There are many reasons to suggest that debt has become the main obstacle to the underdeveloped countries, Rostow believes that for development to work, countries need to go through a certain process. Rostow argues that development should be seen as an evolutionary process in which countries progress ladder of five stages, stage one being at the bottom, i.e. societies which rely on subsidence farming and stage five being at the ultimate stage of development. However there are many countries which are not progressing naturally up this ladder of development, Item A tells us ‘all this was beyond the financial capacity of such countries and as a result a mountain of debt was built up as they were encouraged to catch up with the West’. This could be giving us the idea that in fact, these countries are being pushed into ‘catching up with the west’ getting themselves into debt which they can’t pay back, which is preventing them from moving their way up the ladder. This is the case for many countries with the exception to Tiger countries, many of these underdeveloped countries are remaining at stage one; this essay will assess the possible reasons for this lack of development.
Many sociologists will suggest that the lack of development is because of the increase of debt. In 1980, the developing world owed the West $600 billion; however, by 1998 this had increased to $2.2 trillion. This is showing how much the developing world really was in debt. There are numerous reasons dependency theorists argue to as why the debt crisis has become such an intense issue. For one, it is believed that these underdeveloped countries are too dependent. Its argues that colonialism has resulted in the economies of developing countries being over dependent on a few major cash crops, or raw materials. The prices for these particular goods have reduced significantly meaning export earnings have