Development

The idea of development or progress has always been with us. We have aspirations or desires about what we would like to do and how we would like to live. Similarly, we have ideas about what a country should be like. What are the essential things that we require? Can life be better for all? How should people live together? Can there be more equality? Development involves thinking about these questions and about the ways in which we can work towards achieving these goals. This is a complex task and in this chapter we shall make a beginning at understanding development. You will learn more about these issues in greater depth in higher classes. Also, you will find answers to many of these questions not just in economics but also in your course in history and political science. This is because the way we live today is influenced by the past. We can't desire for change without being aware of this. In the same way, it is only through a democratic political process that these hopes and possibilities can be achieved in real life.

Let us try to imagine what development or progress is likely to mean to different persons listed in Table 1.1. What are their aspirations? You will find that some columns are partially filled. Try to complete the table. You can also add any other category of persons.

Having filled Table 1.1, let us now examine it. Do all of these persons have the same notion of development or progress? Most likely not. Each one of them seeks different things. They seek things that are most important for them, i.e., that which can fulfil their aspirations or desires. In fact, at times, two persons or groups of persons may seek things which are conflicting. A girl expects as much freedom and opportunity as her brother, and that he also shares in the household work. Her brother may not like this. Similarly, to get more electricity, industrialists may want more dams. But this may submerge the land and disrupt the lives of people who are displaced – such as tribals. They might resent this and may prefer small check dams or tanks to irrigate their land. So, two things are quite clear: one, different persons can have different developmental goals and two, what may be development for one may not be development for the other. It may even be destructive for the other.

If you go over Table 1.1 again, you will notice one common thing: what people desire are regular work, better wages, and decent price for their crops or other products that they produce. In other words, they want more income.

Besides seeking more income, one way or the other, people also seek things like equal treatment, freedom, security, and respect of others. They resent discrimination. All these are important goals. In fact, in some cases, these may be more important than more income or more consumption because material goods are not all that you need to live.

Money, or material things that one can buy with it, is one factor on which our life depends. But the quality of our life also depends on non-material things mentioned above. If it is not obvious to you, then just think of the role of your friends in your life. You may desire their friendship. Similarly, there are many things that are not easily measured but they mean a lot to our lives. These are often ignored. However, it will be wrong to conclude that what cannot be measured is not important.

Consider another example. If you get a job in a far off place, before accepting it you would try to consider many factors, apart from income, such as facilities for your family, working atmosphere, or opportunity to learn. In another case, a job may give you less pay but may offer regular employment that enhances your sense of security. Another job, however, may offer high pay but no job security and also leave no time for your family. This will reduce your sense of security and freedom. Similarly, for development, people look at a mix of goals. It is true that if women are engaged in paid work, their dignity in the household and society increases. However, it is also the case that if there is respect for women there would be more sharing of housework and a greater acceptance of women working outside. A safe and secure environment may allow more women to take up a variety of jobs or run a business.

Hence, the developmental goals that people have are not only about better income but also about other important things in life.

If, as we have seen above, individuals seek different goals, then their notion of national development is also likely to be different. Discuss among yourselves on what India should do for development.

Most likely, you would find that different students in the class have given different answers to the above question. In fact, you might yourself think of many different answers and not be too sure of any of these. It is very important to keep in mind that different persons could have different as well as conflicting notions of a country's development. However, can all the ideas be considered equally important? Or, if there are conflicts how does one decide? What would be a fair and just path for all? We also have to think whether there is a better way of doing things. Would the idea benefit a large number of people or only a small group? National development means thinking about these questions.

You might ask if development can mean different things, how come some countries are generally called developed and others under-developed? Before we come to this, let us consider another question. When we compare different things, they could have similarities as well as differences. Which aspects do we use to compare them? Let us look at students in the class itself. How do we compare different students? They differ in their height, health, talents and interests. The healthiest student may not be the most studious one. The most intelligent student may not be the friendliest one. So, how do we compare students? The criterion we may use depends on the purpose of comparison. We use different criterion to choose a sports team, a debate team, a music team or a team to organise a picnic. Still, if for some purpose, we have to choose the criterion for the all-round progress of children in the class, how shall we do it?

