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What Is Development? - The Multiple Facets and Changing Paradigms

This document discusses different perspectives on what constitutes development. It describes development in terms of economic growth metrics like GDP but also discusses broader human development approaches. It summarizes Amartya Sen's capability approach, which defines development as expanding people's freedoms and abilities to live lives they value. The document also outlines limitations of solely using monetary measures like GDP and advocates considering additional factors like income distribution, environmental impacts, and quality of life.

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Pankaj Singh
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22 views

What Is Development? - The Multiple Facets and Changing Paradigms

This document discusses different perspectives on what constitutes development. It describes development in terms of economic growth metrics like GDP but also discusses broader human development approaches. It summarizes Amartya Sen's capability approach, which defines development as expanding people's freedoms and abilities to live lives they value. The document also outlines limitations of solely using monetary measures like GDP and advocates considering additional factors like income distribution, environmental impacts, and quality of life.

Uploaded by

Pankaj Singh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture topic

What is Development?
– the Multiple Facets and Changing Paradigms

PRMX Course
Measuring Development
(Module: Development Perspectives)

Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan


Institute of Rural Management Anand
Dt. 15 October, 2019
What is development?

• Growth rate; Rise in personal income

• Industrialization; Technological advance

• Access to services; satisfaction of basic needs

• Social modernization

• Freedom; Capabilities

Sen’s capability approach

• Satisfaction/happiness

Bhutan’s GNH
What is development?
Cont...

Daly’s Continuum

It relates natural wealth


to ultimate human
purpose through
‘technology’, ‘economics’,
‘politics’ and ‘ethics’, by
integrating means and
ends
Dally (1973); Meadows (1998)
What is development?
Cont...
Bhutan’s GNH

(CBS, 2012)
Sen’s flute example

• Child A: the only one of the three that knows how to play it.

• Child B: is poor and has no other toy of his own to play with.

• Child C: has been working on the flute for months, so deserve it

Who should get the flute?


and Why???
(Sen, 2006)
real-life decisions

Going back to Sen’s flute example

Changing the flute to scholarship on an infectious disease

Changing the flute to fruit/food

Changing the flute to party ticket in a safe constituency


(Mishra, 2006)
Limitations of monetary measure
Shortcomings of GDP
Treats ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ as same:

Considers only economic value (not social value, not environmental


consequences)
Tobacco and health care – treated same
Power plant – do not take into account environmental consequences
Not account the damage to the assets resulting from pollution

Increases with polluting activities and again cleanups


(pollution: double benefit to the economy)

Crime, divorce, and natural disasters as economic gain


Examples: transportation sector
Limitations of monetary measure
Cont...
Shortcomings of GDP
Depletion of natural capital as income
Example – Income for extracting minerals recorded, but simultaneous
depletion is not.
Misleading signal on sustainable national income
– growth is through liquidation of natural capital:
short run ~ long run
For a natural resource dependent economies, GDP and saving are
overstated.
Limitations of monetary measure
Cont...
Shortcomings of GDP

Ignore non-market activities


Childcare, elder care, other home-based tasks, and volunteer
work in the community go completely non-reckoned
Harvest of firewood or wild foods for own use.

Non-marketed goods provided by ecology – not accounted


(Example: recreation value of forests, forest provides watershed
protection – benefiting agriculture, hydro power, municipal water
system)

Several features which cannot be monetized – beauty of a village.


Limitations of monetary measure
Cont...
Shortcomings of GDP
No account of income distribution:
Average; total

No account of quality of products:


Same economic value – quality of products may change

No account of quality of life:


Leisure
Capabilities

Challenging fundamental notion of GDP


HD; Degrowth
Limitations of monetary measure
Cont...
Challenging fundamental notion of GDP

Human development
Sustainable development
Degrowth
- “the only sustainable growth is degrowth”
- rebound effect

(SCORAI, 2016)
Human development paradigm
Sen’s capability approach
Importance of ‘ends’
related example: Dally’s continuum (Dally, 1973)

Pluralistic understanding of well-being (Sen, 1987)

Another belief which harmonizes with our account is that the happy man
lives well and does well; for we have practically defined happiness as a
sort of good life and good action.
(Aristotle, 350 BC)

“Capabilities are the abilities to do certain things or to achieve desired


states of being. They are empowerment, the power to obtain what you
desire, utilize what you obtain in the way that you desire, and be who you
want to be. Goods, on the other hand, are merely things that you
possess.”
(Stanton, 2007)
Ends and means of development

• Traditional way of looking at development

• HRD

• Human welfare – only beneficiaries

Human development paradigm and


Sen’s capability approach
Ends and means of development
Cont...

• Capabilities and choices


• Development is a process of expanding freedoms (Sen, 1999)

resources capacity actions utility

• Market – only one mechanism


• Income – only one dimension (rich also can be deprived)

Example: income versus energy resource (Halff et al., 2014)


Human development paradigm
Cont…
The Humanist Revolution (Stanton, 2007)
Rawls theory of justice (Rawls, 1971)
social primary goods
“Original position” under veil of ignorance
(No knowledge of future; History has no influence)
Two principles
1. Equal basic liberties
Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate
scheme of equal basic liberties, which is compatible to all

2. Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions


First, positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
Second, they are to be the greatest benefit of least advantage
member of the society: difference principle (maximin rule)
HDI was born of the humanist revolution.
Thank You
Queries and Suggestions

E-mails:
[email protected],
[email protected]

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