Have Growth and Development undone Humanity?

Post Development and an Alternate World Vision

In the past few days there have been almost daily newspaper reports on world rankings in Social Progress, Human Development Index, Investment and Credit rating Agencies’ Upgrades and Downgrades and the like. Following these reports ‘Third World’ countries are sometimes lauded for their achievements and at others berated for their failings in Human Health Indicators, Poverty alleviation efforts, Education disparity or Malnutrition Statistics. As the next logical step, these reports are analyzed to develop Joint Action Plans by Governments and International Aid Agencies with the objective of achieving a universal standard in Human living. It is all very fulfilling to notice governments re-dedicating themselves towards ‘Growth and Development of all Humanity’.

Coming to India, it is often said that if we achieve double digit growth in Gross Domestic Product numbers, we will lift millions of people out poverty and life of destitution. No one can doubt that and definitely anyone who does is very sincerely branded as an anti-national. However, my intention today is not to make a political statement on civil liberties under siege in India but to discuss and challenge the present discourse on Development.

A few months ago, I happen to attend an academic seminar on Development and its Alternatives at the Nehru Memorial Museum a

nd Library, here in Delhi.  The seminar did two things for me, first it made me look deeper into Development theory from a sociological and economic point of view second, I could add a structure to my nebulous ideas on inequality and neo-liberal imperialism. Let us start by tracing the idea of Development and how it evolved over the years to become the central theme for all Humanity.

The technological and social advancement made in the West after the Second World War, introduced a new thought about global disparity and how it was a responsibility of the Developed Nations of Europe and America to help the Third World Asian and African nations to realize their full potential for Growth and Development. It was none other than American President Harry Truman who during his inaugural address on January 20, 1949 gave body to this ‘Development’ centric notion of the world.

“We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people.The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.”

With Truman’s noble intention and a grand vision for the world, the third world was to be turned into America. With its modern education, industry, knowledge and society America was the paragon of development which everyone else was to emulate. This is what anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls a ‘Uni-verse’ vision, in this conception the ethics, knowledge, philosophy and way of life of all traditions is considered inferior and incomplete vis. a vis. the Western model of development. This doctrine for development is put in words by a report brought out by United Nations “for the economic development of underdeveloped countries,” as follows

“There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scraped: old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of cast, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress.”(United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs [1951])

With the history in context, it wouldn’t be misplaced to say that the development as we see today has miserably failed, in other words this battle against backwardness of the Third World has been nothing but pyrrhic. The very fact that today we see increased thrust of ‘Sustainable Development’ itself explains the flaws in a consumerist development order. In China for instance, a recent BBC documentary ‘Under the Dome’ cites data that shows Beijing is under a cloud of harmful pollutants for as much as 2/3^rd of total days in a year. Displacement of people for mega projects have led to complete washout of traditional knowledge and cultures. Large tracts of forests have been destroyed in the tropics to meet the development demands of the world. In the occidental vision, nature is considered as an infinite resource that is meant to be consumed quite contrary to its role as a living being as believed by a wide array of local cultures from India to Latin America.  More and more languages and local cultures are at the brink of extinction as we chase the vision of a ‘Uni-Verse’.

The present concept of development takes the one size fits all to solve problems of people all over the world. This model while bringing fruits of development to some condemns many to life of destitution. For instance, a researcher recently recounted the story of development and self perception of a community in India’s Ladakh region. When 20 years ago people were asked to point the the poorest household in the village, they had responded that no one was poor in their community. When the same question was asked to the people recently, they begged for development aid citing the backwardness of their community. This example amply illustrates that communities had no notion of poverty or even if they did, their situation was worsened by development.

Stories such as these make us think, whether we need alternate forms of development or maybe an alternative to development itself. Such an idea, at first is difficult to accept, for be it communism or capitalism, development and growth have occupied the central space, it is only the means to achieve them that have differed in both ideologies. While one takes a redistributive and social welfare approach, the other believes in the fairness of markets to take care of interests of all. However, the notion of Post Development appears more palatable when we align it with the concept of a ‘pluri-verse’ and ‘planeterization’ in contrast to ‘uni-verse’ and ‘globalization’. 

In the next blog, I shall be exploring the following questions about Alternatives to Development? Where are they to be found? Do local epistemologies have some answers to this? And will definitely talk about examples of Post-Development in Latin American countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Columbia.