Perspectives

Perspectives presents abstracts of select articles by well-known practitioners and academicians. Readers are welcome to contribute their own thoughtprovoking pieces or those of others that they have come across. Please send three type-written copies of the article to Professor Ranjit Gupta. Rural poverty unperceived: Outsiders are people concerned with rural development who are themselves neither rural nor poor. Many are headquarters and field staff of government organizations in the Third World. They also include academic researchers, aid agency personnel, bankers, businessmen, consultants, doctors, engineers, journalists, lawyers, politicians, priests, school teachers, staff of training institutes, workers in voluntary agencies, and other professionals. Outsiders underperceive rural poverty. They are attracted to and trapped in urban “cores” which generate and communicate their own sort of knowledge while rural “peripheries” are isolated and neglected. The direct rural experience of most urban-based outsiders is limited to the brief and hurried visits, from urban centres, of rural development tourism.