How to sight the Holy Grail of Development: Two Development Tales of Sri Lanka and Malaysia

Abstract

The grammar of development always relates to the question words of who, what, and how. Contemporary uni-polar world order has paid more attention on the ways of developing all countries equally. The United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Work Bank have become the entrepreneurs of the international development project that has focused on establishment of a universal development system. However, the current development discourse is still in a struggle to conceptualize and map out the development policies to accomplish development ends. The waves of development discourse emphasis the changing pattern of development and reduce rich-poor gap. Bridging the gap of rich and poor is a dilemma as of poor understanding of root causes of underdeveloped. The objective of this article is to understand richpoor gap and the role of internal and external structure to exterminate this gap. Sri Lanka and Malaysia are the selected case studies of the present study. The case studies are to understand the lessons learnt of development. One of the key findings of this study is that the absence of consensus on development and development alienation are direct causes to fail the mega level development policies that has caused countries to stagnate in the same level of poverty. The interests of entrepreneurs of development project on capital accumulation is another crucial factor of widened gap between rich and the poor. Bad governance, corruption, political instability, popular politics and consumer politics, connectivity of global capital to local elites and economic policies to maintain the industrial reserved army have further deteriorated balance development both at national and international levels.