of measuring and explaining the impact of the program; the purpose was to find better ways of implementing a program. This problem-solving approach to evaluation is quite different from that of contracting for professional outside evaluators as is the general practice in the United States. The latter evaluations are conducted by people unrelated to a particular program for the explicit purpose of grading it. The finding would be limited to the question of whether an existing program works or not, instead of seeking alternative methods to improve the program. If the evaluation were negative, the program would often simply be cancelled, or at least reduced in scale. In China, however, the practice was to continue to make adjustments until success was attained, or until the policy was changed from the top.
In many cases, local evaluations of the educational reforms also formed the basis upon which the general program was evaluated. While independent evaluations were often initiated by higher-level program administrators or policy-makers to assess the overall effectiveness of the reforms in a given region or across the country, a common procedure was to convene investigative conferences in which local evaluations would be reported and discussed.
* This observation is derived from going through every article in CE from 1968 to 1973, and checking on the authors of the numerous investigation reports.
f Tung-kuan Hsien Rev. Comm., "To Investigate a Problem is To Solve It'. People's Daily, December 6, 1969, trans. Chinese Economic Studies 3 (Spring 1970). pp. 211-213.
w

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High-level officials usually attended these meetings. In this manner, information and experiences would be exchanged, and findings from local investigations would thus be communicated to the upper echelons of government. In some cases, the discussions in these conferences were published by newspapers and journals so that they could be studied by an even broader audience.
Aside from this informal evaluation process, direct investigations were also conducted by higher-level officials. As it was virtually impossible to evaluate every school in a given region, the mid-level bureaucracy usually selected different types of areas to serve as "key points'-advanced, average and backward. The main purpose of these selective evaluations was to acquire an overall assessment of the progress of the reforms in the particular region. Moreover, as these investigations usually overlapped with local evaluations, it seems that they also served as checks on the accuracy of the latter.
Finally, not wishing to rely exclusively on the data they receive via written reports and oral briefings, Chinese policymakers themselves were personally involved in the evaluation process. Their main purpose was to assess the overall effectiveness of the reforms throughout the country. However, aside from having a broader scope than the regional inves
tigators, they were also more concerned with policy implications than simply with the operational problems of the program. They were the only ones who had the authority to actually alter the broad guidelines of the educational reform policies. Another purpose of the evaluations conducted by the policy-makers was to “cultivate model units,' i.e., to give nationwide publicity to certain institutions or people who had performed outstandingly in implementing the reforms so as to serve as an inspiration for the entire country.'
f For example, see "Minutes of a Forum in Shanghai on the Education Revolution in Colleges of Science and Engineering.' Red Flag, no. 8 (1970), pp. 20-34, trans. Joan Cheu, CE (Spring-Summer 1971), pp. 36-63.

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Concluding comments
In conclusion I would say that our Secondary Education suffers from three major ailments. They are:
(1) External examinations.
(2) Heavily centralised administrative control and profes
sional direction.
(3) A teaching service that has been well and truly put on rails to carry out an instructional programme far too uniform across the whole country.
These three are concomitant as the two former factors support each other and together have brought forth the third.
Like most other developing countries with a colonial past, we too have inherited a strong tradition of external examinations at the Secondary level. But we have gone further than most others. Perhaps in no other country in the world can one find such large numbers-half a million-sitting externally conducted examinations covering the entire school system. As already pointed out, these have strong popular support because they contribute much towards the equalisation of access to employment in the modern sector through schooling. With increasing unemployment among the educated youth this receives greater emphasis. In response to the popular pressure to "run the race' on absolutely equal terms, whatever features of differentiation there were in our vast school system got eliminated one after the other. This was a climate most conducive to the furtherance of centralisationin both administrative control and professional direction. We have carried this out to such an extent that not only the pupils and the parents but also the teachers see themselves as being completely outside the decisionmaking arena. This is true not only for the finding of resources, financial management and the like, but also for what is taught and even the details of how it is to be taught in the classroom. The vast teaching service has lost its identity both because it has been converted into a rootless, floating, combined service and also because its professional creativity has been effectively curbed by being put 'on rails' (course guides, teachers handbooks, etc.) to carry the pupils to the destination of external examinations. To borrow an idea currently very much in vogue in other areas of social

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science, a kind of centre-periphery relationship appears to be getting hold of our formal education set-up. With a periphery robbed of all initiative, it would not be possible to get going anything of the type of formative evaluation, feedback and programme improvement that we found operating in China.
This state of affairs has evolved in the context of increasing unemployment in a stagnant economy, coupled with strong egalitarian pressures for equality of access to whatever little is available. In trying to function as the medium of selection in this tight situation Secondary education has turned out to be a rigid mould rather than a creative crucible. In marked contrast to this stands out the Education Ministry's imaginative programme of reforms in Primary education (grades 1 to 5) in which the teacher's creativity is heavily fostered and thereby a wide variety of learning, situations available in the environment are picked up. One can comment that such a programme was made possible in the Primary grades only because they do not suffer from the disabilities imposed by an external examination. The pilot programmes done in connection with the Project Work for the H.N.C.E. grades referred to above is another silver lining in a gloomy sky. These experiences indicate the direction in which changes should be brought about in the N.C.G.E. grades and beyond.

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