Changing Concept of Development PDF

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CLASS ASSIGNMENT Q) Write an essay on changing concept of development. Ans.- DEVELOPMENT FOR ALL The study of development is a complex concept and there does not exist a single definition for defining the concept. In common parlance, development describes a process through which the potentialities of an object or organism are released, until it reaches its natural, complete, full-fledged form. Development can be defined as the attempt to reduce poverty and world inequalities in an effort to guide the world to a situation of betterment and improvement over time. According to The Rough Guide to a Better World, “International development is the journey the world must take in order for poor countries to become prosperous countries.” The definition suggests that development involves making sure people have the basic things they need, like food, housing, schools, health care and jobs. It also emphasises on freeing people from the grip of poverty as a vital task of development. It is overcoming the divide between developed and developing countries by removing inequality. From the point of view of the state, development is a process of growth, expansion or realisation of potential, bringing regional resources into full productive use. Developmental planning mans any action by the state whose purpose is to raise the rate of economic growth, above that which would take place without any conscious effort. Development planning has a dual purpose of economic growth and social structural change. CHANGING MEANING OF DEVELOPMENT The origins of development are often traced back to the arrival of development economics in the post-war era. The late 1940s and early 1950s witnessed a rapid expansion in development economics, as the concepts, methods and tools of mainstream economics were applied to the problems of post-war reconstruction and development in Europe. It has been argued that this era was launched on January 20, 1949, when Harry S. Truman made these remarks in his inaugural speech after his re-election; the famous Point Four Program was presented. The last of his four points concerned the developing world and promoted a substantial increase in international development assistance. Truman concluded:

“We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial process available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism- exploitation of foreign profit- as no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of Development based on the concept of democratic fair dealing.” -

Harry

S.

Truman,

1949Trueman was encouraging the ‘under-developed’ nations to turn to the USA and the West generally for long term assistance, rather than to the socialist world or ‘East’ based on Moscow and the USSR. The genesis of such modern theory and practice lay in the period between 1945 and 1955 which is referred to as the period of high modernism. During the 1970s, economic development came to be redefined in terms of the reduction or elimination of poverty, inequality and unemployment within the context of a growing economy. Redistribution of growth became a common slogan. Dudley Seers posed the basic question about the meaning of development, this is

What has been happening to poverty.

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What has been happening to unemployment.

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What has been happening to inequality?

If all three of these have declined from high levels, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned. If one or two of these problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would be strange to call the resulting development even if per capita income doubled. The modern notion of development had a long history. Enlightenment values were combined with nineteenth century humanism to justify the new trusteeship of the neo-colonial mission. WIDER DEFINITIONS Classical economic-inspired approaches thus dominated development thinking in the 1940s and 1950s, based on concepts such as modernization theory, and top-down development. Little changed until the 1960s when, in the wake of the Vietnam War and several other developments, radical dependency approaches were advanced. The approach argued that the development of the West had acted as an inhibitor of development in the emerging developing world. The 1970s then witnessed another counter movement, one that argued that development should be based on local resources rather than economic efficiency – giving rise

to development from below, rural-based development, and eco-development which later turned to sustainable development. In 1970’s and 80’s, a whole series of social indicators of development appeared, including those relating to health, education and nutrition. Eventually, such social indicators were broadened to incorporate measures of environmental, quality, politics, human rights and gender equality. This concept was explored by Amartya Sen (1999) in his “Development as Freedom”. The need for an understanding of the multidimensional nature of development was outlined by Goulet (1971) in his book, “The Cruel Choice: A New Concept on the Theory of Development”. In this he recognized three components of development, these broadly equating with the economic, followed by personal and wider societal freedoms: 

Life sustenance – concerned with the provision of basic needs.

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Self-esteem – is concerned with the feelings of self-respect and independence.

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Freedom – refers to the ability of people to choose their path.

AMARTAYA SEN’S CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT The Capability Approach was first articulated by the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen in the 1980s and remains most closely associated with him. It has been employed extensively in the context of human development. The core characteristic of the capability approach is its focus on what people are effectively able to do and to be, that is, on their capabilities. In capability approach, development is seen as a process of enhancing people’s capabilities by expanding their real freedoms. The capability to function effectively is what matters the most and it goes well beyond availability of commodities. Here ‘poverty’ is understood as deprivation in the capability to live a good life, and ‘development’ is understood as capability expansion. Core Concepts and Structure of Sen’s Capability Approach The Capability Approach focuses directly on the quality of life that individuals can achieve. This quality of life is analysed in terms of the core concepts of ‘functioning’ and ‘capability’.

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Functionality: Functioning is a state of ‘being and doing’ such as being wellnourished, having shelter, working, resting, being literate, being healthy, being part of a community, being respected, and so forth.

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Capability: Capability refers to the set of valuable functioning’s that a person has effective access to. Thus, a person’s capability represents the effective freedom of an individual to choose between different functioning combinations – between different kinds of life – that she has reason to value.

