The Planning Mystique
In the initial decades after the Second World War and decolonization, the pur-suit of economic development was reflected in the almost universal accept-ance of development planning as the surest and most direct route to economic
progress. Until the 1980s, few people in the developing world would have
questioned the advisability or desirability of formulating and implementing a
national development plan. Planning had become a way of life in government
ministries, and every five years or so, the latest development plan was pa-raded out with great fanfare.
National planning was widely believed to offer the essential and perhaps
the only institutional and organizational mechanism for overcoming the major
obstacles to development and for ensuring a sustained high rate of economic
growth. To catch up with their former rulers, poor nations were persuaded
that they required a comprehensive national plan. The planning record, unfortu-nately, did not live up to its advance billing. But a comprehensive development