Phillip Taylor (2007) State attitude towards rural people and ethnic minorities

'... in the government's suite of programs for rural development, the state is responsive to other interests as well: donors such as the Australian and US governments and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, which offer aid conditional on the adoption of market-based policies. There are strong indications that these interests—and those of an increasingly assertive urban middle class—have captured the voice of government, whose approach to rural development today embodies a mix of deference toward universally applicable laws of development and a paternalistic attitude toward rural people. This attitude is especially evident in depictions of rural people in official development reports as poor, backward, remote, unconnected, unaware, and dependent on the state for their uplift. It is most blatantly revealed in official attitudes toward ethnic minorities, including Khmer people..., whose “backward” customs, religious orientations, and cultural insularity are deemed to impede the operation of markets and of state programs, the beneficial effects of which are taken for granted.'

Phillip Taylor (2007) Poor policies, wealthy peasants: alternative trajectories for rural development in Vietnam