A few years ago, Asoka Mehta, then Deputy Chairman of India's Planning Commission, listened patiently to my enthusiastic discourse on the value of empirical research in the social sciences to better identify India's problems and thus speed up the process of their solution. He signed urgent red-flagged files as I talked, and interrupted occasionally to telephone a request or to take a message. Clerks in the interim regularly deposited new files on his mammoth desk. I sensed that a Commission meeting-or some meeting-was to be held soon because of Mehta's repeated glances at the office clock. My final example outlined the latest research results on municipal government in Hyderabad, complete with statistics proving the unresponsiveness of the system. My host moved to a lounge chair, stroked his beard, looked at the wall, and told me, in effect, to shut up. Park, he said, leaders in developing countries have before them two alphabets of absolutely essential tasks to perform. They cannot, in all rationality and humanity, omit any of these items from high priority, and pressures are powerful in support of each requirement. Our human and financial resources, however, permit us to deal with ten or so of the 52 now, and to give a superficial, politically useful, lick-and-a-promise to ten more. An alphabet plus of tasks we ignore, and failure is almost certain for most of the ten we are underfunding or otherwise neglecting. When you social scientists can help us to select the tough priorities that are involved in the development process, let me know. And don't forget that this is a federal, democratic republic, and that I am a politician with elections to look out for. We also are aware of all the problems you can unearth and we could direct you to a few hundred more of which you have never heard. We are as good at problem-identifying as you are, perhaps better. It takes genius to solve our problems and we have tried, in all due modesty, to exercise as much of that quality as we can muster. I like social scientists. With historians and archaeologists, they make good bedside reading on yesterday's issues. You will excuse me. A dam has burst somewhere. That, at least, is how I remember a lesson on relevance taught by one who knows. Most of the literature on modernization and political development is academically brave and fresh, but it is not of much help to those charged with building new political orders. The abstracting of concrete