Development covers a wide range of meaning from national economic growth to individual well-being.The definition and understanding on development has changed immensely over the period as the quest for development experts to define, measure, and amplify the understanding about development continued. Development thinking[1], strategies and theories have also evolved along with change in values of development (Potter, 2002).
Till date, the principles of economic growth remained at the core of development interventions in terms of resource mobilization by state. The idea of economic development again was not sufficient to fulfil the quest to define and measure development in terms of improvement in human-well being. Amartya Sen and Denis Goulet were the prominent thinkers in this field who attempted to challenge economic perspective of development. Goulet introduced the idea of life sustenance, self-esteem and freedom as three key components of development where he claims that income is only sufficient to enhance life-sustenance i.e. meeting basic needs (Thirlwarll, 2002). Amartya Sen went much deeper in introducing freedom as key factor for development. According to Sen, freedom, as one of the basic elements of development, allows a person to choose his/her destiny and also make efforts through set of capabilities and functionings (Sen, 1999). Sen also does not discount income since he considers income as one of the determinants of capabilities and functioning. Muhbub Ul Haq added the perspective of human development which is being advocated through UNDP, and Bruntland commission introduced sustainable development in 1990s incorporating environmental factors.
Though the idea of human development and sustainable development attempted to broaden the scope of development efforts, the economic growth principles still apply to a large extent which can be visible from the fact that financial institutions like World Bank, ADB are major development partners for almost all of the developing country. The discussions above clearly indicate to the fact that main development problem of 21st century is not a growth but distribution of the returns from growth, and improvement in human factor. There is serious need to review our previous development approaches.
In my opinion, our development efforts failed to reach poor because we depended on money based economy. Money based economy which required monetary investment and also measured outcomes in terms of money contributed to broaden the social divides between rich and poor. The person with money had access to the benefits of development interventions, thus, poverty of inequality increased marginally. Here, shifting of development approach to ‘knowledge economy’ might be a solution.
Globally, the presence and operation of ‘knowledge economy’ have been realized among government, development partners, planners, experts and non-government organizations. The knowledge economy is believed to have higher multiplier factor than ‘money economy’ and efficient ways to transfer from one person to other.
It is time to think how ‘knowledge economy’ can be extracted in solving existing development problems so that the multiplier effects could lead to faster solutions to problems of captivating poverty, hunger and low socio-economic profile. The knowledge economy largely relies on research and innovation. Research is a production process and innovation is an output.
Developing countries like Nepal are facing number of problems. Till this date, we depended on ‘money based economic development principle’, thus, we invested money and the results were not as expected. The money only went to richer sections of society, and in turn, the investments increased the level of inequality. Hence, it is time to invest through ‘knowledge economy principles’ in a way that the interventions will remain indifference to the people based on their money and physical assets.
Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom: Human Capability and Global Need, New York: Knopf.
Thirlwall, A.P. (2002). Development as economic growth, New York: Oxford University Press (published within a book titled Companion to Development Studies edited by Vandana Desai and Robert B. Potter).
Potter, R.B. (2002). Theories, Strategies and ideologies of development, New York: Oxford University Press (published within a book titled Companion to Development Studies edited by Vandana Desai and Robert B. Potter).
[1] Development thinking is a term used by Potter (2002) as a catch-all phrase indicating sum total of ideas about development, that is, including development theory, strategy and ideology.
