World Development Vol. 29, No. 8, pp.

1443±1454, 2001
Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev 0305-750X/01/$ - see front matter
PII: S0305-750X(01)00046-8

Viewpoint

DevelopmentÐThere is Another Way: A

Rural±Urban Partnership Development Paradigm
T. SCARLETT EPSTEIN
Practical Education and Gender Support, UK and INTERVENTION, India

and

DAVID JEZEPH *
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Paci®c (ESCAP),
Bangkok, Thailand
Summary. Ð This paper emphasizes the possibility and cost-e€ectiveness of stemming the tide of
migration to larger cities and increased urbanization of rural life by improving income-earning
opportunities in rural areas and making them again more attractive in terms of economy and
infrastructure. Local resources are the main determinant in bringing this about. Emphasis on
increased agricultural productivity, establishment of agro-based industries and the pursuance of
policies establishing a rural±urban partnership development is encouraged. Such a partnership would
bene®t both rural and urban populations and can prevent the nightmarish forecast of a doubling of
urbanization in Africa and Asia by the year 2025. Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words Ð Asia, India, rural±urban migration, balanced development, growth centers

1. SETTING THE SCENE vantages Third World economies derive from

Third World development began to loom
largely on the world horizon only after the last
world war when many of the pre-war colonies
gained their independence. The governments of
many of the newly established nation states
were understandably eager to take their rightful
place among the Western nations and took
Western industrialized societies as their eco-
nomic models. Many of the ®rst lot of Third
World politicians and Chief Secretaries of
Planning Commissions were either Western
macroeconomists or had studied at Western
universities such as Harvard, London School of
Economics, etc. This was re¯ected in a Western
urban bias that was built into the development
paradigms used in Third World countries. 1
concentrating their meagre resources on urban
industrial development while neglecting their
rural areas, particularly in countries where the
majority of the population is still rural. Many
developing countries' ®ve-year plans show the
excessive emphasis placed on industrialization
and the comparatively small amounts allocated
to promote rural development. Khurshed Alam
Khan, Governor of Karnataka State in S. India
highlighted this when in 1998 he pointed out
``that planners had neglected rural areas''
(Deccan Herald, November 3, 1998, p. 5). He
went on to stress ``the need for setting up agro-
based small scale industries in villages as that
would create jobs. This would stop migration
to cities and improve the quality of life of rural
people'' (p. 5).

(a) Urban bias

Careful examination of the impact of this

urban bias clearly indicates the serious disad- * Final revision accepted: 6 January 2001.
1443
1444 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
(b) Rural±urban migration and its e€ect on
urban centers
The neglect of rural areas and the resulting
high poverty levels against a background of
urban industrial development led to increasing
rates of rural±urban migration. This was fur-
ther fuelled by the higher fertility rates among
the poorest rural families. Most of these poor
rural migrants expected that the big cities
would provide the panacea for all their prob-
lems, such as employment, housing, education,
etc. For the majority of them their dreams re-
mained unful®lled. They ended up living in
appalling conditions among strangers in urban
slum settlements without any income or access
to the basic requirements of life and no one to
turn to for help. Patrick Wakely, Professor of
Urban Development, University College, Lon-
don, states that
at the beginning of the 21st century, half the world's
population lives in cities and towns. Urban centers
in Asia are expanding by an astonishing one million
people a week ± and rising. And the urban popula-
tions of Africa and Asia are set to double by 2025
(The International Development Magazine, 2000,
No. 10, p. 8).
The continuing in¯ux of growing numbers of
rural migrants into state capitals increased the
number of slum dwellers and put a big strain on
the infrastructure of these cities, so that many
governments decided to improve the infra-
structure of a few secondary cities to take the
pressure o€ their capitals. For instance, the
Karnataka State Government recently man-
aged to secure a large grant from the Asian
Development Bank to provide improvements in
®ve secondary Karnataka cities. The World
Bank and other large donors have given similar
grants to other developing countries. Policy
makers seem to be convinced that there is
nothing that can be done to reduce the rate of
rural±urban migration. They assume that most
rural dwellers prefer to live in an urban envi-
ronment that o€ers employment and business
opportunities, better education and training
facilities and a variety of entertainments. Yet
improving urban infrastructures of some of the
still smaller cities as a curative measure only
increases the gap between rural and urban set-
tlements. These measures deal only with the
consequences of rapid urbanization and not
with its causes. Unless the ¯ow of these mi-
grants can be drastically reduced it is highly
likely that the secondary cities, whose infra-
structure is presently being improved at great
cost will within the next 10 years su€er the same
fate that has already befallen the capital cities,
such as, large slum areas with substandard
housing, excessive pollution and a high and still
growing crime rate.
The statistics are disturbing. Over 50% of the popula-
tions of Karachi, Mumbai (Bombay) and New Delhi
live in slums. In Lagos and Nairobi, over 60% of
households have no water connections, and in Jakarta
the poor pay ten times more than the rich for clean
water because they have to buy from street sellers
(Wakely, P., 2000, No. 10, p. 8).
