1Sahil B = ""[Why have
our development] efforts over five decades not borne greater fruit? Measured
against history, where have things gone wrong? Given the progress we have made
in so many fields, why have we been so relatively ineffective in sharing that
progress more equitably, and in making it more permanent?My response centres on one principal observation: I believe the
industrialised world has often expected developing societies to behave as if
they were similar to the established nation states of the West, forgetting the
centuries, and the processes which moulded the Western democracies. Forgotten,
for one thing, is the fact that economic development in Western nations was
accompanied by massive urbanisation.Yet today, in the countries of Asia and Africa where we work,
over 70 percent of the population is rural. If you compare the two situations,
they are one and a half to two and half centuries apart. Similarly, the
profound diversity of these impoverished societies, infinitely greater than
that among nascent European nation states, is too often unrecognised, or
under-estimated, or misunderstood. Ethnic, religious, social, regional,
economic, linguistic and political diversities are like a kaleidoscope that
history shakes every day.behaviour. It’s part of your everyday life. You live the faith. And I think that’s why
many, many Muslims, not me but others, including myself, define the faith as, a
way of life because it is a way of life. [Emphasis original]"- Aga Khan IV"
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