The 10 Commandments for Developing Countries in the Nineties

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

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

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

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

5.  Thou shall borrow no more. Thou shall get foreign investment that pays for itself. Thou shall build only the infrastructure that is needed and create no white elephants nor railways that end in deserts. Thou shall accept no aid that is intended only to subsidize ailing industries in developed countries.

6.  Thou shall not reinvent the wheel. Millions of people have gone through the path of development. Take the well-travelled road. Be not prisoners of dead ideologies.

7.  Thou shall 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 shall follow suit.

8.  Thou shall 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 1990s.

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

10.  Thou shall not abandon hope. People are the same the world over. When  Europe achieved yesterday, developing world will achieve tommorow. It can be done.

              Mahbubani, Kishore. 2002. Can Asians Thinks? Singapore: Times Books International.