Non-economic Factors in Development

Economic development in knowledgeable circles has a missing dimension— the non-economic, which is not quantifiable. Development, a leading sector in national transformation, is rooted in nonmaterial factors and requires a positive feedback between culture, economy, and polity. I would invite attention to an insightful comment from a practising professional economist: ‘The need for economic growth in a developing country has few if any economic springs. It arises from a desire to assume full status by taking part in an industrial Civilisation, participation in which alone enables a nation or individual to compel others to treat it as an equal. Inability to take part in it makes a nation militarily powerless against neighbours, administratively unable to control its own citizens, and culturally incapable of speaking the international language’.