2. THE IMBALANCE BETWEEN URBAN
AND RURAL AREAS NEEDS TO BE
REDRESSED
Measures are urgently required that will
make it not only possible but also attractive for
the poorer rural dwellers to remain in their
native places. If these measures succeed they
will bene®t not only rural sectors but also re-
duce the problems of large-scale urbanization.
But, most of the policies pursued by many
Third World governments and supported by
the large donor agencies are still based on a
model that promotes urban development and
neglects rural areas. Dr. Nunjundappa, Deputy
Chairman of the Karnataka State Planning
Board recently
expressed concern that rural development is still a
non-starter in the State even after ®ve decades of Inde-
pendence. . . He stressed that there was still a bias to-
wards urban areas in the growth policies and
cautioned that such growth policies would only in-
crease the gulf between the poor and the rich and
the rural and urban areas. . . While thousands of
crores were spent for implementing the Cauvery
fourth phase drinking water project to help Bangalore
City, there were many villages without drinking water
facility. . . . . . Hardly any honest attempt had been
made to bring an ordinary villager into the main-
stream of production, he alleged and stressed the need
for changing the policies in order to bring about inte-
grated development in villages. . . The present techno-
cratic strategy should be replaced by a strategy that
allocates importance to the human component of de-
velopment (Deccan Herald, October 17, 1999, p. 3).
(a) Rural social cohesion versus urban
individualism
Numerous studies have shown that the
majority of rural dwellers prefer the social
 DEVELOPMENTÐTHERE IS ANOTHER WAY
cohesion their small rural communities o€er as
opposed to the individualistic lifestyle that
prevails in the large cities. Provided villagers
have access to sucient income-generating
activities and can establish a reasonable stan-
dard of living they rarely want to uproot
themselves. Most rural settlements with their
``face to face societies'' can still be relied upon
to o€er emergency care for their needy fellow
villagers. For most rural poor it is only the
continuing lack of income-earning opportuni-
ties that forces them to migrate to urban
centers in the hope of a better life. Relation-
ships in cities are much more impersonal than
in villages. In developed countries, state au-
thorities have become responsible for social
welfare. Most Third World states lack the
necessary resources to perform even the most
essential welfare functions. Therefore, in Third
World cities often a person may be sick or
even die in the street and no one will o€er help
or even take notice of someone in distress.
This is unlikely to happen in a villageÐthere
is usually some kin, friend or patron who will
take care and if possible arrange help. Social
cohesion is usually much stronger in rural
than in urban societies. It is this fact that
makes village life more attractive and helps to
reduce the pressure to move to cities. Whereas
in the past many villages were remote or iso-
lated settlements, modern technologies now
enable villagers to communicate with the
outside world by telephone and often even by
computer, listen to radio broadcasts, watch
television and videos, and altogether broaden
their horizons. Some villages also have large
school complexes where pupils can complete
even their pre-university training. This means
that modern communication and information
technologies can readily make villagers part of
the mainstream of developmental activities, if
only more emphasis would be placed on pro-
viding them with income- generating oppor-
tunities as part of the global development
process.
(b) The need to change development policies
It is therefore necessary to reduce the so-
cioeconomic di€erentiation that under present
conditions is still growing at a quite consid-
erable rate between urban and rural dwellers
and between the rich and the poor. Every-
where more emphasis needs to be placed on
rural development to discourage rural±urban
migrationÐit is most important in countries
1445
where the majority of the population still lives
in rural areas. Urban and rural development
need to be considered as complementary pro-
cesses rather than competing for limited re-
sources. The bene®ts of such an integrated
approach will by far outweigh the costs. It is
likely to prove more cost-e€ective to improve
rural rather than urban infrastructures. This is
so, ®rst of all, because most work associated
with infrastructure improvements is highly la-
bor-intensive and wages are lower in rural
than urban areas; second, villagers can be
motivated to o€er some of their assets and/or
labor free as long as they are assured the
venture in which they get involved will bene®t
their own society. There are plenty examples
of wealthier villagers donating land and/or
buildings for educational purposes or primary
health centers and others who o€er voluntary
labor to prepare rural roads. By contrast such
voluntary activities are rare in urban areas.
Moreover, a wealthier rural sector will create
increased demand for industrial products and
therefore, help to ensure an increasing GNP
growth rate. Though growing urbanization
increases the demand for farm produce in the
cities in many developing countries food prices
are kept arti®cially low to keep labor costs at
a minimum for infant industries, thereby
making the rural sector subsidizing industri-
alization.
(c) On what type of revised development
paradigm might new policies be based?
There are a number of di€erent ways
whereby a government can attach more im-
portance to rural development and at the same
time ensure an increasing GNP growth rate.
