beyond utopianism and despair: indigenous mode s of development?

In March 2006, the World Bank opened a meeting in London called Asia 2015 to discuss the issue of persistent and endemic poverty in the globe’s largest continent. An estimated two out of every three Asians are still living in poverty despite the revolution in science, technology, medicine, productivity and infor- mation, the new wave of democratization, and the economic rise of China and India. Notwithstanding the good intentions of many who attended that World Bank meeting, it appears that no new paradigms, approaches or solutions were offered beyond the “Western” ideological assumptions of “free market” and aid.