Dr Balogh and the Third World SIR,—Lord Campbell of Eskan,
in his letter (SPECTATOR, November 11) commenting on my article (November 4), charges me with having allegedly 'dressed up "the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate" in disreputably old-fashioned academic dress.'
I tried to show that the policies of the cur- rently most influential ideology of development economics do not tackle the causes of poverty. Their main effect is to centralise and augment state power which, in the condition of these countries, is more likely to perpetuate or intensify poverty than to alleviate it, let alone promote prosperity, notably a rise in general living stan- dards. So far from advocating laissez-faire, I specified a long list of necessary governmental tasks, the adequate performance of which would exceed the resources of any government of a poor country, however efficient, even if it did not attempt to con- trol pervasively the activities of its subjects. At present, most of these governments, though happy to plan, are unable to govern. An instructive example, one of many, is provided by the current riots in India in support of the extension of the statutory ban on the slaughter of cattle, concurrently with the dispute over the location of another government-financed steel plant.
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