The role of anthropology and anthropologists in relation to interventions for social change has been an issue of debate since the time of Malinowski. Anthropologists’ cooperation with the colonial administrations during the colonial era has been severely criticized. Furthermore, in relation to the increasing involvement of anthropologists in project implementation in the post-colonial period, opinions have been highly ambivalent. Whereas proponents of other social sciences seem to move ahead without much ado about their own role in the world of planned development, there has been much hesitance and remorsefulness within the anthropological community about the role of anthropology in this respect. In the present paper, the author draws from his experiences both as an external anthropological observer of development interventions and as participant in various development programmes. The anthropological ambivalence to applied anthropology is discussed in the paper and some threads of thought for further reflections are identified.