SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

elationship between economic development and social change. There
was a feeling that the institutional factors came in the way of economic
development and technological change. Thus, there was a contemplation
to modify the institutional framework of society and alter the attitudes
and values to facilitate and accelerate the process of economic
development. It was also in the same phase that the modernisation
paradigm had emerged and become popular in the 1950s and 60s.
According to Varma (1989), the emphasis in modernisation approach, as
waswadually realised, was too much on material gains and very little on
psychic satisfaction.
The third phase was characterised by reaction and response to the
earlier phase. There was a sharp reaction to earlier inadequate paradigms
of development and modernisation and a positive response to a more
successful praxis of development. There was a realisation at this phase,
that finding fault with tradition and social structure for slow growth,
provides only a partial explanation and so, it was inadequate and
unacceptable. There was also a feeling that the question of unequal
development was essentially a creation of the unequal distribution of
power. There was a disenchantment with growth-centred development
and an emergence of human-centred development. The call was for a
greater involvement of the common people in the planning process, for
evolving effective strategies geared to meet the basic needs, for human
resource mobilisation and for human capital formation. There were also
powerful currents of rethinking development, generated by the new
environment and energy consciousness. In essence, the concepts of
alternative development had been the by-products of this reaction and
response. The fourth is a reflective phase, born out of a felt-need for a
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