Economic development- A plea for a human(e) policy

Abstract

Development, though a many-splendoured and multi-linear concept, has been taken, in common parlance, to mean mainly ‘economic development’ with its usual parameters explained interms of GNP, incomes, growth, wealth and material prosperity, increased trade and commerce, etc., as also a transition from ‘agraria’ to ‘industria’, a movement for modernisation, a signature of progress. It, however, fails to address the core issue, the summum bonum of development, the man and his life, its enrichment, fulfilment, and quality and his freedom of choice to live the way he likes. Unless development concentrates on individual's unfettered entitlement unfreezing all forms of ‘unfreedom’ and eliminating basic ‘capability deprivation’, paving the way to flourish as ‘fuller social persons’, it will fall short of its raison detre, as demonstrated by the Human Development Reports of United Nations since 1990s, indeed, the paradigm shift makes Man the measure of all development and rightly, therefore, the moral ethical, cultural, inter-relational, even the environmental aspects must have to be accepted as the central foci of development's basic concerns. Developmental futurism must necessarily, and undoubtedly, be woven around conceptualisation and realisation of good life of man-in-society, its hope and optimism, its visions and mission, its efflorescence and vibrance, in an altruistic ambience of harmonious human symbiosis.