Integrated Industrialisation of Non-Metropolitan Areas

In almost every developing country, there is already a planning process and machinery at work. Metropolitan areas have developed and exercise considerable, almost decisive, influence over policies, plans, programmes and allocation of scarce financial foreign exchange, manpower and other measures. This paper argues that the developing countries should reorient their industrialisation goals and priorities; give highest priority to the use of all the available labour; revise plan allocations in accordance with this objective; reassign available technical skills from the urban to the rural areas; and adopt a central-decentral type of authority with an effective system of support and communication from one to the other to ensure unity of purpose and synchronisation between both planning and implementation from above and below, and a greater use of iterative planning.