Social Information and Government-Sponsored Development: A Case Study from West Pakistan

Abstract

Greater governmental participation in economic organization in the developing countries is increasingly an accomplished fact and, ostensibly, an irreversible trend. In Pakistan it is manifested by several governmental organizations; the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) has been selected to represent it for purposes of this study. To what extent are criteria based on social information ideas applicable to this new development? To answer this question, three dimensions of PIDC were chosen for study in some detail. The conclusions that emerge are complex and mixed. PIDC's performance and some of its programs certainly cannot be understood in terms of purely economic criteria. In particular, its location policy can be meaningfully evaluated on the basis of the social benefits it was formulated to generate. There exists, however, the need to proceed with caution and vigilance, for the danger of social information being used to justify waste cannot be entirely ignored.