Development as freedom?

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"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
John F. Kennedy

"Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

WE are witnessing today the collapse of the world economic and financial order based on the philosophy of individual freedom that Amartya Sen has espoused in his treatise Development as Freedom and that has so far been the ideological ethos of the leading economy of the world.
US President Obama is invoking community service and is going to the grassroots, joining ordinary folks to paint walls as a demonstration of his own commitment to this value. Can we, then, revisit this philosophy of individualism?
First, the notion of "individual identity" is rather vague. Humans, as babies, are nursed by some "collective" or other -- first, one's own family, then other relatives, and in the laps of neighbours/members of the local community. Thus, growing up one acquires a sense of oneness in some degree with other humans and human communities, with the ecology, a sense with which one gets inclined to sacrifice for one''s own family, for the wider community or society, for the country, for the ecology, even to give one's life in specific situations for such wider entities.
The very awareness of one's "self," thus gets intertwined in various degrees with an awareness of belonging to some "collective" identity or other. And often this sense gets transformed in newer circumstances, with newer experiences, e.g. living or working together, facing crisis situations together, doing community service together, engaging in social struggles together, fighting national liberation wars together.
Secondly, since human beings are not Robinson Crusoes, since they are social beings, even their urges as individuals are influenced by others' thinking and values. Furthermore, the self-satisfaction from one's own achievements is also in general dependent on recognition by some or other human quarter(s), and likewise one's personal values and urges to engage in different callings are also influenced by interactions with and values of others, be this the wider society or a smaller community or one's own family or circle of friends and colleagues. Hence the suggestion inherent in the concept of "individual freedom" that one aspires to walk along a path of purely personal urges also misses the mark -- it is to a greater or less degree urges influenced by others' values and desires as well.
For these two reasons the "individual" identity of a person is not an identity dissociated from everyone else, and hence the concept of "individual freedom" is not amenable to definition as a distinctive concept upon which the development philosophy for any society can be constructed.
A lot of research on this question has been done in social psychology (e.g. Triandis 1988), which contains numerous elaborations and illustrations of inseparable unity of a person's awareness of self-identity with some or other wider communal identity or identities.
Besides, to claim the concept of individual freedom, however defined, as the foundation of development philosophy also calls for clarifying the import of this philosophy for humanity. As Swedish sociologists Backstrand and Ingelstam have observed: "Individual freedom is meaningless and dangerous when not rooted in an ethic and enlightened by social and spiritual considerations."
This should not need arguing in view of exhibitions of indeed dangerous individualist and sectarian conduct throughout human history by persons enjoying high degrees of individual freedom by virtue of money and social power, with perhaps a first order crisis for humanity rooted in such conduct that we are witnessing today.
Thus the suggestion of individual freedom as the foundational concept of development is potentially a rather dangerous one, and initiatives to morally enlighten individual action as well as to provide for safeguards against abuse of individual freedom need to be actively pursued.
The desired ethical conduct of individuals may not be ensured merely by "public discussions and social interactions, which are themselves influenced by participatory freedoms" as Sen suggests. Participatory freedom may be very insufficient to ensure social justice, particularly in conditions like unequal distribution of economic power, asymmetrical economic inter-dependence and patron-client type socio-economic relations.
Furthermore, some ethical views representing the most enlightened thinking of human civilization, e.g. the ethics of human rights, stand above any society-determined values, expressing concerns of all humanity, which has a stake in how any individual society conducts itself.
Thus all enlightened social thinking encourages service to the community especially to the needy, and this principle is also enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as quoted above, through which world humanity is demanding accountability from any society beyond the consensus of its own people even if fully democratic.
Even apart from these philosophical and spiritual considerations, a suggestion of identifying the goal of development as expansion of individual freedom would be particularly harmful for a country like Bangladesh. The country has relatively less land in proportion to population, and an individualist ethic would invite intense competition for ownership of land by fair means or foul as well as activities that would devastate the environment, as is actually happening from actions motivated by this ethic.
On the other hand, many of the country's disadvantaged, finding it difficult to advance with individual resources alone, are joining hands in various kinds of collective endeavours, and are thereby advancing in their lives.
For poverty alleviation and development that may benefit the disadvantaged in this country, the importance of such collective endeavours is indisputable and is independent of any social ideology. Whether such endeavours are expanding "individual freedom" of those engaged in them and, therefore, whether in Sen's terms "development" is taking place for these people, would be a totally wrong question.
The relevant question is whether such persons are advancing toward fulfilling their own life's urges as evolved from their own life's situations, experiences, possibilities, and interactions with other members of their kind.
A word, finally, for Barack Obama, who is desperately seeking to salvage his country and is invoking community service, rightly, as one strategy. I suggest that he think of deeper community solidarity, to the extent of invoking Americans to share in the current hardship together, instead of the more fortunate witnessing their partners in enterprises get laid off.
The ceiling Obama has capped on the salary of public servants is a salutary move. He has no authority to do this in the private sector; but he can invite the private sector managements to propose salary cuts for all without lay-offs as a mark of solidarity with their employees.
By such measure, if this could be widely shared, market demand for most consumables will also stop declining which Obama is seeking to face by huge deficit spending to finance the creation of new jobs, a time-consuming measure by itself. And he can announce national honours for enterprises that respond to this invocation. I understand that the Japanese have a similar culture of sharing hardships together in their enterprises during bad times.
And Obama himself could also take a salary cut to set the ultimate example.

References
Backstrand, Gordan and Lars Ingelstam (2006). "Enough! Global Challenges and Lifestyles." What Next, Setting the Context. Development Dialogue No. 47. June.
Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press.
Triandis, Harry. C., Robert Bontempo, and Marcello J. Villareal (1988). "Individualism and Collectivism: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Self-Ingroup Relationships." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 54 (2).

Md. Anisur Rahman is ex Professor, Dhaka University and ex-Member, first Planning Commission.