One such option emanates from the in-depth
micro-studies of rural transformation the au-
thors conducted in South and South East
Asia.
3. MICRO-STUDIES
2
(a) South Asia
In South Asia, the focus has been on two
South Indian villages: Wangala, a wetland vil-
lage which got access to canal water in the
1930s and Dalena situated near Wangala where
lands remain dry because they are above canal
levels.
1446 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
(i) Wangala village
WW II delayed the impact of irrigation on
the village economy. Wangala farmers began to
grow sugar cane and paddy as cash crops on an
increasing scale only in the late 1940s. These
cash crops required considerably more labor
before the more recent onset of mechanization
than was required for dry land farming.
Therefore ties between peasant caste farmers on
the one hand and their landless Functionary
Caste and Scheduled Caste (S.C.) clients on the
other were strengthened. This in turn rein-
forced the traditional social system. The
subsequent Green Revolution with its high-
yielding varieties (HYV) of seeds and begin-
nings of mechanization of agricultural activities
further improved Wangala's agricultural base,
so much so that village lands could support a
trebling of population during 1955±91. This
strong economic base made Wangala people
village-introverted.
Since the 1940s the number of houses in
Wangala greatly increased and their appear-
ance has changed considerably. Many now are
urban-style well-furnished two story structures
with modern facilities, private water taps and
some even with latrines; some also have tele-
phones and/or television sets. Moreover, there
are public water taps so that all households
have easy access to water. The housing of the
poorest too has improved greatly; there are
now many fewer conventional small thatched
huts; these have been replaced by Re-inforced
Concrete Structures (RCC). Street lights and
drainage are also important innovations. Most
houses have access to drainage. This makes the
village cleaner looking and healthier.
The headquarters for the Village Council
located in Wangala also covers four neigh-
boring villages. Many government ocials as
well as residents from other villages frequently
call at the Wangala council oces. Throughout
the day buses, cars, scooters and bicycles stop
o€ in Wangala on their way to other destina-
tions. Such a volume of trac was unknown in
1955.
The hustle and bustle around Wangala's
main roadÐwhere most peasant caste families
still resideÐgives the impression of a small but
thriving urban settlement. Indeed people often
refer to their village as ``Little Mandya,'' a
small replica of the nearby town of Mandya.
Many stores carry boards with big lettering
indicating the nature of their business. As
might be expected, the branch of the Corporate
Bank occupies the most solid and impressive
building. This bank also caters for neighboring
villages and therefore attracts many visitors.
In the morning when school begins and in the
afternoon when it ends crowds of boys and girls
neatly dressed in uniforms stream through the
village streets; many go to the shops and treat
themselves to snacks. A large proportion of
children attending the di€erent levels of Wan-
gala's school complex live in neighboring vil-
lages. Small specialist shops and restaurants
cater to a variety of consumer requirements.
They all appear well frequented throughout the
day.
Since the onset of irrigation only very few
villagers have worked outside Wangala and
even fewer have moved out. The economic ex-
pansion in fact attracted immigrant labor even
from as far as the neighboring state of Tamil
Nadu. Wangala now enjoys most of the ame-
nities that towns o€er such as electricity, piped
water, a primary health center, a large educa-
tional complex with a library, telephone, radio,
TV connections, numerous trade stores, co€ee
shops, banking and postal facilities, etc.Ð
without the disadvantages of urban life such as
pollution. During the past 20 years Wangala's
economy has diversi®ed in terms of tertiary
industrial development. There is enough de-
mand within the village and in the surrounding
area to sustain a thriving services sector.
Wangala thus already has the makings of a
growth center.
(ii) Dalena village
Dalena village displays much more radical
socioeconomic and political changes than have
taken place in Wangala, although it remained a
dry land enclave in the midst of an irrigated
belt. Dalena lands were actually traversed by a
canal yet remained completely dry. Across the
canal Dalena farmers would see immediately
before their eyes the bene®ts resulting from ir-
rigation and exactly what was involved in
growing cash crops. This spurred many of them
onto e€orts leading to their own economic
progress, and encouraged them to participate in
the economic growth resulting from irrigation
in the region. Dalena villagers, like their Wan-
gala counterparts, referred to the advent of ir-
rigation as the turning point in their history.
Alternative economic opportunities which
occurred in the new wet land region made dry-
land farming comparatively less advantageous
to Dalena farmers. They were eager to take
part in the economic expansion they saw hap-
pening around them. Realizing that they could
 DEVELOPMENTÐTHERE IS ANOTHER WAY
do so only by reaching out into the wider
economy, they looked for opportunities outside
Dalena. The village dry land continued to be
cultivated, but mainly by female labor. This
allowed men to take up other income-earning
opportunities. Since they could not grow cash
crops in their own village, many purchased
newly irrigated land in neighboring villages,
where they would then grow crops for sale.
