If the reductionism of science appears to be taking scientists down a dead end, the reductionism of development theory and practice is even worse. It seems to be leading us directly into a black hole. Vast amounts of money and other valuable resources are daily sucked into unproductive investments to satisfy the whims of self-appointed experts and decision-makers who believe they have found "the key" that will solve the problems of poverty - or of the environment, or of whatever they have identified as worthy of their attention.

The key is usually stated in terms of the form "If only there was a light bulb [or a toilet or a solar cooker or whatever is the speciality of the pontificator] , , , , ", or "I have always maintained that the solution to the country’s poverty is literacy [or whatever] . . . ". The parliament votes thousands of crores, equivalent to billions of dollars, in guilt money to be thrown (unfortunately not with very good aim) at "poverty alleviation" by legislating schemes on housing, water, creation of work (not long term employment opportunities), etc. NGOs and thinktanks are often no better, bringing their preconceptions to the design of the single intervention they feel, perhaps because it is the only one they know, that will make a lasting difference.

It is the community based organisations who work with real life people, whether in the village or in the city slums, that come to know the complexity of the lives of the poor, and the futility of the misplaced trust in one-dimensional solutions. And from such experiences we must learn quickly. The main key, if there is one, is to build the capacity of communities to identify, formulate and solve their own problems. For this, they must have institutional mechanisms that allow solid participation by every citizen in local decision making. And, to make such participation meaningful, they must have access to information on a variety of things, including their rights, their resources and the technologies they can use to set up their livelihoods on a sustainable basis.

Given the scale of the problems to be tackled, any solution must be replicable, at least in communities with similar conditions. Outside intervention is meaningful if it serves not only to create a living example of how the processes of sustainable development can be set in motion in a particular case, but also to catalyse local initiatives to adopt these processes on a larger scale. Programmes to "adopt a village" are usually of greater benefit to the adopter than to the adoptees. Unless the processes of development are appropriated by the community where they are demonstrated and by neighbouring communities who in time accept them as their own, the development approaches being promoted cannot be very sustainable.