Deconstructing Development Sumanasiri Liyanage The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. ~Albert Camus The Minister for Economic Development in presenting Divineguma Bill to the Parliament tried to portray the government’s effort to economic development as a ‘second war’, the first was the one waged against ‘terrorism’ i.e. the LTTE insurgency. The phrase ‘the war for development’ or ‘the developmental war’ sounds paradoxical. ‘Development’ is generally depicted as something ‘good’ while ‘war’ is portrayed as something essentially bad. Immanuel Wallerstein once remarked: “There is perhaps no social objective that can find as nearly unanimous acceptance today as that of economic development. I doubt that there has been a single government anywhere in the last 30 years that has not asserted it was pursuing this objective, at least for its own country. Everywhere in the world today, what divides left and right, however defined, is not whe...