Misconceived Development
The idea of development stands today like a ruin in the intellectual landscape of the organisations and government departments claiming to work for development - it is an outdated monument to an immodest era. It is high time not only to set about the archaeology of this ruinous idea but also to set our priorities right for genuine development.
Since Harry Truman's inauguration speech to the Congress on January 20, 1949 largest parts of the world are being defined as "underdeveloped areas." The new world view was thus announced: all the people of the earth were to move along the same track and aspire to only one goal - development. And the road to follow lays clearly ahead: "Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace." Clothing self-interest in generosity, Truman and his administration outlined a programme of technical assistance designed to "relieve the suffering of these people" through "industrial activities," and to give them "a higher standard of living."
The idea of defining the world as an economic arena was completely new. For England and France during the colonial period, dominion over their colonies was first of all somewhat like a cultural obligation. It was Lord Lugard who formulated the doctrine of the "double mandate": economic profit was of course desired, but most important was the responsibility to elevate the "coloured races"to a higher level of civilisation. The colonialists came as master to rule over us; they did not camo as planners to push the spiral of supply and demand.
According to Truman's vision, the two commandments of Lugard's double mandate coverage under the imperative of "economic development." A new rod-view had found its succinct definition: the degree of civ8lisation in a country could be measured by the level of its production. There is no longer any reason to limit the domain of development to resources only. From now one, people and whole societies could, or even should, be seen as the object of development.
A Prerequisite for Western Hegemony
To define the economic exploitation of the land and its treasures as "development" was a heritage of the productivist arrogance of the 19th century. Through the trick of a biological metaphor, a simple economic activity turns into a natural and evolutionary process. It is this metaphorical background which permeates the American imperative to develop and allows the universal "developed/underdeveloped" axiom to be transformed into a teleological creed: Societies of the Third World are not seemed as diverse and incomparable possibilities of human living arrangements, but are placed on a single "progressive track," more or less advanced according to the criteria and direction of the hegemonic nations. Such a reinterpretation of global history is not only politically flattering, but also epistemologicaly unavoidable; underdevelopment can only be recognised in looking back from a state of maturity. Development without a predominance is like a race without direction. Therefore, the hegemony of the West was logically included in the proclamation of development. It is no coincidence that the preamble of the UN Charter ("We, the peoples of the United Nations...") echoes the Constitution of the United States ("We, the people of the United States...."). To talk about development means nothing more than projecting the American model of society onto the rest of the world.
Just like the Post Cold War American needs a vision, the post World War - II American needed a vision of a new global order. This need was ideally met by the concept of development which presents the world as a collection of homogenous entities not held together through the political dominion of colonial times, but through economic interdependence. The US could, therefore, establish its hegemony, not through the possession of territories, but through independent countries' openness to economic penetration. The independence process of the ex-colonies was thus encouraged int the hope that they would automatically fall under the wing of the US when they proclaimed themselves to be the subjects of economic development.
Development was the conceptual vehicle which allowed the US to behave as the herald of national self-determination, while at the same time founding a new type of worldwide hegemony, an anti colonial imperialism.
Blind Pursuit
The leaders of the newly founded nations - from Nehru to Nkrumah, Nassar, Qaid-e-Azam - accepted the image that the North had of the South, and internalised it as their self-image. Underdevelopment become the cognitive foundation for the establishment of nations throughout the Third World. Economic development as the primary aim of the state - the mobilisation of the country to increase output without regard to ideological skirmishes - beautifully suited the western concept of the world as an economic arena.
As all types of competition, the development race produced its professional coaching staff. The World Bank sent off the firs of its innumerable mission in July 1949. Upon their return, the experts presented their conclusions: "Short-term and sporadic efforts can hardly improve the overall picture. The vicious circle...can only be broken seriously through a global relaunching of the whole economy, along with education, health and food sectors". Increased production implied nothing less than the overhauling of entire societies. Had there ever existed a more zealous state objective?
