The author of this book has had rich experience of both life in a developing country and the attempts to build up, in today’s world, a coherent form of cooperation between the member nations of the United Nations. As the Vice-President of the United Nations Development Planning Committee he showed the wisdom of the experienced expert.

In two parts he gives (i) a picture of how Pakistan has fared since liberation and what the objectives of the five Five-Year Plans of her successive governments were in that period as well as how policies worked out (ii) an alternative development strategy which he recommends on the basis of the lessons learned. The book gives Mr. Qureshi’s view and builds upon a common Pakistan — Dutch technical cooperation project.

When confronted with the world’s, and Pakistan’s, problems we should not overlook the fact that developing countries are not the only ones facing problems. Developed market economies have just experienced how difficult it is to avoid inflation and mass unemployment. Centrally planned economies have found that they are unable to solve all their problems from one centre. In fact, nations are searching for the optimal combination of centralization and decentralization, a way of combining larger well-being with a clean environment — to touch upon only some main topics.

This book constitutes an eloquent attempt to illustrate possibilities to find such an optimum, with Pakistan as its concrete example.