An individual’s capability set is the set of valuable functioning that an individual has real access to. Achieved functioning are those they select. For example, an individual’s capability set may include access to different functioning relating to mobility, such as walking, bicycling, taking a public bus, and so on. The functioning they select to get to work may be the public bus. The Capability Approach can be used to examine the underlying determinants of the relationship between people and commodities. It means that one can’t measure development only based on the availability of commodities Individual physiology, such as the variations associated with illnesses, disability, age, and gender. To achieve the same functioning, people may have needs for non-standard commodities – such as prosthetics for a disability – or they may need more of the standard commodities – such as additional food in the case of intestinal parasites. Note that some of these disadvantages, such as blindness, may not be fully ‘correctable’ even with tailored assistance. Local environment diversities, such as climate, epidemiology, and pollution. These can impose particular costs such as more or less expensive heating or clothing requirements. Variations in social conditions, such as the provision of public services such as education and security, and the nature of community relationships, such as across class or ethnic divisions. Differences in relational perspectives. Conventions and customs determine the commodity requirements of expected standards of behaviour and consumption, so that relative income poverty in a rich community may translate into absolute poverty in the space of capability. For example, local requirements of ‘the ability to appear in public without shame’ in terms of acceptable clothing may vary widely.

Distribution within the family – distributional rules within a family determining, for example, the allocation of food and healthcare between children and adults, males and females. DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM According to Amartya Sen, freedom is the primary goal of development; freedom is also the principal means of development. It is “the enhancement of freedoms that allow people to lead lives that they have reason to live”. Hence “development requires the removal of major sources of un-freedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systemic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over activity of repressive states”. According to Sen, development is enhanced by democracy and the protection of human rights. Such rights, especially freedom of the press, speech, assembly, and so forth increase the likelihood of honest, clean, good government. INSTRUMENTS TO FREEDOM In his book Development as Freedom, Sen prescribed five types of freedoms that “tend to contribute to the general capability of a person to live more freely.” They are interdependent and interconnected. Indeed, these interconnections are central to a fuller understanding of the instrumental role of freedom. These freedoms arePolitical Freedoms: They essentially include functioning democracy, freedom to scrutinize and criticize actions of authorities, freedom and expression and speech, presence of the free press. Economic Facilities: such as People’s opportunity to have and use economic resources or entitlements. E.g. people’s opportunity to have and use economic resources for purpose of consumption, production or exchange. Social opportunities: They include people’s ability to access health and education services, opportunities to participate in social processes and activities. E.g. people’s ability to have health care, to be educated. Illiteracy –a barrier to take part in modern economy and in political life.

Transparency guarantees: This concerns transparency in the functioning of authorities so that people can trust the information they receive and the system. E.g. the ability to trust others and to know that the information one receives is clear and honestly disclosed. Protective Security: This pertains to social protections of the vulnerable people so that they don’t fall into abject deprivation. E.g. social protections for vulnerable people that prevents abject deprivation. Expanding these freedoms constitute not only the means but also the end in development. The state must play its role in supporting freedoms by providing infrastructure and easy access to public services, social safety nets, good macroeconomic policies, and environmental protection. MEASURING DEVELOPMENT In the 1950’s through the early 1980’s development was measured by economic growth and the growth of production and income. In the 1980’s and 1990’s changes in the way development was being envisioned were directly recognized in the promotion of wider indices of human development and change. This trend towards recognizing the multidimensional nature of development was continued from the 1990’s to the early 21st century. Wider approaches were being used later reflecting more subjecting and qualitative dimensions of development. Three approaches are discussed below: 1. Measuring Development as Economic Growth: GDP and GNP per capita: this approach uses ‘income’ per head of the population as a measure of a development. The approach sees development as being essentially the same thing as economic development. During the era of uni-linear development models and theories, the growth of GDP/GNP was taken as the surrogate measure of development. The GND/GNP of a territory is directly affected both by the number of people working within a country and their overall level of productivity. 

Gross Domestic Productive (GDP) per capita- measures the value of all goods and services produced by a nation or a territory, weather by nation or foreign companies.

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Gross National Product (GNP) per capita: This is Gross Domestic Product to which net income derived from overseas is added. In other words,

income which is generated abroad is added and payments made overseas are subtracted. This approach employee the basic cause of poverty id due to low productivity labour that is associated with low levels of physical capital and human capital accumulation and low levels of technology. 2. Measuring Development as Human Development: the HDI: In the 1980’s, it was increasingly recognised that non-economic factors are involved in the process of development. In 1989, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) promoted the Human Development Index (HDI) as a wider measure of development. HDI data was published for the first time in 1990. There was still a measure of economic standing but this was only one of three principal dimensions identified: 

A long and healthy life- originally measured by life expectancy at birth in years.

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Education and knowledge- initially measured by adult literacy rate and the gross enrolment ratio.

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A decent standard of living- originally measured by Gross Domestic Product per capital in US dollars.

In 2010, HDI translated their 3 dimensional indicators into 4 and the measures are transformed into an index ranging from 0 to 1. The HDI has been used to divide nations into high, middle and low level of human development and later very high development category was introduced. Over the years various methodological refinements have been tried by the United Nations, including Human Poverty Indices 1 and 2, the Gender related Development Index Gender Empowerment Measure and Multidimensional Poverty Index. In 2010 Gender Inequality Index (GII) was introduced, looking at disparities existing between males and females. 3. Measuring Development in Wider Terms including Human Rights and Freedom: This approach was more subjective and qualitative in nature. Views of Goulet (1971) and Sen (1999) on self-esteem and freedom represents specific recognition that wider aspects are vital, particularly related to the quality of people’s lives, their freedom from various inequalities and the attainment of human rights and basic freedoms. The Millennium Development Goals are such

indicators, that can be employed in order to assess the progress of nations and regions towards the goals and targets, and represents the measures of the wider dimensions of development, covering issues such as

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

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Achieving universal primary education

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Promoting gender equality and empowering education

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Promoting gender equality and empowering women

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Reducing child mortality

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Improving maternal welfare

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Combating diseases....