The quest for sustainable development

Any study/scanning of development is important and at the same time interesting. It is important because in any economy, developed or developing, the scope for further economic and social development is always there through optimal utilisation of resources over a finite time and space. The challenge before the biggies is how to maintain the level of development already reached for ensuring a better life to its citizens and to aid trailers so that the latter can climb upon the development track. For the developing block the challenge is all the more crucial and at the same time difficult especially considering the complexities of the globalisation process.

Newer techniques and innovention [innovation plus invention] process call for continuous searching and unearthing. Thus, the arena is interesting, more so because the process of development today is not well defined nor there exists any short cut routes.

Development is more than improvements in people's well-being: it also describes the capacity of the system to provide the circumstances for continued well-being. Development is a characteristic of the system; sustained improvements in individual well-being are a yardstick by which it is judged. This has important implications for development policy, both for developing countries themselves wishing to put their economy and society onto a path of faster development, and for outsiders who want to help the process.

Especially, as of now the change has been so fast that it has become increasingly difficult to adapt quickly to the ever changing processes where one technology is being fast substituted by another. The orthodox view - considering development as relating to the process of increasing the relative and absolute wealth of LEDCs [least economically developed countries] usually through notions of increased output of either industrial or agricultural goods - has also been under scanner. The modern day economists contend that development of LDCs [least developed countries] to the wealth levels of the richer OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] nations, using extractive production and trading processes similar to those of OECD nations, is untenable because of the ecological and environmental damage which would ensue. New paradigm of development undoubtedly has reasoning and validity considering the reality that has been increasingly there globally.

Who thought that the cheaper flights will be contesting with the railways, sub prime crisis paving the topsy-turvy way to global meltdown, Satyam be under scanner?

In fact development means 'upward drift of the entire social system', as rightly opined by Prof. Samuelson. Truly, development studies as an area calls for an inter-disciplinary and  multi-disciplinary approach where the economic factors are equally important as the non-economic factors so that all of the relevant issues of concern to developing economies in particular are addressed in a wholesome manner - regional studies, demography, economics, anthropology, management and essentially sociology, pedagogy, social policy, migration, human security, philosophy and ethics, international relations, gender issues.

The crucial need remains: to learn lessons of past development experiences of Western countries. Harry S. Trumann rightly stated that 'for the first time in history, humanity possess(ed) the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people'. Time stays, we go out.

Ecological and environmental damage was not there on tea-time discussion table, whereas the same has now been talk of the town.

It has the especial focus on issues related to social and economic development and the relevance goes to communities and regions beyond the developing world. That is one of the foremost reasons why the area is given much of importance by the leading global institutions - the World Bank, United Nations, Asian Development Bank and the like. Non-government Organisations as well as the private consultants have also to borrow a lot from this discipline.

Actually, emergence of development studies as a separate discipline started to rise from second half of the last century, mainly emerging out of concern hovering around economic and social prospects for the trailers [ third world] after decolonization when it was largely felt that economic aspects alone could not fully address the development requirements [viz. educational provisions; political effectiveness] and thereafter it could reasonably assume an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary area of thought. That encompasses variety of social scientific fields. 

Again in today's world a severe shortage is there especially in Asia for skilled personnel who could join the team that shoulders the responsibility of ensuring not only growth but development as well ensuring a balanced regional growth - drifting apart from the incidence of rural exploitation for urban growth. In fact it is the very incidence of regional imbalances that go on keeping the rural counterpart as the depressed corridor. Skilled personnel with a better understanding of the growth-environment can only be the instrument for developing the backward regions and ensure creation of lasting assets as well as the human factor utilization and thus ease social tension, terrorism and destructive politics.

What is more, human security aspects have emerged to be an area where there exists a high degree of correlation between security and development aspects. Clearly, as on this day, inequalities and insecurity in one region have definite direct and indirect bearings on global security and development of the global economy.

Recent happenings - sub-prime crisis, financial crisis, food insecurity, distributional hazards, corruption, and communal disharmonies are hindering the growth process in many ways.

Plan implementation and development financing aspects could be seen from an unconventional angle. Governance aspects, renewed development-oriented-marketing-drive [ in the urban-rural context ], duly taking care of WTO goings, sharing operational experience of 'financial biggies', could be found to be more useful when the country would be entering into the next phase of development vis-à-vis skill shortage.

Able scanning of such an inter-disciplinary area could be put to use effectively in the country's march towards occupying a leading role in the global context via reflecting optimum utilization of human resources in the workable age group, technology, physical, information and financial resources.

Finally, today we are more and more concerned with sustainable development. The term sustainable development appeared in the late 1970s and was definitely consolidated in 1987 the Brundtland Commission. This commission prepared the most broadly accepted definition of sustainable development: sustainable development is a transformation process in which the exploitation of resources, direction of investments, orientation of technological development and institutional changes are reconciled and reinforce present and future potential, in order to attend to needs and future aspirations (...) it is that which attends to present needs without compromising the possibility of future generations attending their own needs (Becker, 1993, p. 49).

It could be said that sustainable development is the development that provides or allows for the condition of the harmonious maintenance of man's well-being (economic, social and political) and the environment (ecosystem and space) to be attained.

Very judiciously, Sachs (2004) made some basic principles of this new developmental vision clear: satisfying basic needs; solidarity with future generations; participation by the population involved; preservation of natural resources and the environment in general; and then, preparation of a social system that guarantees employment, social security and respect for other cultures; and education programmes.

The upshot: development is more than improvements in people's well-being: it also describes the capacity of the system to provide the circumstances for that continued well-being.  Development is a characteristic of the system; sustained improvements in individual well-being are a yardstick by which it is judged. This has important implications for development policy, both for developing countries themselves wishing to put their economy and society onto a path of faster development, and for others who want to help that process.

So, the need has arisen to look at the crucial one from different unbiased age-specific angles.

The writer, a Management Economist, is a Professor at ICFAI University, Tripura, India.

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