<Li> It teaches economic development within the context of a major set of problems, such as poverty, inequality, unemployment, population growth, environmental decay, and rural stagnation . Formal, abstract models and concepts are used to elucidate real - world development problems rather than being presented in isolation from case study illustrations . </Li> <Li> It adopts a problem - and policy - oriented approach to the teaching of development economics on the assumption that a central objective of any development economics course should be the fostering of a student's ability to understand contemporary economic problems of developing countries and to reach independent and informed judgments and policy conclusions about their possible resolution . </Li> <Li> It approaches development problems systematically by following a standard pedagogic procedure with regard to their analysis and exposition . Each chapter begins by stating the general nature of a problem, its principal issues, and how it is manifested empirically in various developing countries . The chapter then presents main goals and possible objectives, the role of economic analysis in illuminating the problem, and some possible policy alternatives and their likely consequences . This approach not only helps students think systematically about major current development issues but, even more important, provides them with a methodology and an operating procedure for analyzing and reaching policy conclusions about other contemporary and future development problems . </Li> <Li> It starts from the premise that it is possible to design and structure a broadly based development economics textbook that simultaneously uses the best available data from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and appropriate theoretical tools to illuminate common developing country problems, although these problems will of course differ in both scope and magnitude when we deal with such diverse countries as India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, and Guatemala . </Li>

What is the meaning of development according to todaro