From then on, an unprecedented flowering of agencies and administrations, "guide" by numerous theories, burst forth to address all aspects of life - to count, organise, intervene and sacrifice, all in the name of underdevelopment. Traditions, hierarchies, mental habits - the whole texture of the societies - were all dissolved in the planners' mechanistic models. In this way, expert were able to apply the same blue print for institutional reform throughout the world, the outline of which was patterned on the American way of life. There was no longer any question of letting things "mature for centuries," as in the colonial period. After the Second World War, engineers set out to develop whole societies, a job to be accomplished in a few years, or, at most a couple of decades.
A Rude Realisation
In the late sixties, deep cracks began to appear in the edifice of constructed in the name development. The international elite, which had been busy piling one development plan on top of another, knotted its brow. At the ILO and the World Bank, experts realised that growth policies were not succeeding. Poverty increased in the shadow of wealth, unemployment proved resistant to growth, and the food situation could not be helped though steel factories. It became clear that the identification of social progress with economic growth was pure fiction.
In 1973, Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank, summed up the state of affairs: "Despite a decade of unprecedented increase in the gross national product...the poorest segments of the population have received relatively little benefit...The upper 40% of the population typically receive 75% of all income."
The US strategy had failed, but McNamara immediately proclaimed another development strategy with a new target group - rural development and small farmers. The idea of development was not abandoned: indeed, its field of application was enlarged. Similarly, in rapid succession, unemployment, injustice, the eradication of poverty, basic needs, women, and finally the environment, were swiftly lured into problems and became the object of special strategies. The meaning of development exploded, increasingly covering a host of contradictory practices. The development business became self-propelling: whatever the new crisis, a new strategy to resolve it could be devised. Furthermore, the background motive for development slowly shifted. A rising chorus noted that development was not meant to promote growth, but to protect against it. Thus the semantic chaos was complete, the concept torn to shreds.
The Shackle of Development
So, development has become a shapeless, amoeba-like word. But it remains ineradicable because its diffusion appears benign. He who pronounces the word denotes nothing, but claims the best of intentions.
Development as such has no content, but it does possess a function: it allows any intervention to be sanctified in the name of a higher, evolutionary goal. Development always implies that there are lead runners who show the way to latecomers: it suggests that advancement is the result of planned action. Even without having economic growth in mind, when someone talks of development, they evoke notions of universality, progress and feasibility. They show that they are unable to escape American influence.
This heritage is like a shackle. It prevents people - in Michoacan, Gujrat, Yorbaland, Malakand and around the southern hemisphere - from recognising their own right to refuse to classify themselves according to the ahead/backward schema, and their freedom to rejoice in their own diversity and wit. Development always suggests looking at other worlds in terms of what they lack, and obstructs the wealth of possible indigenous alternatives.
The contrary of development, it must be emphasised, is not stagnation. From Gandi's swaraj to Zapata's ejidos, we see that there are striking examples of change in every culture. Distinctions such as backwards/advanced or traditional/modern have in any case become ridiculous given the dead end of progress in the North, from poisoned soils to the greenhouse effect.
Truman and his fellow Americans' vision have thus fallen in the face of history, not because the race was fought unfairly, but because it leads many to the abyss. The idea of development was once a towering monument inspiring international enthusiasm. Today, the structure is in ruins. But ruins which block the path to a viable future. The task, then, is to push the rubble aside and open up new ground.
Targets for real Development
In Pakistan, as the politicians fiddle, though, the country - once South Asia's richest nation measured by income - stagnates, and the state of development is that only one in three Pakistanis can read and the same number don't get enough to eat, by the World Bank's yardstick. One in 10 babies dies as an infant. Life expectancy is 57.7 years. Most alarming to development specialists, population growth is a galloping 3% - adding about 4.2 million people a year. The debt liability has gone up to such an extent that only the interest paid on domestic and foreign debt amounted to Rs. 150.26 billion in 1996-97, which was more than the expenditure of Rs. 127.45billion, allocated for the defence of the poor country in the same year.
