ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING THE REGIONAL PLANNING AND AREA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT - A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

bilateral development assistance program? Using several RPAD projects as examples, this issues paper argues that these programs often fail to reach their targeted beneficiaries because of unrealistic basic assumptions. For example, the poor are identified statistically according to degree or rate of caloric intake, infant mortality, access to broadly defined health services, and per capita income, but human factors such as needs, aspirations, caste, and creed are ignored. The poor are assumed to be concentrated in areas of arid or otherwise vulnerable ecosystems when many are, in fact, often found in fertile areas and in urban centers. Administrative decentralization is supposed automatically to ensure participation by the poor in the planning and decisionmaking process, but no account is taken of the critically important areas of physical infrastructure, social systems, financial resources, availability of trained personnel, or the nature of the political process among the target group. The author attributes these faulty assumptions to two sources: frequent changes in foreign aid policy and focus made in deference to domestic and international politics; and the reluctance of universities competing for A.I.D. projects and funds to question program assumptions, along with the failure of these universities to study the complex socioeconomic problems of developing countries. To make regional planning more effective, the author recommends: macro studies realistically accessing the potential for achieving participation of the poor and outlining minimum policy and structural reforms and amounts of foreign aid necessary to ensure project success; rigorous, independent analysis of underlying concepts and premises prior to program adoption; ongoing evaluation of assumptions in the course of project implementation; and greater emphasis at the universities on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research in the theory, methodology, and problems of development. A 32-item bibliography (1967-80) is appended.