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Passport from Work. Myrdal is equally gloomy about the possibility of checking South Asia's population explosion. Again, contrary to the usual Western assumptions, he finds indications that birth control in Asia may not "spread spontaneously with industrialization, urbanization and rising levels of living." Even if he is wrong and massive birth control takes hold, the very youthfulness of the present population ensures, he says, that the Asian work force will not shrink for at least a full generation—and therefore neither will unemployment. Moreover, any advantage to be gained by borrowing Western technology to speed up the "takeoff" into industrialization is being nullified by the accelerating pace of the West's own industrial progress. The "pace of history" is working against the Asians.
The emphasis in Myrdal's book is on what is wrong but he does have some ideas about what should be done to set things right. First and foremost, the Asian nations themselves must bring about social reform and impose social discipline. Education, for example, must cease to be a passport to escape hard work. The West can help by mounting a massive research program into the problems of underdeveloped countries and by opening its markets wider to more Asian products. When it comes to agriculture, in which two-thirds of South Asians work, Myrdal echoes the sensible—if not always acclaimed—view that land reform that gives every peasant an equal plot and breaks up large estates may do Asians scant good. Peasants, unless re-educated, tend to continue farming just as when they were sharecroppers; efficient farmers are only penalized.
Most of the development aid to the region is now given by individual nations. Myrdal recommends that most of it should be distributed through such international agencies as the World Bank. That way, it would flow to those who need it with fewer conditions at tached and a greater chance for establishing long-term stability.