When Forests Are Rended

October 16, 1982 gimes that are repressive, corrupt and authoritarian. Sound prudential reasons might prevent the management institutes located in these countries from referring to the nature of these regimes. but it is irresponsible to pretend that people-centered planning or participatory development could emerge on any significant scale in such political climates, if only local level vested interests could be handled or overcome by creative and committed bureaucrats. Even under the somewhat more favourable circumstances of India, J K Satia points out in his paper that the generally low performance of officials in IIMA's Jawaja project area was inter alia traced to "fear of possible political renercussions if the resulting actions should run counter to the interests of powerful economic and political groups in the district". A part of the problem is that the management approach seeks to arrive at its "concepts and technologies" for "development management" drawing upon its experience with enterprise management, This process ignores some basic differences. To the enterprise manager, the political system and its functioning are externalities or "the environment" which is to be lived with or manipulated in the pursuit of the interests of the enterprise. On the other hand, politics is thoroughly internal to development; the development manager cannot manipulate it but is rather manipulated by it. In this situation, the kind of prescriptions that the study is able to come up with only confirm Karl Mannheim's well known observation that the fundamental tendency of all bureaucratic thought is turn all problems of politics into problems of administration.