What is development in Southeast Asia and who benefits? Progress, power and prosperity

This chapter explores development in Southeast Asia through the lens of what development is supposed to achieve, giving consideration to concerns about failure, tracing the often convoluted pathways toward success and identifying who it is that benefits along the way. It begins with a discussion of how the confluence of politics and development is evident in the roots of development in Southeast Asia. The chapter also discusses the origins of aid in the region and how foreign investment in development was tied in to the emergence of Southeast Asia as a geopolitical entity. Development discourses identify a series of altruistic goals that national development programs and individual aid projects are supposed to achieve. These include: progress and modernization, justice and empowerment, greater equity and prosperity. Community-based and community-driven economic development is being tried in various ways by larger development agencies, with positive results for community prosperity.