Dalena families were shrewd and tried to marry
their daughters into neighboring irrigated vil-
lages to make sure they would be the ®rst to
hear whenever land came onto the market
there. By this and other methods they managed
to acquire considerable wet land acreage out-
side their own village. Their extra-village net-
work of relations put them into a strategic
position to venture also into work outside
farming.
A fair number of Dalena men acted regularly
as contractors for the building of canals and the
accompanying road system. Most of Dalena's
poorest farmers and landless have worked at
one time or other as laborers for private con-
tractors or for the Public Works Department
directly. Their contact with the Administration
made Dalena people realize the importance of
literacy in particular and education in general.
Accordingly, some sent their sons to sec-
ondary school in the nearby town of Mandya.
Some of these educated young Dalena men
secured jobs in the town's Agricultural Oce
and transmitted the latest techniques of farm-
ing to Dalena farmers. The village headman
was thus encouraged to experiment with the
Japanese method of paddy cultivation on wet
land he cultivated in neighboring villages.
Surprisingly as it seemed for a native from a
dry-land village he won the prize for the best-
irrigated paddy cultivation in the region in
1954. Their many extra-village contacts enabled
Dalena men to take advantage of the new
economic opportunities resulting from irriga-
tion in the region. They are employed outside
their village working as unskilled laborers or
skilled mechanics and electricians, clerks, or-
derlies or drivers. Some have even become
doctors and surgeons, or lawyers. A consider-
able proportion of those in employment outside
Dalena have left the village and moved near
their place of work. Many others have migrated
to cities in the hope of ®nding work only to join
the masses of urban slum dwellers. There is
ample evidence that urban work opportunities
attract many more rural migrants than can ®nd
employment in cities. Thus a growing number
1447
of these people have no other option but move
into shanty settlements where they usually have
little or no access to the basic services such as
education, health care, safe drinking water, and
electricity.
Some of those who left still keep in touch
with their village kin and friends, while others
have cut their village ties completely and are
not even remembered any more in Dalena.
These dry-land villagers responded to the onset
of irrigation in their region by diversifying their
economic activities to try and meet demands
arising in the wider economy. Dalena's popu-
lation increase was less than Wangala's: it
doubled during 1955±91. Yet the meager eco-
nomic base that dry land provided forced
people to become village-extroverted.
Spontaneously, and against the plans of re-
gional authorities, Dalena people helped to
meet the demands irrigation had initiated in
neighboring wet land villages and in the rapidly
expanding nearby urban centers. Whereas
Wangala's economic diversi®cation focused on
the services sector Dalena's concentrated on
secondary industrial activities. In doing so
Dalena provided the basis for an e€ective spe-
cialization and division of labor in a regionally
integrated economy. It enabled wet land farm-
ers to concentrate on crop cultivation without
having to worry about where to get the inputs
they needed and how to market their output.
But, government policies neglected rural de-
velopment and therefore migration to urban
areas has come to rank high on Dalena's
agenda. It led to continuing village extroversion
that has torn apart the village social fabric.
3
(b) South East Asia
In South East Asia, two areas were studied.
(i) The Sukhothai groundwater development
project in North Central Thailand
During 1980±90, The Sukhothai ground-
water development project in North Central
Thailand pioneered large-scale groundwater
irrigation in the Central Plains. In this region,
the rural poor had traditionally based their
tenuous livelihoods on one drought-prone,
rainfed rice crop for food security in the rainy
season, supplemented by hunting, charcoal-
burning and short-term casual labor in nearby
towns during the long dry season. The judicial
use of groundwater pumped from the new, deep
tubewells during the drier periods of the rainy
season guaranteed a reasonable yield from the
1448 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
favored, local varieties of rice. During the dry
season, it was also possible to pump limited
amounts of groundwater to cultivate a small,
second crop of rice in the heavy, clayey soils
which predominated. Overall family incomes
and living standards were marginally improved,
with better access to electricity, schools, health
care, agricultural equipment, shops and trade.
With the successful but gradual introduction of
HYV rice varieties, which could be grown now
that there was a reliable source of water
throughout the growing season, yields almost
trebled, and for the ®rst time families had ad-
ditional purchasing power to buy nonessential
goods and ``luxury'' items.
