Recently a conference of Saarc ministers of finance and planning was held in Islamabad to consider the problem of poverty alleviation. It is, therefore, desirable to review the theory of economic development and to develop a strategy which will promote wider diffusion of fruits of economic development.

Over the last few decades different growth models for economic development have been tried in the under-developed countries. However, the experience has generally been that these growth models have largely failed to tackle the problems of mass poverty and to ensure a more equitable distribution of the fruits of economic development. Instead it has been observed that income and employment disparities between the developed and underdeveloped areas both at the national and international level have widened, with the passage of time.

It is in the light of this experience that the entire economic thinking, both at the national and international level, has undergone a radical change and the search for new strategies of development which could combine growth with equity has been initiated. One of the basic reasons for lack of success of the various growth models has been that special characteristics of the physical and human factor endowments have not been taken fully into consideration.

It was thought by economic planners in the decade of 60s that rapid economic growth even if it was concentrated in a few urban centres would filter down and take care of problems of mass poverty in the rural areas. However the actual outcome generally has been different. The strategy of growth-manship instead of decreasing the regional income inequalities has in fact widened them.

Therefore, the most important reason for the disenchantment with the past development strategies is that they did not solve the problem of a skewed income distribution. It is due to this reason that in the current economic thinking more emphasis is being placed on the regional and spatial dimension to economic planning. This emphasis on the spatial dimension to economic planning is particularly relevant for the developing countries where a modern sector co-exists with a large subsistence sector.

There is an increasing realization of the need for a more comprehensive approach to development wherein the different regions of a country are economically more integrated and the backward and underdeveloped areas are brought into the mainstreams of economic development. As a result, the emphasis in research currently is on identifying the problems and consequences of underdevelopment in different regions.

As a corollary to this thinking, greater emphasis is being laid on meeting the basic needs of the poorest sections in the society. Following the World Employment Conference held in June 1976, the ILO had prepared a report based on the theme that the future development strategy should aim at meeting certain basic needs of the poorest 20 per cent of the people in different countries of the world. The ILO has suggested that this target can be achieved more rapidly if efforts are made in the individual countries to bring about a redistribution of income in favour of the bottom 20 percent of the population.

The basic needs which are listed by ILO include personal consumption items like food, clothing, housing and services like water supply, sanitation and education which in many countries are provided by public authorities. However before direct action can be taken to benefit the poorer sections of the population, it is necessary to identify the demographic, social and economic characteristics of the poor. In particular, it is essential to determine the regions which are backward where the majority of the poor live.

Since development is no longer being viewed in undimensional terms, that is, in terms of level of per capita income because of the observed lack of correlation both inter-temporally and spatially between the level of per capita income and the percentage of population which can be considered as poor, it is necessary to conceive the level of development as being a composite indicator derived by combining indicators of the level of development inputs and physical infrastructure and of the availability of basic services like water supply, drainage and sanitation, health and education.

There is an urgent need for undertaking of studies on different development indicators so as to determine the level of development and underdevelopment with respect to different development indicators. I was associated with a study on underdeveloped target areas undertaken by the ministry of rural development in 1978 under the leadership of Dr. Hafiz Pasha. The study compared the level of development for 21 development indicators. These development indicators related to various economic and social indicators for various sectors including agriculture, industry, transport and communication, education and health sector.

There is an immediate need for constantly undertaking such studies at district level at regular intervals so as to constantly compare as to which district is deficient in what socio-economic indicator. This has become more urgent for undertaking proper projects by the district governments by generating data at disaggregated level of district tehsil and union council. The data which is available in 1998 census will have to be updated at regular time intervals so as to prepare a proper project profile keeping in view the needs of a particular district. It is only on the basis of regional planning on the basis of proper data that the problem of poverty alleviation can be tackled.

The experts and consultants have to be enrolled at district, provincial and national level for undertaking detailed planning exercises. It is evident that without properly knowing the magnitude of poverty in different regions of the country and in different sectors in a region, the objective of a balanced economic growth and wider distribution of the fruits of development cannot be achieved without generation of regionally disaggregated data and its constant updating.

It is hoped that the present government will give proper attention to regional planning if it wants the system of local government to really succeed and result in more equitable distribution of fruits of development.