Is there a conflict between development on the one hand and democracy and/or human rights on the other? The issue began to be seriously examined some forty years ago1 and the controversy has simmered because there has been empirical evidence to indicate at least some shortterm validity to those who do see a conflict and press the primacy of growth. They take off from premises like Einstein’s, “An empty stomach makes a poor political adviser.” The controversy in recent years has not so much been for and against human rights as over which category of it should have precedence: civil and political rights or economic, social and cultural rights. Originally, the bill of rights had remained confined only to the first category. But after World War II, when the newly formed United Nations began to consider the need for a universal declaration and, later, for a binding covenant on the subject, inclusion of economic, social and cultural rights was vehemently and successfully argued, especially by the socialist bloc of countries. Later the issue even became an element in the cold war. While the West assumed the title of ‘Free World’ on the basis of its relative guarantees of civil and political rights, the East claimed credit for its primacy to economic rights. The developing countries too, unable or uninclined for various reasons and to varying degrees to accept international standards in guaranteeing the freedoms to their people, began when challenged to claim an overriding need to concentrate on the economic