You must either be very numb or very rich if you fail to notice that Development stinks. Gutavo Esteva (1987:135). Assess the challenge of Post-development theory to mainstream development paradigms.

The rise of Post-development theory in the late 1980s through to the 1990s advocated by scholars across the globe (Sachs, Escobar, Esteva,  Shiva and Illich  to name but a few) brought to the fore more radical interpretations and critiques of mainstream development paradigms.  The post-development theorists set about a brutal yet arguably necessary attack upon current development practices and theories claiming to uncover some of the hidden truths behind the Western development project, as Esteva states The time has come to unveil the secret of development and see it in all its conceptual starkness (1992:7)….(short extract)