The challenges of development or growth

  • Save
Devel­op­ment Challenge

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.

Leave a Comment

Share via
Copy link
Verified by MonsterInsights