Amiya Kumar Bagchi, an eminent economist of the modern
Cambridge tradition, has produced a timely treatise, in a condensed
form, on the development problems of the Third World countries. The
author's general thesis is that economic development in the developing
societies necessarily requires a radical transformation in the economic,
social and political structures. As economic development is actually a
social process, economic growth should not be narrowly defined as the
growth of the stock of rich capitalists. Neither can their savings be
equated to capital formation whose impact on income will presumably
'trickle down' to the working classes. Economic growth strategies must
not aim at creating rich elites, because, according to the author,
"maximizing the surplus in the hands of the rich in the Third World is
not, however, necessarily a way of maximizing the rate of
growth".