A post-development theorist claimed that development has failed because of its overbearing tendencies, because the whole concept of development and its practice has become ideological, reflecting Western hegemony over the rest of the world, and because it has wrestled development attempts away from the people in local contexts. This paper is an attempt to examine post-development critique of development and to argue against those who are of the opinion that post development is misguided or that there is no sense in it. It argues that the sense in post-development has to do with its bottom-up approach to development, which pays attention to the tradition of the local societies. The problem, however, is that within the post-development discourse, much attention has not been paid to the specific roles that tradition and cultural values play in the transference of this power to the extent that the society develops in its own terms. This paper attempts to fill this gap by focusing on two elements of tradition, namely, cultural identity and indigenous knowledge and how they can foster the process of development to the extent that local cultural autonomy is not minimised.
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