But by the mid-1980s, the success of the
Green Revolution was beginning to wane, as
rice prices drifted much lower and the world
witnessed a glut of rice. Consequently farmers
became more reluctant to pay the high pump-
ing costs associated with groundwater irriga-
tion and many of them went back to rain-fed
irrigation for food production to meet basic
family needs. It was then that this Thai region
experienced a spontaneous Rural Growth
Area/Center development, similar to what had
been observed in South India. Farmers living
outside of the project area who had been at-
tempting to cultivate rain-fed soya bean on
raised beds to take advantage of a sudden in-
crease in price of this nontraditional crop,
started to lease the uncultivated land from
farmers who were no longer interested in irri-
gating paddy. These enthusiastic farmers were
trained by project agricultural extension sta€ in
growing soya bean under furrow irrigation in
the wet season with good drainage, and with
similar areas under irrigation during the dry
season. Farming incomes soared, and the
farmers then organized their own trucks for
taking the soya bean to the distant mills and
markets, thereby maximizing their own pro®ts
by cutting out the middleman and additional
transport costs. The farmers soon realized that
a large percentage of their pro®t was being
consumed in transporting the soya bean to the
regional capital at Phitsanulok for milling and
oil production. So, with ®nancial support from
the Bank for Agriculture and Agriculture Co-
operatives and local entrepreneurs, a soya bean
mill was established in the small village (am-
phoe) of Sawankhalok; within two years, with
endorsement from the Ministry of Agriculture
and Co-operatives, Sukhothai Groundwater
Project became a soya bean seed production
center for the whole province. The small village
of Sawankhalok was no longer just a sleepy
local market convenient for tourists to stop o€
for 20 minutes and experience Thai rural village
life halfway on their journey between Bangkok
and Chiang Mai. Although Sawankhalok
(meaning ``Heaven on Earth'') still retains its
charm and tranquility perched on either side of
the Yom River, close to the ancient Thai cap-
itals of Sukhothai and Sri Satchanalai, it now
boasts modern banks, schools, traders and an
extensive service industry, ®rst-class hospitals
and an air of prosperity within the community
usually associated with villages in more devel-
oped countries.
(ii) The dry Northeast ``Esarn'' area of Thailand
A recent master plan study of this poorest
region in Thailand identi®ed the main con-
straints on planning and development of water
resources in the region, and made proposals for
improving the incomes and living standards of
rural farmers within the region (Royal Irriga-
tion Department, 1995). The recommendations
made in the study emphasized the need to make
future investments only in the rehabilitation
and up-grading of existing irrigation projects,
improving operation and maintenance of
schemes, and implementing a few, justi®able
small to medium-scale irrigation schemes lo-
cated in the poorest rural areas. Aware of the
shrinking water availability per capita, the plan
recommended that no new large-scale irrigation
systems be funded; it also identi®ed the urgent
need for new agricultural policies to stabilize
which account for the changing characteristics
of the rural population resulting from the mi-
gration and urbanization which was taking
place in the region.
(c) New Thai agricultural policies
New policies were proposed to stop the
massive outmigration and urbanization of the
rural poor to the nearby cities and the capital,
Bangkok, by introducing crop diversi®cation
away from irrigated and rainfed rice to the
implementation of integrated farming. This
new cropping system, which had been success-
fully introduced by the end of 1995 on a small
scale under the Ubol Ratchathani Land Re-
form Area Project (URLRAP) in Northeast
Thailand, had been shown to achieve self-suf-
®ciency for rural families across this arid re-
gion. The cropping model was based on the
harvesting of rainwater in shallow storage
ponds, and the cultivation of a small amount of
 DEVELOPMENTÐTHERE IS ANOTHER WAY
rice, vegetables and fruit trees for family con-
sumption, combined with ®sh farming, and
raising ducks, pigs and chickens. Incomes could
be increased from a typical 25 Baht (equals
US$1 at 1995 prices) per day per farm for rice
monoculture, to 100 Baht (US$4) per day for
integrated farming. Together with limited sea-
sonal migration for one or two of the family
members for employment in nearby tourism
centers or specialized agricultural centers,
family incomes of 150 Baht (US$6) per day
were easily achievable.
Over the past ®ve years, however, almost all
of the government's expenditure has focused on
attempting to meet the expanding population's
need for water in the burgeoning cities and in-
dustrial areas of the Northeast, and on ambi-
tious river diversion schemes and storage dams,
none of which could be shown to be ®nancially
or economically viable. In stark contrast to the
10% annual growth Thailand has experienced
over the past decade, the living standards of the
rural poor (90% of the population of the
Northeast who are farmers) have not notice-
ably increased. In fact, many of them believe
themselves to be far poorer now (in real terms
of available income for spending and main-
taining living standards) than they were 10 or
even 20 years ago.
The recent social and economic crisis, which
started in Thailand during 1997, has caused a
drastic rethinking of the country's past growth
strategy and future development objectives. A
new understanding has emerged among gov-
ernment, civil society organizations, the private
sector, and academia to consider the impor-
tance of redressing the rural±urban imbalance
that has arisen during the past decade, and re-
turning to a more balanced growth paradigm in
the future. As a result of this consensus, the
new Constitution of Thailand and the revised
Eighth National Economic and Social Devel-
opment Plan (1997±2001) give far greater at-
tention to good governance, sustainable rural
development and community participation. In
response to the Thai Government's request for
support for a revised strategy for rural devel-
opment, the World Bank has recently prepared
a report setting out objectives and a medium-
term strategy for sustainable and equitable ru-
ral development for Thailand to achieve this
new and balanced growth paradigm (World
Bank, 2000).
