The Political Economy of Rural Energy Planning in the Third World

R. S. Ganapathy might be seen as writing a memo to newly-trained energy planners. The essence of his message is that energy planning does not take place in a social or political vacuum. In effect, if as a planner you value collective self-reliance and democratic control by people over their affairs and equity, you must not let yourself make energy prescriptions based only on economic (cost/benefit) and engineering analyses. Also, even as a "well-trained " energy planner, you still know less than you think about what any specific rural community needs in the way of energy investment. But your technical expertise, along with the community's sometimes unarticulated understanding of its real needs, may together ameliorate their energy problem in a progressive way.The article is concerned first with energy planning in the Third World and second with the types and means of international support for appropriate, non-imperialist, transfer of energy technology. In fact, the preceding two articles have illustrated energy planning and technology transfer when Ganapathy's concerns are not addressed. Although implementing Ganapathy's program under current conditions may seem utopian, the issues raised here are nevertheless the ones raised in continuing discussions of the formation of official policies for rural development in a number of countries which profess to be following socialist paths to development.