the concept of development is widely used in our day to day life as well as in the literature.

In its
day to day use, the concept of development is nothing new, the meaning and perception of
development are continuously changing. for example, if getting electricity was termed as
development earlier maybe getting satellite TV connection and internet connection is what you
call development now. so there is no single definition of the term development and more
interestingly it can vary from place to place, time to time, and even individual to individual. so
development is a complex phenomenon comprising many dimensions. it is not only about the
economic development it is also about social development, political development and also in
administrative development.

if you ask the economists they will say that per capita income and GDP growths are the two
major aspects of development but if you ask the political scientists they will say political
freedom and freedom of speech and expressions are the most important aspects of development
but for the students and experts of development studies per capita income and the assurance of
basic necessities of life and also the freedom of speech and expression are equally important for
development.

If we look into some of the definitions given by the scholars the first one is from Gunnar Myrdal
as it says "development means the process away from underdevelopment of rising out of
poverty". so going away from underdevelopment and poverty is what we can call the
development and there is another famous quote by E. W. Weidener as it says "development is a
state of mind, a direction rather than a fixed goal. It is a rate of change in a particular direction".

if we focus on four aspects of development and you can add even more ideas to base. so in
economic development, you have national income, you have poverty reduction. may have more
equitable distribution of wealth and income. in the political aspect you have to develop the
political system to deal with its own fundamental problems and it should be more responsive to
the changing political demands of the people. in terms of Social Development, it focuses more
on bringing improvement in people's social life by providing health, education,

housing and cultural amenities. administrative development is more about the development of
the administration which is responsible for delivering development so you have to develop the
administration and also the administration should deliver the development projects. so this is
how this all is related.

by far you must have understood that the concept of development is not to mix up with the use of
this word in the name of the construction and real estate companies, rather in a broader sense
construction of physical infrastructure is just one part of development. when there are multiple
other dimensions of it as you have seen so in its essence the idea of development is a lot more
than what we use it in our day-to-day life.

now moving to the academic use of development in the social sciences and particularly in
Development Studies discipline we can see the development is a contested term the development
experts often say that the idea of development has its contemporary route in the post Second
World War era. but the early conception of development was actually promoted by the Western
industrial nations in as early as the 19th century. the idea first used by the Western industrialized
nations was a top-down approach and to some extent, the idea was demeaning for the countries
of the global south in Asia, Africa and Latin America. the early conceptualisation of the idea of
development posits that the then developed countries of Western European nations are in a
master role to dominate and civilize the less developed countries in the Asian and African
regions. the Western European countries did all the colonization activities in the name of
development and in the name of promoting civilization and even famous experts like Cowen and
Shenton in their articles have boldly traced the origin of modern development doctrine back to
the writings of the Sumerians and more spatially of August both as we know as a famous
political scientist in the writing as early as the 1820s. however, this colonial root of the idea of
development is often ignored in contemporary development studies. Uma Kothari in 2005 book
argued that many of the contemporary development studies experts distance themselves from the
negativity related with colonialism and instead they present a truncated version of history that the
idea of development almost starts from the 1950s or late 1940s in all the development literature.
in popular development literature, the term development gained mass popularity in the change
global reality after the Second World War with subsequent decolonization process of the
colonized countries. the development planning became central to the policymaking in the newly
independent countries and as the Bretton Woods institutions as we know the World Bank and
IMF are called Bretton Woods institutions, so by 1950s these institutions rose to prominence for
helping the less developed countries in devising and financing the development projects and
planning.

The idea of development in the 1950s was predominantly centred on economic growth.
development was perceived as economic growth later on the growth-centric development was
heavily criticized for its failure in bringing prosperity in the life of the masses while a small
portion of the society continued to gain wealth and there was a huge inequality between the rich
and the poor people. and that's why most of the development experts who viewed this idea very
critically they say that the development is not a nice concept and rather it's a Western instrument
to exert influence in the less developed countries mainly in economic and political interests in
the name of development.

As the development planning in the 1950s and 60s failed to deliver what it promised. the idea
itself evolved to incorporate other social and environmental aspects rather than only its focus on
the economic one. the first major change in the mainstream understanding of development
occurred when United Nations Development Programme or officially known as UNDP
acknowledged that there is the importance of other aspects like life expectancy and literacy along
with the economic development idea, in measuring human development in 1990. broadening the
idea of development to human development was the first step in defining development in a new
way in a little bit comprehensive way but the idea still had limitations as it was unable to
incorporate political and cultural aspects in the idea of human development. at around the same
time when the first UN Human Development Report came out in 1990, the UN also organized
the first Earth Summit which is also known as Rio summit in 1992 and responded to the growing
concern regarding the ecological crisis and the environmental crisis and the necessity to address
the environmental issues in the contemporary development discourses. it's important to note that
the idea of sustainable development first came out in the "our common future" report by
Brundtland Commission in 1987 but the idea came into prominence with the "Rio Earth" summit
and we got the most cited definition of sustainable development from "our common future"
report as it states that "sustainable development is a kind of development that meets the needs of
the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs" .so it focuses more on the intergenerational ability to meet their needs given the limited
natural resources available while the idea of sustainable development has been often acclaimed
politically on the other hand academicians and researchers have criticized the all-embracing
nature of the concept as it puts the contradictory idea of environmental sustainability and
economic growth in the same basket and not giving specific direction on how the environmental
sustainability can be ensured while also achieving the economic growth. and as we have seen
from 1992 to 2018 the idea of sustainable development has come a long way to dominate the
global development discourses as now sustainable development goals have become a global
pledge for all the countries. so coming from a very much growth-centric idea of development
towards a new idea of human development and then a broader idea of sustainable development
has defined the development discourses through the second half of the 20th century and the first
two decades of the 21st century