Development is arguably one of the most important words in the English language.
Its various meanings have changed over time but it has become a shorthand for a complex set of social, economic, political, cultural and institutional transformations over the last five hundred years. Since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall, it is often assumed that development can only mean capitalist modernization of the Western sort. At the end of the 20th century, the division is less between capitalist and socialist states, as between the growing gulf between rich and poor nations. Since 1960, the growing globalization and integration of the world economy, and unprecedented forms of technological innovation and social integration, has seen a growing inequality between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people. Their plight is atrocious and the evidence suggests that in the current globalized world, the gap between them and the rich is likely to grow worse.