The report identi®es the key rural challenges
as being the continued rural poverty, growing
income inequality, limited rural employment,
1449
widespread environmental damage and the
underdevelopment of social capital, causing
urbanization and migration which has de-
stroyed the traditional Thai family values and
the social cohesion of village life. A clear vision
for rural development in Thailand has emerged
which emphasizes:
ÐA rural population that is empowered,
secure and content.
ÐA rural economy that is balanced, sustain-
able and equitable.
ÐA rural development process that is
holistic and centered on people and local
community institutions.
ÐA rural development partnership that in-
volves local communities, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), government, private
sector and academic institutions.
Key objectives for rural development ¯ow
from this vision:
ÐEnhanced human resource development
of the rural population.
ÐStrengthened local institutions, based on
greater self-reliance and community partici-
pation.
ÐIncreased income and employment gener-
ation, particularly for the poor and those af-
fected by the crisis.
ÐA better protected environment.
The proposed steps to be taken to achieve
these objectives are:
ÐLocal community organizations must be
strengthened.
ÐO€-farm employment and rural enter-
prises must be expanded.
ÐRural ®nance markets must be strength-
ened.
ÐAgricultural productivity must be
increased.
ÐThe management of natural resources
must be improved.
This Thai model for a revised development
paradigm is not new, for all of the above pro-
posals were contained in the water resources
development master plan report for the Mun
river basin completed more than ®ve years
earlier. But perhaps what is new is the sudden
social and economic crisis experienced in
Thailand, and for that matter, what followed in
most of Asia, which may now trigger the
changes required to bring about the transfor-
mations in rural development which are so
urgently needed. As is so often stated in Thai-
land, ``nothing changes, except in crisis.'' The
Chinese for ``crisis'' is made up of the two
characters ``danger'' and ``opportunity.''
1450 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Perhaps in the light of recent events, now is
exactly the right time to introduce this new
paradigm into the rural development of
Thailand.
4. CHANGING CONDITIONS CHANGE
RURAL STRUCTURES
(a) Increasing emphasis on o€-farm
income-generation
Until recently rural economies depended al-
most exclusively on agriculture. Population
growth and low agricultural productivity in the
Third World encouraged the establishment of
the International Crop Research Institutes
where research has been conducted with the
objective of optimizing the productivity per
unit of land. The research began with the as-
sumption that land is the scarce factor of
production, while there is no problem with
availability of water. The high-yielding variet-
ies (HYV) that resulted require a larger
amount of water than the traditional varieties
if they are to ful®ll their promise. In the earlier
post-war period there were numerous cases of
investment by international donors in irrigated
agriculture development, many of which have
been success stories, similar to the rural
transformation that occurred in South India.
But during the last decade conditions have
begun to change.
In many regions of the world water has now
become the scarce factor of production. In
some Chinese counties as much as 80% of rural
settlements have no secure access to water.
Villagers in drought-prone areas such as Ra-
jasthan complain that the
government does not know the situation on the
groundÐthe feedback they get is not correct. . .. If
there is no rain this year, we will leave the village. Last
year we survived, but this year it is a big burden (Fi-
nancial Times, May 23, 2000, p. 12).
The International Crop Research Institutes
have yet to produce crops that maximize the
productivity per unit of water rather than of
land and/or economic activities in rural sectors
have to diversify.
(b) Demand for water exceeds its supply
It was only as recently as 1992 at the Dublin
International Conference on Water and the
Environment, that the world really began to
take notice of the overconsumption of water,
increasing pollution and rising threats from
drought and ¯oods. One of the four guiding
principles arising from this conference was
that fresh water is a ®nite and vulnerable re-
source, essential to sustain life, development
and the environment. Although 70% of our
blue planet is covered with water, very few of
the general public are aware that 97.5% of all
water on earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5%
as freshwater. Nearly 70% of that small
amount of freshwater is actually frozen in
icecaps, and most of the remainder is present
as soil moisture, or lies in deep, underground
aquifers as groundwater. Only 0.26% of the
total amount of fresh water on earth is con-
centrated in lakes, reservoirs, and river sys-
tems, which are accessible for economic needs
and important for water ecosystems. Accord-
ingly, less than 1% of the world's freshwater,
or 0.007% (i.e. 2.5%  0.26%) of all water on
earth, is readily available for direct human use
(Shiklomanov, 2000). This small fraction of
the world's freshwater resources has to meet
the total global demand by agriculture, in-
dustry, human and livestock consumption,
municipal and recreational uses. The ever-
growing human population continues to in-
crease the world demand for clean water,
while the available freshwater is in constant
decline, owing to the continuing pollution of
these ®nite resources by industrial waste and
domestic sewage. The per capita area of agri-
cultural land under irrigation is also shrinking,
and competition for water is increasing. Not
only are there disputes over water between
urban and rural populations, there is also
competition between intracountry regions and
across international borders.
