Structural failure of integrated rural development

Excessive urbanization and the concentration of investment in urban-oriented, capital-intensive activities have produced a severe imbalance within developing countries between the urban elite groups that monopolize power and wealth, and the majority of the rural population that remains poor; this despite the fact that the cost of bringing a person to an urban area is often much greater than the cost of providing social infrastructure to keep that person in the rural area. Rural industrialization is not meeting its aim of bringing city comforts to the rural areas, thereby creating a rural-urban continuum; it is, instead, creating a rural-urban conflict.