Time to re-think our 'development' paradigm?

THE world's literature on development talks overwhelmingly about economic growth. Writers Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs are well known for their liberal ideologies and pro-development bent. In "One Economics, Many Recipes," Rodrik points out the need for developing countries to shape their own policies and develop their institutions. In "The End of Poverty," Sachs talks about how the world has the capacity to bring all the countries on to the path to development, and to help the extreme poor to step on the first rung of the ladder of economic development.
Both of them are probably correct in their own approaches. It is true that developing countries today do not get freedom to shape their policies. It is true that the Washington Consensus failed miserably to help countries like Argentina, who followed it like a Bible, grow. Indeed, the true success stories of the last few decades -- China, India, Vietnam and other East Asian countries -- grew so fast only with the help of home-made policies that starkly deviated from the consensus. Rodrik is therefore right in vying for more sovereignty of developing countries, and in trying to shift the focus of western powers and their surrogate organisations to development from just trade maximisation.
It is also true that economic growth does mean that first step towards development. When people are dying in their millions from curable diseases and chronic hunger, when so many do not have access to safe water or sanitation, or even a roof above their heads -- as Sachs brilliantly depicts from first-hand experience -- any other priorities seem beside the point.
In the recent IUCN World Conservation Congress, Prof. Joan Martinez Alier, professor of economics and economic history at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, said exactly this: "Below a certain income level well-being is dependent on economic growth."
However, despite all of this being true, Prof. Alier mentioned one more thing that seems missing in the global development doctrine today. He added: "Happiness is not necessarily a function of economic growth, above a certain level of income."
Completely ignoring this important point, the current debate seems to revolve around what is the better route to economic growth, most often measured by a notoriously narrow indicator called GDP growth rate, than how to achieve "development" in a broader sense. Economic growth is deemed synonymous to development, and that is where I find a frustrating tendency to view the world through a very narrow lens. Of course there has been a gradually increasing focus on a more holistic "human development," especially on the index -- HDI -- developed by UNDP. But even that, I feel, only measures some important prerequisites to the real "human development" I am envisioning in this article.
If we look at a large majority of today's "developed" countries, the first thing we will notice is wealth, and sometimes even extravagance. It is an endless cycle of production and consumption, competing with each other and increasing exponentially, often at the cost of "less important" issues such as the environment and human rights. Nike sneakers are sold at a magnificent three-storied store on 5th Ave, bearing no mark of the poor Vietnamese child who made it with her own hands in dire working conditions, or the despoiled river flowing by the industry which tanned the leather.
This ever-increasing prominence of consumerism has one more casualty, more tragic than the river or the child. That is mankind's shift in priority from spiritual to material wealth.
Some wise person (I forgot who) once said: "The East turns material things into spirit, and the West turns spiritual things into matter." That was indeed so in the past. India, China, and the Middle East of the ancient past were known more for their great philosophers and scientists than their material wealth. The West only became the thinkers of the world very recently. And in the US, even the so-called "knowledge-based society" was developed not as an end in itself, but only because it was perceived to be necessary to sustain the capitalist society and maintain global dominance. The irony behind this knowledge-based society called the United States is pitiful. The vast majority of the American population are kept uninformed and shallow, a vast army of guinea-pigs who need to be sustained as voracious consumers only so that more and more can be produced!
The sad thing is -- the East has followed suit. India and China are gearing themselves for a spiraling race (to the bottom) to become economic giants. In the process, they are selling the spiritual character that so long defined eastern civilisations, and becoming nothing more than Wannabe Westerners. To many (if not most) Indians and Chinese, and indeed Bangladeshis, the definition of success in life is now the tantalising luxuries seen on prime-time television and lifestyle magazines.
Is that the path we want to follow? Do the less developed countries, many of which were well known throughout history for the enlightenment of their ancient civilisations, need to calibrate their success by registering a 5%+ growth rate, year after year? Do they need to whet the appetite of the West's consumerism, and become instruments and partners of their capitalist machinery?
The answer is very simple -- No! It is still not too late to take a step back from the global paradigm that economic growth is the means and the end. Even in the West, think-tanks like the New Economics Foundation (based in UK) are striving for a new economics which redefines "wealth to focus on increased well-being and environmental sustainability rather than on just having and consuming more things."
Instead of blindly following the dirty and unsustainable path others have trod before us, we therefore have a choice to create our own different route to development so that yet others can follow. Our imperative to pursue economic growth and higher rankings in Human Development Reports should only be as a means to assure every individual of a satisfactory livelihood and a fulfilling life -- to give them a chance to achieve the spiritual growth, knowledge, and all the other great things that each human being is intrinsically capable of.

Rubayat Khan is a member of Jagoree, a non-partisan platform for political engagement of youth. He can be contacted at [email protected].