The meaning of the concept of development is different for different people.
One thing is definitely common that development means the diffusion of growth to all sections of the society to raise the standard of life of the people.
The development conveys the ideas of improvement, progress well-being, and inspiration for a better life.
Through the process of development, society seeks to achieve the vision of the future for the future generation.
The development has also been Understood and used in a narrow sense y understanding it related with limited goals such as increasing the .ate of economic growth or modernizing the society.
In fact, the development is not concerned with just achieving the present targets or completing projects like dams and factories i.e. growth of infrastructure but it is more concerned with realizing the broader vision of society.
We can say that development is a value ridden concept.
Since the concept of development is very wide, a number of issues are involved in it which are as under.
The rights of the people should be taken into account during the course of development.
To make development more pervasive, there should be the democratization of the social, economic, and political environment.
The benefits of development should reach all sections of society.
There should be qualitative improvement in the lives of the people.
The word ‘Development’ carries many connotations.
It is a very wide concept with different aspects.
The very purpose of the development is to build a modem society, to change the face of not only every section of the society but of every man by taking the fruits of development to the last man.
It seeks to make maximum utilization of all the resources and to make their just distribution.
It is opposed to the concentration of resources in few hands or the resources remain unexploited.
Therefore it is a very positive concept, however, it has been understood in a negative sense only.
The term ‘Development’ can be understood better in both the broader and narrower sense:
In a broader sense, development conveys the ideas of improvement, progress, well¬being and aspiration for better life to constitute the vision for society as a whole and how to achieve it.
In a narrower sense, it refers to more limited goals as increasing the rate of economic growth, etc.
Benefits to different sections of society.
Development has been identified with completing projects like factories, dams, hospitals, national high ways rather than to uphold the broader vision of development into the society.
The concept of ‘development’ gained importance after the second half of twentieth century when a large number of countries in Asia and Africa got political freedom from colonialism.
In the beginning years, the focus was on catching up with the west in terms of economic growth and modernisation of societies.
Earlier the state was the only agency capable of initiating that type of social and economic change and several nations embarked upon ambitious projects of development, generally with the assistance of loans and aid from the developed countries, i.e. five years plans in India since 1950s.
The model of development adopted by India and other countries has come under a great deal of criticism over the years and this led to some rethinking about the objectives and processes of development today.
In a broader sense, the development conveys the ideas of improvement, progress, well-being and an aspiration for a better life to articulate its vision for society as a whole.
It refers to more limited goals such as to increase the rate of economic growth or modernising the society, i.e. construction of dams or hospitals or factories without any compensatory gains.
Development may be an increase in national economy or for others it may be social development or some others may feel it to be modernization.
Riggs, “Development involves the ability to choose whether or not to increase outputs, whether or not to raise levels of per capita income or to direct energies to other goals, to the more equitable distribution of what is available to spiritual values or qualitatively different kinds of outputs.”
Unequal distribution of costs and benefits of development on the huge costs of human and environment.
The ‘top-down’ strategy adopted by countries decide the development projects and implementation of development by the higher level of political leadership and bureaucracy.
The peoples who are normally affected by the development projects are hardly consulted.