Pakistan no longer has fiscal room to manoeuver. As just about every opposition leader delight in reminding the government, almost every rupee collected by the government is used to service old debts or fund the untouchable military. For us the writing is on the wall. No matter how blind we are, the options we had in the past are gone. We are living on the borrowed time and we have to set our priorities regarding development as right as we can. Our development must embrace more than just higher wages or national income. It must also include social improvements such as better health and education, environmental sustainability and greater democratic engagement by people and governments at the local and national level.
We cannot, or must not, reduce development to the sum of just one year's statistics. It is measured by the changes in the lives of billions of people that take place over the course of decades. This new idea can be turned into specific targets that can be used to focus development strategies, evaluate progress and make the government and the donors more accountable. Such targets include the following:
- Working for real reforms for brining social, political and economic equality throughout the country.
- Halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2010, i.e. to bring the number down to 1965 level of 23 million from the current 42 million.
- Extending primary school education to all children.
- Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary school education that penalize young girls.
- Reducing infant and child mortality rates by two-thirds.
- Reversing destructive environmental practices.
- Reducing non-development expenditures to half, including cutting the defence budget to at least 25 per cent from the current more than 60 per cent.
These are ambitious goals. Given the expected increase in Pakistan's population, their success will require that nearly 30 million people be lifted out of poverty to halve the poverty rate from today's rate of 30 per cent. The wealth of comprehensive data provided by Human Development Centre, Islamabad's reported, authored by Dr. Mahboob ul Haq, provides a yardstick to measure progress towards these goals and an analysis of the prospects for achieving them.
Fifty years ago, Pakistan had roughly the same per capita's income as Korea. Today, the average South Korean earns eight times more than the average Pakistani. Also, there have been notable setbacks. In the last two decades, for example, sub-Saharan Africa's primary school enrolment rates have slipped, partially reversing the progress in the years after independence. Can "development" efforts be sustained and even accelerated in countries like Pakistan in order to meet the above-mentioned development targets?
The answer, according to our unstable governments and other indicators, is "may be." It depends on effective and real development strategies. According to Joseph Stiglitz, the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, "if those economic policies that prevailed in 1990 are maintained, then only about half of major developing countries will meet the goal of cutting poverty in half. But if policies are improved, then most major countries will grow quickly enough" to meet their development goals.
If our government ensure that everyone shares in the fruits of growth by investing in improved education, for instance, then the numbers of people rescued from abject poverty would be even greater. Our past experience shows that with corrupt and selfish politicians on top achieving such kind of goals is extremely difficult. However, progress at this stage depends on actively targeting the most needy - the poorest and disadvantaged of the of the poor. This can be a highly controversial process, as it can collide sometimes with entrenched cultural and political barriers.
Of course, cutting down the average terrif and surrendering activities like steel production and telecommunication to private sectors can produce thriving markets, but if we are interested in genuine development, we must focus on our core mission on developing our human resources and social progress which can never be identified with economic growth alone. Never before has there been a greater consensus between sincere scholars and leaders of developing countries on a set of clear goals for development, as we find now after fifty years of confused and dictated strategies for development.
Particularly experience of the last decades and reverberations from the East Asian economic crisis show that the above-mentioned goals are not only vital for development but also attainable if strived for seriously. Recent events in Asia provide a dramatic illustration of how powerfully and swiftly a major economic shock can be translated into a major social crisis. They provide a strong moral argument for ensuring greater attention on social aspect of development. It was not only weaknesses in domestic development policies and regulatory mechanisms that caused the crisis in Asia. The contamination of market processes by politics was also a root cause. The strengthening of democratic and social institutions is thus central to a development model. The key is putting into place more effective social and economic upliftment policies, and the international donor support to sustain them. Only then will the rewards of higher economic growth pay off for millions of people in Pakistan whose lives continue to be blighted by poverty.
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