Breaking the vicious circle of distrust and underdevelopment in context of creative economy: The case of Pakistan

In developing countries, the experiences of government-led development through heavy loans and grants from international donors have added to records of failure because of centralized system of plan formulation and its implementation through complex bureaucratic structure of government agencies. Realizing the inevitability of active participation of the local communities, the international donor agencies persuaded the governments in developing countries for transforming from traditional top down and centralized approach of delivered development to participatory development. However, in the name of participatory development, huge amount of hard capital has been extensively used for the creation of physical infrastructure whereas the formation of human capital and social capital has been generally ignored. The failure of top down and centralized approach of plan formulation and its implementation through heavy investment on physical capital without considering the formation of human and social capital has now been well recognized by development planners. Social capital facilitates human actions for collective efforts and increase efficiency of human capital, which eventually contributes to the efficient utilization of hard capital. Trust, as a social capital is now attracting attentions from researchers and practitioners.