Social Development and Planning in Asia

While probing into the economics of development and planning and evolving the strategy for social transformation, professional economists often lose sight of the ultimate goalman. The firsthand knowledge and experience of the human situation are tabulated and computerised, and then they reappear as abstract ‘models’ and formal ‘indicators’. In his Social Development and Planning in Asia Dr. Ralph Pieris salvages this human factor that often tends to disappear behind ‘significant statistics’. Unlike the alienated technocrats, whose profession is to devise strategies for economic development, Dr. Pieris stresses the human dimension of all socio-economic planning. The papers included in this volume were prepared during 1951-75; they trace not only the history of the socio-economic development in the underdeveloped Asian countries, but also delineate the dialectical relationship between the philosophy of development and the ‘social-man’. This vein of concern for the human situation, though running through all his writings, is methodically formulated in Part IV of the book. ‘The Problem of Human Relationships: A Grammer of Sociology’. In whatever he has written during the past quarter century, Dr. Ralph Pieris is rightfully confident that he has pre-empted Gunnar Mydal’s Prognosis (1970).