In teaching my medical students I have to tell them about these terms that are in text books, but I never use them for reasons that I discuss below.

By Developed Countries is meant rich, technologically advanced countries, mostly in the temperate West. And Developing Countries are taken to refer to poor, technologically underdeveloped countries, generally in the tropics and in the East. Now fashionable terms are First World and Third World respectively, the Second World having collapsed; Third Rate for the Third World is implied but not voiced to keep us native peasants happy. But I am uncomfortable with the terms Developed and Developing (formerly these were Underdeveloped Countries but this perjorative term begged more questions than it answered and was softened, as a sop to us peasants, to read Developing.). But the huge question remains; What do Developed and Developing really mean? I recall a story of a peasant in a Third World country relaxing in his hammock while fishing. Comes a tourist from a Developed Country who asks the peasant; What are you doing? the peasant replies; Well, I am relaxing while also fishing. Says the Developed man; Why don’t you buy a motor boat with a powerful engine and you can go deep-sea fishing, you can earn a mint of dollars, and when you are rich you can then sit back and have all the time to relax. The peasant replies; Well, that is just what I am doing now.

Scandinavian countries are said to be Developed Countries. But I read some years ago that human contact is becoming rarer to the extent that Scandinavians have special classes, like Yoga or Meditation Classes which we in poor Lanka attend, where people are taught to touch each other. But it is a very common sight in the villages of our Underdeveloped Country to see female peasants squatting together amicably and at leisure, picking nits from each others heads, while gossiping on the day’s events. Take the article in one of our newspapers last week An Appraisal of politics in the US in relation to Sri Lanka. The author thought it "… worth exploring the real state of affairs beneath the veneer of prosperity" of the alleged Developed Countries; and again the author considered our perpetual grumbling about the awful state of our country – chaotic, corrupt, ill-disciplined and so on; is apparent that undue importance is being attached to the independence of Sri Lanka’s Public Service as the reason for its alleged poor performance". And more pointedly the author states that on our governance or corruption which some of us cry about, "… the situation in Sri Lanka is not as negative as it is made out to be"; the article cites a specific case that "Little or no recognition is given both within Sri Lanka and outside for the remarkable recovery from the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami as compared with the recovery in the US from Hurricane Katrina". I happen to have some parallel statistics on this Act-of-God from a Third World Country (Mumbai in India) and from a First World Country, New Orleans (NO) in the US that was hit by Hurricane Katrina (HK); but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the figures nor can I remember the source:

I read this unbelievable, screaming headline in a Scottish newspaper last year – THE KILLING WARDS, referring to the state of hospitals in Scotland in the UK, a Developed Country. The report also stated: "Despite the billions spent on the National Health Service in Scotland, thousands have died who should have survived had they received the right treatment, writes Mark Macaskill". Our little Sri Lanka, a so-called Third World or Developing Country "….. which is listed as one of the poorest countries in the world can boast a literacy level which surpasses many of the advanced industrialized countries. Its infant mortality rate of 33 per 1000 in (1983, 11.2 in 2005) and life expectancy of 70 years, the common indices of social progress, are among the best in the world" (de Silva 1989, Science & Public Policy, 16(6): 367; a Central Bank report of 1983 quotes the figure as 28/1000). In poor old Lanka where, not billions of pounds but, certainly a lot of state money is spent on providing free health care, Punchiappuhamy from Hindagala can have his sick gall bladder removed in a Lankan state hospital, free of charge, and not die of it, despite an occasional nurses’ or doctors’ strike, or when they strike each other. Compare poor little Sri Lanka with the powerful, rich US: "But the fact that about one-sixth of the American population has no access to high-quality medical care is an astonishing failure in a rich democracy and Obama has travelled enough to see it for the scandal that it is." (Gwynne Dyer. The Island, 10 May, 2008, p7)

Take Bhutan; Michael Palin, whom BBC sent on a sponsored tour of Asia, was all aglow in praise of the land and the Bhutanese. A British friend said it was a beautiful country. A correspondent writing in The Island 29th March wrote " ….the novel Gross National Happiness index formulated by the Bhutanese monarch…." … "Perhaps Bhutan could be a regional forerunner in this true development". Shame on you pedlars of GDP, GNP, PQLI and all that piffle from TDCs. The spectrum developed to developing (whatever they mean) can be seen on a microscale; assuming that Sri Lanka is more ‘developed’ than Bhutan, deforestation was just 30% in Bhutan, while in SL it was over 80%; in Japan it was over 90% while in Hong Kong it was near 100%. So much for being Developed or Underdeveloped. If I have to refer to these two sets of countries I will use the terms Technologically Developed Countries TDC (notwithstanding Bush on his upside-down telephone or avoidable deaths in Scottish Hospitals), and Technologically Underdeveloped Countries TUC respectively.