Appendix D*: Thirty-eight thousand [plus] development programs

Paradoxically, much of the instrumental value of the conventional vocabulary of development

planning rests in its imprecision of meaning, and its authoritative, technical gloss. Advertising
executives and businessmen are very familiar with these ‘Buzzwords’ --words which make a
pleasant noise but have little explicit meaning. One property of these words is that they may be
combined into almost infinite permutations and still ‘mean’ something. To illustrate this, we list
below 56 words which occur frequently in the planner’s lexicon. These will generate 38,316
development programmes; since the publisher is unaccountably reluctant to print the necessary
950 additional pages, we must prey on the reader’s patience to elaborate it for himself/herself.
Select one word from each column at random to compose a four-word phrase: for example, A3,
B6, C9, D12 = Systematically balanced cooperative action. Or A12, B9, C6, D3 =
Comprehensively mobilized rural participation. These may be immediately recognizable, but what
do they mean? If two or three people were each to write a paragraph explaining one of these
phrases to the masses, on behalf of the government of Ruritania, their different interpretations
should bear further witness to malleability of such language.

A B C D
1 Centrally Motivated Grass-roots Involvement
2 Rationally Positive Sectoral Incentive
3 Systematically Structured Institutional Participation
4 Formally Controlled Urban Attack
5 Totally Integrated Organizational Process
6 Strategically Balanced Rural Package
7 Dynamically Functional Growth Dialogue
8 Democratically Programmed Development Initiative
9 Situationally Mobilized Cooperative Scheme
10 Moderately Limited On-going Approach
11 Intensively Phased Technical Project
12 Comprehensively Delegated Leadership Action
13 Radically Maximized Agrarian Collaboration
14 Optimally Consistent Planning Objective

_____________

* This page, up to line 14 of the list, was copied from page 139 of a British
sociology/anthropology textbook entitled “Structures and Processes”. I photocopied only this
page from the book, and do not have the names of the author(s) handy. I Americanized the
spelling of some of the words in the original (such as ‘programmes’, ‘mobilised’, etc.).

It seems to me that some of these words do not go well together (e.g. (A5, B10) ‘totally limited’;

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or (A10, B13) ‘moderately maximized’; or (A9, B2) ‘situationally positive’. On the other hand,
more combinations can be created by adding the following:

15 State Sanctioned Transportation Program

16 Divinely Inspired Energy Plan
17 Leadership Sanctioned Education Effort
18 Grass-roots Initiated Disarmament Movement

Clearly, in order to use ‘program’ in the D column, we need to skip ‘programmed’ from column
B; to use ‘leadership’ in column A, we need to ignore ‘leadership’ in column C; to use ‘grass-
roots’ in column A, we need to forgo ‘grass-roots’ in column C. Then again, some nouns can be
quite appropriate in column A, as well as the above adverbs. Also, there can be two-word
combinations in one column (like ‘divinely-inspired’ in column A --heaven help us!; or ‘birth-
control’ in column C (or A); or ‘children-focused’ in column A; or ‘environmentally-conscious’ or
‘environmentally-friendly’ in column A; ). As the people who prepared this list would note, there
already are many familiar expressions that use specialized words other than the words above (such
as ‘general and complete disarmament [movement]’). No doubt, (English-speaking) human beings
can find ways of coming up with names for their programs (etc.) with words that have nothing to
do with the above.