The crucial question in realising basic needs strategies concerns the effort to include those areas, peoples and their requirements which tend to be excluded from the existing benefits of growth, and especially from existing distributive programmes. However the achievement of much more inclusive coverage is difficult, partly because of its political implications and partly because of the types of decision‐ making and calculation which would be required. In particular, the effort to provide a state‐guaranteed and inclusive minimum has always under‐rated the institutional and administrative problems of implementation. Concern with the concept of the minimum has a long history in both ideas and policy, revealing a need to solve problems of institutional processes. But these solutions in turn require alternative types of politicisation and control in the programmes themselves. It is not that the choices involved in basic needs strategies are unreal, but rather that they do not advance far in solving long‐standing problems of distribution, decision‐making and the control of institutions.