At the Second World Water Forum, James
D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank
reiterated that ``it is these tensions that have
given rise to the suggestion that the wars of the
21st century may be fought over water rather
than oil.'' He went on to say that ``there is no
way we can continue with business as usual. By
2025, we will need 40 per cent more water for
cities and 20 per cent more for food'' (World
Water Forum, 2000). The cost of other sources
of freshwater, such as the desalination of sea
water and its distribution must be greatly re-
duced before they can become an economic
proposition. Therefore alternative and realistic
solutions are required to address the emerging
critical water issues.
 DEVELOPMENTÐTHERE IS ANOTHER WAY
Apart from some references to the need for
more emphasis on integrated water resource
management at the basin and aquifer level, a
participatory approach to irrigation develop-
ment and the use of tradable water rights, most
of the proposals made at the Forum were
concentrated on technological and ®nancial
reforms.
The World Bank estimates that in order to meet the
enormous demands for water, investment will have
to double over the next 25 years from some $70bil-
lion today. This cannot be done unless the private
sector plays a much larger role in the provision
and ®nancing of water services.'' (World Water Fo-
rum, 2000).
But where is most of this huge investment to
be made?Ðpredominantly in the water utilities
of the cities, in leak detection and the privati-
zation of the water sector.
It is not only the World Bank that empha-
sizes major investments in city water utilities.
At the Second World Water Forum in The
Hague, the Executive Director of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
said that ``The battle for the conservation of
water will be won or lost in the megacities of
the world'' (World Water Forum, 2000). With
over 60 million people being added to the
population of cities each year, he called on
cities and city authorities to adopt a six-point
integrated strategy for managing urban water
resources, to reduce the demand for water in
cities, and to play their part in implementing
the World Water Vision. The proposed UNEP
strategy is for local authorities to: carry out
city-wide water audits; introduce policies to
protect watersheds; use new technologies to
minimize the amount of water lost through
leakage and illegal connections; introduce so-
cially sensitive water pricing policies; recycle
wastewater; and set up an integrated strategy
for demand management.
Even at the Asian Development Bank
(ADB), the greatest concern at the present
time is for Asian cities, where 56% of the
population is expected to live by 2025. Some
830 million people in developing Asia and the
Paci®c do not have safe drinking water, and
two billion lack sanitation facilities. This is far
more than two-thirds of the total world pop-
ulation who su€er water shortages and have
little or no sanitation. In its 1999 Annual
Report, the ADB calls this situation ``a major
human tragedy.''
1451
5. A RURAL±URBAN PARTNERSHIP
DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM
The preceding account began by outlining
the serious problems that result from ever-
growing rural±urban migration rates and went
on to show how economic growth in rural areas
can make people village-introverted, so much
so that they do not want to migrate to cities. In
Wangala and Sawankhalok it was canal and
piped irrigation that triggered o€ an overall
improvement in economic conditions. Wher-
ever it is still feasible to extend access to water
for crop production this obviously needs to be
done. But in rural areas where the increasing
water shortages and existing agricultural tech-
nologies prevent further improvements in crop
outputs other sources of employment and/or
income need to be put within reach of villagers
to reduce the rural±urban rate of migration (see
Figure 1).
A Rural±Urban Partnership Development
Paradigm, linking urban centers with rural
growth areas and growth centers, ensures an
overall balanced development process. Such
rural±urban partnership will create mutually
bene®cial network relations not only between
farmers, agro-based processing enterprises and
domestic industrial units in rural growth areas,
but also between rural growth areas/centers and
urban industrial centers.
(a) Essential preconditions
Essential preconditions have to be met before
such a Paradigm can be expected to succeed:
(i) Political commitment
A need to balance rural±urban development
is of foremost importance.
(ii) Local participation
Local participation and interest in such a
revised development strategy need to be en-
sured. Villagers have to be convinced that the
authorities are now really committed to pro-
mote not only urban but also rural develop-
ment.
(iii) Appropriate and decentralized education
and training facilities
This will ensure that students from villages
acquire appropriate skills without their studies
alienating them from their rural background.
1452 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Figure 1. Growth areas with growth centers.
(iv) Open-university type courses o€ered in
business management in general and simpli®ed
accountancy in particular
Such courses should also explain the advan-
tages and disadvantages of di€erent types of
business structures so as to put villagers in the
position of making intelligent choices whether
they should work as self-employed or engage in
private partnerships, co-operative ventures or
other forms of business.
(v) International crop research institutes
encouraged to focus their research on producing
HYVs for crops that require only little water
The Green Revolution ceases to be green if
there is insucient water available to grow the
crops. It is therefore important that the re-
search objectives at these institutions are
changed in line with changing conditions.
(vi) The establishment of an industrial extension
service for rural areas
This is required to advise villagers on credit
availability, links with urban manufacturers,
the implications of appropriate productive
processes, etc.
