Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
one, soluble through a suitable settlement policy allied to sectoral moves to
generate markets. Rondinelli saw the problem as one of poor countries having no
market towns where the processes of exchange of surplus could take place, and
creation of these market towns with their markets would initiate the development
process. This was putting the cart before the horse—markets and market towns
would only develop where a surplus was being generated—but it also overlooked
differences between rural regions.
Can we find examples of Development from Below?
A truly locally based development requires local programmes and initiatives to
be taken, effectively a “Development from Below”. This in turn normally
requires some decentralization of political and administrative powers, from a
centre to the individual regions or peripheries involved. It also requires the
presence in the regions of local organizations prepared to handle the
decentralized responsibilities. The case to be made here is that there are usually
no local organizations with these levels of competence, so that separate regional
development has not happened, especially in the LDCS. It is probably the case,
even in developed countries, that initiatives will not be taken without higher
authorities and organizations.
Let us take, for example, the case used by John Friedmann with regard to the
USA (Friedmann & Weaver 1979), on the most noted river basin regional
planning exercise in that country. The Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA, set
up in 1933, had as its role in the early years a combined set of purposes,
integrated through the river basin itself. This included: the control of soil erosion
on the steep slopes of the middle Appalachians, by teaching farmers better
techniques of farm management, such as planting maize across slopes rather than
up and down them; the building of dams to check floods on the river, as well as
to allow better navigation on the river; the use of the electricity generated from
installations at the dams, to provide power to the rural communities and isolated
farms, allowing labour saving and increased productivity; and the improvement
of the infrastructure of the rural communities with better roads and other
facilities, so that the bad old subsistence farming methods would be changed.
As originally planned, the TVA programme was acceptable to all, and hailed
by the regionalists who had argued for strong local communities,
decentralization, and the preservation of traditional regional bonds against the
growing centralization of the nation (Weaver 1984:70-71). It was not claimed as
Development from Below, but it was presented (by Friedmann & Weaver 1979)
as “territorial development”, meaning development undertaken with local or
regional concerns dominant, rather than those of the state. In reality, however, it
was always a national scheme, within President F.D.Roosevelt's control and
outside the control of individual states. It was a plan to promote national
development through the then new methods of Keynesian demand stimulation:
in other words, pouring public money into massive works, which would employ
