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In the broadest sense, economic development might be viewed as “any growth in real income per capita from whatever source”. Bach has described it as “growth in the total output of goods and services in the economy”. Novack has referred to a very old definition of economic growth, according to which it is “con­tinuous substantial increase in per capita consumption of goods and services”. The substantial consumption of economic goods is possible only when there is substantial production of economic goods, and sub­stantial production these days depends upon greater use of technologies. In a narrower sense, therefore, it may be said that economic development refers to “the extensive application of inanimate power and other tech­nologies to the production and distribution of economic goods”. ADVERTISEMENTS: In this sense, economic development is practically equivalent to industrialisation. But to say that economic development is only indus­trialisation would not be correct because besides involving the use of power and technology in production, it also involves labour mobility, ex­tensive educational system, and so on. Jaffe and Stewart (1951), who described economic development as “rationalization of economic production”, have given a dichotomy of de­veloped and underdeveloped countries on the basis of per capita income and factors like high literacy, high expectation of life at birth and low fertility, low proportion of labour force engaged in agriculture, and high production of kilowatts of electricity per capita. Besides these, we may add a third category to this classification, that of a country which is in be­tween the developed and the underdeveloped countries, that is, the developing country. In terms of the per capita income, the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe (Italy, France, Germany, and England) are considered to be developed countries. On the other hand, South Africa, Mexico and most of the southern and eastern European countries are developing countries. India too, in terms of its per capita income, is a de­veloping country. Jaffe and Stewart have said that economic development entail; changes in everything at once to achieve the above characteristics (of de­veloped countries). But, Robert Paris believes that this conclusion (of achieving everything at once for economic development) is not justified. He thinks that though its proximate measurement will be taken as an in­crease in real income per capita, yet all other changes would depend upon the degree of requiredness

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