Understanding Development

What is development?

Development is an end but is also a means to that end. It is a gradual process over a long period of time attaining intermediate goals in small and wide spaces before reaching an ideal situation. The notion of development signifies a move from an unsatisfactory social, economic, and political condition to one that is more humane, relatively prosperous, environmentally safer, and politically more inclusive. However, "development" remains a contested, elusive, and slippery concept. Its meaning is ambiguous and is variously interpreted. The manner in which those interpretations are acted upon can have deep impact on individuals, societies, and nations.

Development is also a relative concept, is culture bound, and therefore is expressive of the unique settings in which it takes place. Its understanding requires deep analyses of what it should incorporate as its goals and values, guiding principles, and strategic directions. However, the contextuality of development does not insulate a society from being impregnated with ideas from other cultures. Inevitably, in today's globalized world, cross-fertilization of ideas on progress and development is inevitable and quite desirable as this can enrich understanding of development from a cross-cultural perspective and help in the design of holistic and integrated development policies and plans and implementation strategies. Thereby, gaps in the process of development can be bridged. Success stories of a variety of development initiatives from any nation, any society, any cultural setting provide lessons for emulation.

Development is equated with a number of phenomena such as change, progress, growth, modernization, industrialization, advancement, improvement, expansion, realization of capabilities, structural differentiation, environmental sustainability, and many more. Each of these phenomena makes our understanding of development more complex and challenging. It can be viewed from several perspectives, each with different attributes, orientations, ramifications, and implications

Development as a Normative Concept

Development has normative influences and therefore is value laden. It cannot be considered only in conventional "economic growth" terms and is not only about acquiring material gains or reaching certain quantifiable standards, such as rate of growth, investments, industrial productivity, and so on. Development is also about qualitative change in the lives of the people. What is good or bad for society, and hence the people, should be at the center of development thinking and ought to be reflected in national and international development policies.,

Development is above all a question of values and human attitudes, self-defined goals, and criteria for determining what are tolerable costs to be borne in the course of change. Ethical judgements regarding the good life, the just society, and the quality of relations among people and with nature always serve, explicitly or implicitly, as operational criteria for development planners and researchers.

As development is about human existence and enrichment, ethical or value-laden judgments become significant while making decisions about development. It brings about societal change and deals with such issues as social justice, basic needs, equality, equity, rights and liberties, and democracy and freedom. Economic growth can serve as a means toward human well-being and the rearing of human functioning and capabilities—as goals of development. Taking cues from Sen's ideas, it is suggested that "the process of international and national development [is] the expansion of basic human capabilities and the promotion of valuable human functioning." Personal choices and preferences of stakeholders, individuals or groups, state or nonstate, and those who plan development strategies or are affected by them come into play. Thus, development with people at the center is laden with ethical matters and is concerned with actions that are expected to have a human touch. The mission of development ethics, is to assure that the painful changes launched under the banner of development do not result in antidevelopment, which destroys cultures and individuals and exacts undue sacrifices in suffering and societal well-being—all in the name of profit, some absolutized ideology, or a supposed efficiency imperative.

Development as a Multidimensional Concept

The idea of development has undergone a radical transformation since the 1950s when the economic focus had primacy. The unidimensionality of development has been replaced by a multidimensional framework. The measures have changed, and development is now an aggregation of multiple goals and functions that go beyond economic considerations. Of course, the economic dimension still retains its core place for creating and sustaining wealth through economic policies that are directed at capital formation and apparently reducing poverty. Economic policy goals include improving growth rates, industrialization, employing import substitution measures, promoting savings and investment, raising income levels, creating employment, distributing income, agricultural modernization, setting up export-oriented ventures, building infrastructures, technological progress, utilizing external aid, and so on. Such strategies of "capital fundamentalism" were expected to achieve a "trickle-down" effect that would relieve societies from poverty and improve economic well-being .

The multidimensional aspect of development has been emphatically advanced by United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and many other scholars and organizations. Growth-oriented development has been complemented by measures to enhance the total well-being of a society and its people. Thus, the social dimension has been added that caters for their needs in health care, education, housing, social safety, and so on. Expanding social choices have become imperative and so are the opportunities for social action.

Culturally, development is about conferring self-esteem to individuals—making them feel included in society's divergent pursuits, believing in themselves, their worth and capabilities, and aspiring to obtain an identity of their own and earning recognition, respect, and honor in life. The focus on creating a balance in the natural ecosystem provides development with the ecological dimension. Thus, protecting and sustaining the environment for the present and the future is now integrated within the framework of integrated holistic development. From a political perspective, development is seen as promoting and nurturing liberties and freedom, empowering people, and giving them the voice they deserve. Participatory development creates opportunities for enabling civil society to play creative roles in alleviating poverty, engendering social roles, creating networks, and building social capital. Some of these provide development with a spiritual dimension—"a focus on individuals' redemptive, inter-transformational changes that may produce renewed individuals who are socially accountable to both current and future generations". These inter-connected elements encapsulate the multidimensional character of development that places the people at the center of the phenomenon.

The economic dimension has been enmeshed into the human dimension and "brings together the production and distribution of commodities and the expansion and use of human capabilities. UNDP has envisaged Three Objectives of Development:

1. To increase the availability and widen the distribution of self-sustaining goods such as food, shelter, health, and protection.

2.  To raise levels of living, including, in addition to higher incomes, the provision of more jobs, better education, and greater attention to cultural and human values, all of which will serve not only to enhance material well-being but also to generate greater individual and national self-esteem.

3.       To expand the range of economic and social choices available to individuals and nations by freeing them from servitude and dependence not only in relation to other people and nation-states but also to the forces of ignorance and human misery.