Usually we take one or more important characteristics of persons and compare them based on these characteristics. Of course, there can be differences about what are important characteristics that should form the basis of comparison: friendliness and spirit of cooperation, creativity or marks secured?

This is true of development too. For comparing countries, their income is considered to be one of the most important attributes. Countries with higher income are more developed than others with less income. This is based on the understanding that more income means more of all things that human beings need. Whatever people like, and should have, they will be able to get with greater income. So, greater income itself is considered to be one important goal.

Now, what is the income of a country? Intuitively, the income of the country is the income of all the residents of the country. This gives us the total income of the country. However, for comparison between countries, total income is not such an useful measure. Since, countries have different populations, comparing total income will not tell us what an average person is likely to earn. Are people in one country better off than others in a different country? Hence, we compare the average income which is the total income of the country divided by its total population. The average income is also called per capita income.

In World Development Reports, brought out by the World Bank, this criterion is used in classifying countries. Countries with per capita income of US$ 63,400 per annum and above in 2023, are called high income or rich countries and those with per capita income of about US$ 2400 or less are called low-income countries. India comes in the category of low middle income countries because its per capita income in 2023 was just about US$10030 per annum. The rich countries, excluding countries of Middle East and certain other small countries, are generally called developed countries.

When we looked at individual aspirations and goals, we found that people not only think of better income but also have goals such as security, respect for others, equal treatment, freedom, etc. in mind. Similarly, when we think of a nation or a region, we may, besides average income, think of other equally important attributes.

INCOME AND OTHER CRITERIA

What could these attributes be? Let us examine this through an example. Table 1.3 gives the per capita income of Haryana, Kerala and Bihar. Actually, these figures are of Per Capita Net State Domestic Product at Current Prices for 2021–22. Let us ignore what this complicated term exactly means. Roughly, we can take it to be the per capita income of the state. We find that of the three, Haryana has the highest per capita income and Bihar is at the bottom. This means that, on an average, a person in Haryana earned Rs 2,64,729 in one year whereas, on an average, a person in Bihar earned only around Rs 47,500. So, if per capita income were to be used as the measure of development, Haryana will be considered the most developed and Bihar the least developed state of the three.

Now, let us look at certain other data pertaining to these states given in Table 1.4. What does this table show? The first column of the table shows that in Kerala, out of 1000 children born, 6 died before completing one year of age but in Haryana the proportion of children dying within one year of birth was 28, which is nearly three times more than that of Kerala. On the other hand, the per capita income of Haryana is more than that of Kerala as shown in Table 1.3.

Just think of how dear you are to your parents, think of how every one is so happy when a child is born. Now, try to think of parents whose children die before they even celebrate their first birthday. How painful it must be to these parents?

Next, note the year to which this data pertains. This was during 2018. So we are not talking of old times; it is 70 years after independence when our metro cities are full of high rise buildings and shopping malls!

The problem does not end with Infant Mortality Rate. The last column of table 1.4 shows that about one-third of the children aged 15–17 years in Bihar are not attending school in secondary classes. This means that if you went to school in Bihar nearly one-third of your class friends would be missing. Those who could have been in school are not there! If this had happened to you, you would not be able to read what you are reading now.

How is it that the average person in Haryana has more income than the average person in Kerala but lags behind in these crucial areas? The reason is — money in your pocket cannot buy all the goods and services that you may need to live well. So, income by itself is not a completely adequate indicator of material goods and services that citizens are able to use. For example, normally, your money cannot buy you a pollution-free environment or ensure that you get unadulterated medicines, unless you can afford to shift to a community that already has all these things. Money may also not be able to protect you from infectious diseases, unless the whole of your community takes preventive steps.

Actually for many of the important things in life the best way, also the cheapest way, is to provide these goods and services collectively. Just think – will it be cheaper to have collective security for the whole locality or for each house to have its own security staff? What if no one, other than you, in your village or locality is interested in studying? Would you be able to study? Not unless your parents could afford to send you to some private school elsewhere. So you are actually able to study because many other children also want to study and because many people believe that the government should open schools and provide other facilities so that all children have a chance to study. Even now, in many areas, children, particularly girls, are not able to go to high school because the government/society has not provided adequate facilities.

