David Jefferies' home pages, and background to this book.
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ENGINEERING FOR DEVELOPMENT
(First Draft)
E J Jefferies
March 1969
CONTENTS
PART 1 THE WORLD DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
Chapter
1 Introduction
Chapter
2 Closing the Gap
Chapter
3 Resistance to Change
Chapter
4 International Technical Assistance
PART II AN ENGINEERING APPROACH TO A PLAN FOR A COUNTRY
Chapter
5 Outline of the Approach
Chapter
6 Setting the Problem
Chapter
7 Basic, Concepts, Terms and Definitions
Chapter
8 Background Data Available
Chapter
9 The Starting Point for a Case Study
Chapter
10 Preliminary Calculations
Chapter
11 Patterns of Economic Growth
Chapter
12 Development Plan for Year 1
Chapter
13 Development Plan for Year 2
Chapter
14 Development Plan for Year 3
Chapter
15 Review of Changes During the Three Years
Chapter
16 The Control of Development
Chapter
17 Financing the Development
PART III THE
IMPLICATIONS OF RAPID GROWTH
Chapter
18 Economic Growth and Technological Changes in Rural Communities
Chapter
19 The Influence of Agriculture on Industrial Development
Chapter
20 The Role of Manufacturing Industry
Chapter
21 The Contribution of Industrial Engineering to a Solution
PART IV DESIGNING FOR BALANCE IN DEVELOPMENT
Chapter
22 The Prediction of New Manufacturing Capacity Requirements by
Product Group
Chapter
23 The Productivity of Labour
Chapter
24 The Growth of Productivity
Chapter
25 The Calculation of Appropriate Levels of Productivity in New
Plants
CHAPTER 3
RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
1.10 Very high initial rates of economic development are necessary if a developing country is to "close the gap" and catch up with the standards of living of the industrialised group of countries. For a country at a present level of per capita national income of $200, the growth line needed was shown in Chapter 2 to start off with three "crash programme" years in which the national income is to be doubled.
1.11 Such a growth rate has not been achieved anywhere in a whole country, nor indeed attempted. The nearest approach to it was the rehabilitation of Europe after World War II. In devastated post-war Europe, economic activity was at a low level; huge quantities of capital assets had been destroyed - factories, dwellings, warehouses, roads, railways, power stations, etc; vast numbers of people were displaced from their native areas and were homeless and unemployed. Many parallels can be drawn between that situation and the condition of countries now attempting economic and industrial development for the first time. But the two starting points show one very fundamental difference, namely the technological and social backgrounds of the people. In Europe the people, however distressed, had in the past been accustomed to living in a developed industrial economy; they knew what living conditions could be like and they knew how these conditions could be achieved, through industrial, social and political organisation. Given an injection of economic aid through the Marshall Plan they themselves were in a position to re-establish a way of life similar to what they had known before, or better. In these circumstances resistance to the necessary changes was absent. In a country now attempting this transition for the first time the human situation is totally different. The bulk of the people have no conception of what they are to expect of life in a few years’ time and only a very small fraction of them have any conception of the mechanisms by which the required changes can be induced. In such circumstances there is a very great risk that rapid change will generate irresistible opposition.
1.12 This is not to deny that similar difficulties exist in the industrialised countries as they continue their development. A very brief glance at the daily press of Europe or North America shows that resistances are still being encountered. But the generation of resistance to change is proportional to the rate of change. The faster we attempt to force development and change, the greater will be the resistance in all fields.
1.13 Some means must be devised to increase the acceptance of social change if any plan for rapid economic development is to succeed. Many methods have been used or attempted in the past: exhortation; legislation and police action; the expropriation, forced emigration or elimination of resistant groups of the population. Each of these has a tendency either to distortion - exhortation leads to excessive nationalism - or to increased resistance; expropriation and forced emigration leads to reduced investment, or to large-scale human suffering which cannot be visualised as a desirable end of economic development.
1.14 Where all else fails, resistance to imposed change can result in civil war, (counter) revolution and a slowing down of the rate of change or a reorientation of change.
1.15 One method which seems in the past to have yielded good results in this respect (but only in the long run) is involvement in large-scale war, preferably including extensive contact with occupation forces from some more "advanced" culture. This is not a method which would normally be sought deliberately by any government and is haphazardous in that it involves a nice balance between present destruction of economic activities and future benefits from the reduction of society rigidity.
1.16 However, the "demonstration" effect provided by occupation forces, reacting directly on a rigid social structure by direct personal contacts at all levels could possibly be provided without the necessity for a war by a radical modification of the mechanisms of international technical assistance. This will be explored in the next chapter.