The Ten Commandments for Developing Countries

Kishore Mahbubani author of "Can Asians Think?" offers his ten rules for developing countries:

I. Thou shalt blame only thyself for thy failures in development. Blaming imperialism, colonialism, and neo-imperialism is a convenient excuse to avoid self-examination.

II. Thou shalt acknowledge that corruption is the single most important cause of failures in development. Developed countries are not free from corruption, but with their affluences they can afford to indulge in saving and loan scandals.

III. Thou shalt not subsidize any product, nor punish the farmer in order to favor the city dweller. High prices are the only effective signal to increase production. If there are food riots, thou shalt resign from office.

IV. Thou shalt abandon state control for free markets. Thou shalt have faith in thine own population. An alive and productive population naturally causes development.

V. Thou shalt borrow no more. Thou shalt get foreign investment that pays for itself. Thou shalt build only the infrastructure that is needed and create no white elephants or railways that end in the deserts. Thou shalt accept no aid that is intended only to subsidize ailing industries in developed countries.

VI. Thou shalt not reinvent the wheel. Millions of people have gone through the path of development. Take the well-traveled roads. Be not prisoners of dead ideologies.

VII. Thou shalt scrub the ideas of Karl Marx out of thy mind and replace them with ideas of Adam Smith. The Germans have made their choice. Thou shalt follow suit.

VIII. Thou shalt be humble when developing and not lecture the developed world on their sins. They listened politely in the 1960s and 1970s. they no longer will in the 1990s. [still relevant in 2000s]

IX. Thou shalt abandon all North-South forums, which only encourage hypocritical speeches and token gestures. Thou shalt remember that countries that have received the greatest amount of aid per capita have failed most spectacularly in development. Thou shalt throw out all theories of development.

X. Thou shalt not abandon hope. People are the same the world over. What Europe achieved yesterday, the developing world will achieve tomorrow . It can be done.