(vii) Promotion of agro-based industries
By involving vertical integration toward the
market will o€er employment opportunities
and will retain more income within the rural
sector, which through the multiplier e€ect will
lead to overall increases in demand for goods
and services.
(viii) Linking urban-based businesses with rural
small-scale producers
This has been successfully implemented for
instance in Taiwan and South Korea. In these
countries urban consumer and other small
goods manufacturers with in-country and ex-
port marketing links have only small factories
with low overheads. They rely on rural do-
mestic productive units; they have hostels in the
cities where villagersÐmost of whom are
womenЮnd temporary accommodation dur-
ing their training. These recruits learn the
productive process before returning to their
rural base equipped with however many ma-
chines they decide to take on a hire-purchase
basis. The manufacturer continues to supply
them with the necessary raw materials (e.g., cut
pieces of shirts or blouses), collects the ®nished
articles, enforces strict quality control, pays
 DEVELOPMENTÐTHERE IS ANOTHER WAY
piece rates and markets the products. This ru-
ral±urban partnership has proven to be an ex-
tremely cost-e€ective productive process, which
helped Taiwanese urban manufacturers to
capture many export markets. At the same time
it has also resulted in an unusually high rural
standard of living. Villagers are able to earn
reasonable incomes while being self-employed
and without having to worry about how to
market what they produce.
(ix) Appropriate shareholding arrangements
with legally binding obligations
These need to be made available to villagers.
Such arrangements should be formalized under
a local statute or regulation.
(x) Rural infrastructures
Rural infrastructure have to be improved to
ensure e€ective road networks, ready access to
education, sanitary water, primary health cen-
ters, hospitals banking, supplies of power etc.
Such public works ventures will have the ben-
e®cial by-product of o€ering many de-central-
ized income-earning opportunities.
6. A THREE-LEVEL RURAL±URBAN
PARTNERSHIP
(a) Rural growth areas
Expert socioeconomists by basing their plans
on reliable Resource and Market Surveys
should be able to calculate the most e€ective
and appropriate size of individual growth areas
that facilitates easy access and communication
not only between the di€erent settlements that
constitute one rural growth area but also be-
tween di€erent growth areas and urban centers.
NOTES
1. The argument presented here emanates from the
wide-ranging experience and in-depth research the
authors shared. T. Scarlett Epstein studied over 45
years the impact of a large canal irrigation scheme on
two South Indian villagesÐone which got access to
canal water and another where lands remain dry
because they are above irrigation level. David Jezeph
has more than 30 years of experience of working as a
consulting engineer in Africa and Asia in irrigation
development and water resources management. He has
worked in Thailand since 1980, and implemented the
1453
This will stimulate economic expansion in rural
areas and reduce the socioeconomic di€erenti-
ation between rural and urban populations.
Each such area could also represent a demo-
cratically elected political entity.
(b) Rural growth centers
These centers will form the nuclei of each
growth area and have two-way socioeconomic
relationships with neighboring villages and
linkages with urban and rural suppliers and
markets. These Rural Growth Centers will
provide the formalized services for the popu-
lation residing in the Growth Area. Compara-
tive advantages enjoyed by the di€erent
settlements within one growth area will deter-
mine the role each such center will play in its
area development.
(c) Urban centers
Urban centers should have an increasing
volume of network linkages with rural partners,
suppliers and buyers. Such rural±urban part-
nership arrangements can reduce rural±urban
migration, improve both rural and urban levels
of living and provide a sustainable development
option as part of the ongoing process of glo-
balization.
The most important factor needed to redress
the imbalance between rural and urban devel-
opment and for the rural±urban partnership
development paradigm to succeed in reducing
the rate of urban growth is the political will and
commitment to a balanced rural±urban devel-
opment process with a rural±urban partnership
that can alleviate the problem of poverty in
both rural and urban sectors.
®rst deep tubewell irrigation project in the Central
Plains.
2. For detailed accounts of these studies see: Epstein
(1962), Epstein (1973) and Epstein et al. (1998).
3. David Jezeph studied the impact of introducing deep
tube-well irrigation in the Sukhothai Plains and the
potential for water resources development in the dry
Northeast region of Thailand. His comments do not
necessarily represent the views of the United Nations.
1454 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
REFERENCES
Epstein, T. S. (1962). Economic development and social
change in South India. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Epstein, T. S. (1973). South India: Yesterday, today and
tomorrow. London: Macmillan.
Epstein, T. Scarlett, Suryanarayana, A. P., & Thim-
megowda, T. (1998). Village voicesÐforty years of
rural transformation in South India. Delhi: Sage
Publications. Accompanied by a documentary ®lm
with the same title, produced by the German Institute
for Scienti®c Films, University of Goettingen.
Royal Irrigation Department. (1995). Mun river basin
water resources development master plan. Royal Thai
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Shiklomanov, I. A. (2000). Appraisal and assessment of
world water resources. Water International, 25(1),
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Wakely, P. (2000). The inclusive city. The international
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