Kerala has a low Infant Mortality Rate because it has adequate provision of basic health and educational facilities. Similarly, in some states, the Public Distribution System (PDS) functions well. Health and nutritional status of people of such states is certainly likely to be better. Isn't it surprising that a small country in our neighbourhood, Sri Lanka, is much ahead of India in every respect and a big country like ours has such a low rank in the world? Table 1.6 also shows that though Nepal and Bangladesh have low per capita income than that of India, yet they are better than India in life expectancy. Many improvements have been suggested in calculating HDI and many new components have been added to the Human Development Report but, by pre-fixing Human to Development, it has made it very clear that what is important in development is what is happening to citizens of a country. It is people, their health, their well being, that is most important.

Do you think there are certain other aspects that should be considered in measuring human development?

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT

Once it is realised that even though the level of income is important, yet it is an inadequate measure of the level of development, we begin to think of other criterion. There could be a long list of such criterion but then it would not be so useful. What we need is a small number of the most important things. Health and education indicators, such as the ones we used in comparison of Kerala and Haryana, are among them. Over the past decade or so, health and education indicators have come to be widely used along with income as a measure of development. For instance, Human Development Report published by UNDP compares countries based on the educational levels of the people, their health status and per capita income. It would be interesting to look at certain relevant data regarding India and its neighbours from Human Development Report 2023-24.

Suppose for the present that a particular country is quite developed. We would certainly like this level of development to go up further or at least be maintained for future generations. This is obviously desirable. However, since the second half of the twentieth century, a number of scientists have been warning that the present type, and levels, of development are not sustainable.

"We have not inherited the world from our forefathers — we have borrowed it from our children."

LET'S UNDERSTAND WHY THIS IS SO THROUGH THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES -

Example 1: Groundwater in India

"Recent evidence suggests that the groundwater is under serious threat of overuse in many parts of the country. About 300 districts have reported a water level decline of over 4 metres during the past 20 years. Nearly one-third of the country is overusing their groundwater reserves. In another 25 years, 60 per cent of the country would be doing the same if the present way of using this resource continues. Groundwater overuse is particularly found in the agriculturally prosperous regions of Punjab and Western U.P., hard rock plateau areas of central and south India, some coastal areas and the rapidly growing urban settlements."

(a) Why groundwater is overused?

(b) Can there be development without overuse?

Groundwater is an example of renewable resources. These resources are replenished by nature as in the case of crops and plants. However, even these resources may be overused. For example, in the case of groundwater, if we use more than what is being replenished by rain then we would be overusing this resource. Non-renewable resources are those which will get exhausted after a few years of use. We have a fixed stock on earth which cannot be replenished. We do discover new resources that we did not know of earlier. New sources in this way add to the stock. However, over time, even this will get exhausted.

Example 2: Exhaustion of Natural Resources

Look at the following data for crude oil.

The table gives an estimate of reserves of crude oil (column1). More important, it also tells us for how many years the stock of crude oil will last if people continue to extract it at the present rate. The reserves would last only 50 years more. This is for the world as a whole. However, different countries face different situations. Countries like India depend on importing oil from abroad because they do not have enough stocks of their own. If prices of oil increase this becomes a burden for everyone. There are countries like USA which have low reserves and hence want to secure oil through military or economic power.

The question of sustainability of development raises many fundamentally new issues about the nature and process of development.

(a) Is crude oil essential for the development process in a country? Discuss.

(b) India has to import crude oil. What problems do you anticipate for the country looking at the above situation?

Consequences of environmental degradation do not respect national or state boundaries; this issue is no longer region or nation specific. Our future is linked together. Sustainability of development is comparatively a new area of knowledge in which scientists, economists, philosophers and other social scientists are working together.

In general, the question of development or progress is perennial. At all times as a member of society and as individuals we need to ask where we want to go, what we wish to become and what our goals are. So the debate on development continues.