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Development, Regional Disparity and Planning: The Experience of Northeast Thailand*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

C. J. Dixon
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Extract

There is considerable concern amongst development planners at the large and apparently growing areal disparities in the level of development in many underdeveloped countries. A number of theoretical studies support the view that economic growth inevitably results in widening disparities in the initial stages of economic development which may or may not be reversed with later growth. Empirical studies, although frequently lacking in comparability and deficient in data, confirm the existence of widening disparities in a large number of countries. Some planners have questioned the policy of maximising growth of gross product as the panacea for under-development and attempted to ensure more even patterns of development. Where economic and political unrest, including “insurgent activity”, have occurred, and have been equated by government officials with regional concentrations of poverty, further weight is given to policies directed towards reduction of regional disparities. However, where the results of schemes aimed at reducing regional imbalance have been assessed the success rate is slight. This paper examines the experience of Northeast Thailand, the Korat plateau, as an example of a backward region that has had considerable planning effort directed at it over the last twenty years.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1977 , pp. 210 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1977

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Footnotes

*

Field work was conducted in Thailand during the dry seasons 1971 to 1975, while the author was attached to the Lam Pao Project of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, supported by the Overseas Development Administration and the Social Science Research Council of the British Government.

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