John Samuel
I have seen a man on the bank of a river buried up to his knees in mud, and some men came to give him a hand and help him out, but they pushed him further in up to his neck.
Abba Paphnutius, Hermit of Egypt, Forth Century AD1
No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations to get started on the path of industrialisation, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. The methods of nineteenth century will not work in the people’s century which is now about to begin..
H. A. Wallace, 1942, the Vice President of USA2
The idea of development stands today like a ruin in the intellectual landscape.
Wolfgang Sachs3
1. THE IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT
The practice of charity and giving help to the needy have a long history and are rooted in various ethical traditions4. While the notion of charity and giving to the needy are derived primarily from ethical and spiritual choices or obligations, the idea of development has strong political and socio-economic connotations. One of the key aspects of the idea of development is the distributory and interventionist role of the state in mediating between liberty and equality. Defining development is not an easy task as there are multiple undercurrents of political perspectives, ethical underpinnings and institutional interests that stir up the ongoing development discourse. Though the dominant tendency is to project development as a linear ‘progress’ or transition from tradition to modernity, a cross-cultural perspective would point out the Euro-centric and Semitic roots of such linear notions of social change. The dominant idea of development has emerged as a modernist political and economic project, in the wake of industrialism, capitalism, scientific searches, nation state, international trade and colonialism that formed the cornerstones of modernity. In many ways, the modern idea of development has emerged through the various notions of welfare, charity and relief that can be traced back to various schools of political and ethical legacies.
The large-scale marginalisation of the working class in the wake of industrialisation and the unprecedented scale of urbanisation paved the way for new awareness about the need to mitigate the trials and tribulations of the working class. The extent of such marginalisation is well captured in the following descriptions:
I saw little children, three parts naked, tottering under wet clay, some of
it on their heads and some on their shoulders, and little girls with large
masses of wet, cold and dripping clay pressing on their abdomens... They had to
endure the kiln and to enter places where the heat was so intense that I myself
was not able to remain more than two or three minutes5.
The mixed legacy of the European Enlightenment in many ways influenced and informed the emergence of the modern idea of development. The Enlightenment from 17th to the 19th century had two faces.
In retrospect, it is the political and economic lessons learnt in the aftermath of the First World War and the great depression in the early part of the 1930s that gave impetus and political legitimacy to the idea of welfare and development. In fact, one of the seminal papers by John Maynard Keynes, ‘The Economic Consequences of Peace’ (1919) that cautioned about the need for an international aid system to sustain market, relative social stability and peace in the war ravaged countries, was not taken seriously by the world leaders of the day. The seeds of the Second World War were very much in the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919. The devastation and demoralisation of the First World War were the breeding ground for Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. The devastation caused by the great depression and the Second World War exposed the fragile international order.
The post Second World War consensus on the need for international peace and human rights, the wider legitimacy of the role of welfare state, the Bretton Wood system and the Marshal Plan formed the backdrop for crystallization of the idea and practice of development. On the one hand, the Marshal Plan and the international bilateral and multilateral aid system was a pragmatic strategy to sustain markets and to facilitate international market for the USA, and on the other hand, the idea and practice of development became one of the most powerful diplomatic and ideological weapons in the cold war era. That is why Richard Nixon has candidly admitted that the main purpose of American Aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves7.
The second half of the 20th century is often termed as the age of development. This period proved to be economically far better than it was hoped in 1945. The economic, health and education standards have improved tremendously, and more people moved out of poverty in the last fifty years than the previous five hundred years. However, there is a different side of the story of development. The rate of inequality has increased. There is an estimated 1.3 billion people who earn less than a dollar a day. The 500 largest corporations in the world control 25% of the global output, though they employ a miniscule percent of the people in the world. The net worth of Bill Gates is greater than the poorest 40% of the US population. The total income of three billion people in the developing world is less than the asset of 358 multibillionaires. The socio-economic conditions of more than 100 countries are worse than they were 15 years ago.
The idea of development acquired new meaning and validity in the international politics in the 1940s. There were four key characteristics that informed the new meaning of development:
a) the role of the state as a primary actor for advancing the agenda of development.
b) an international system of aid that in many ways defined bilateral trade and political relationship between the various countries.
c) the role of multilateral intergovernmental systems and organisations in determining and influencing the development agenda and policies.
d) the role of non-state actors, particularly voluntary associations and charity organisations as supplementary agents to the government to ‘implement’ development projects and programmes.
The content of such a development discourse was supposed to be based on the values of freedom, rights, duties and the responsibility of the state to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. The contestation of the idea of development by different actors is often based on multiple perspectives and perceptions about ways and means to achieve liberty and equality.
Over a period of around sixty years, the development discourse has emerged through various phases, marked by the changes in the international political, economic and public policy making systems and process.
First Phase: Development as it began (1940s to 1970s)
The Great depression in the 1930s, the subsequent miseries of the people even in the industrialised countries, the New Deal welfare measures of the Roosevelt regime, the brutality of Nazism and the devastation of the Second World War provided a strong rational for an international system and process that would promote cooperation among states to advance peace, freedom and socio-economic development.
On the one hand, the USA played the role to promote a new age of internationalism and development as articulated by Henry A Wallace, Vice President to Franklin Roosevelt:
the century that will come out of this war can be and must be the century of
common man. Perhaps it will be America’s opportunity to suggest freedoms and
duties by which common man must live9.
However, the USA that emerged as the most powerful economy after World War II also made use of the opportunity of crisis to push its own agenda of Americanisation as a new kind of universalism. This dream of the USA to Americanise the world is articulated by Henry. R Luce, the millionaire Publisher in his own Life magazine envisioning an American Century,
America as the dynamic centre of ever-widening spheres of enterprise,
America as the training centre of skilful servants of mankind, America as the
Good Samaritan, really believing again that it is more blessed to give than to
receive, an America as the powerhouse of the ideals of freedom and
justice10.
It is in this backdrop that a series of international meetings were held in 1944 and 1945 to advance an international system for cooperation and development. The most famous of these meetings were the ones in the Bretton Wood town of New Hampshire in 1944 and San Francisco in 1945.
We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war… reaffirm our faith in fundamental human
rights … and for those ends agree to employ international machinery for the
promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples11.
Behind the ideals echoed in the UN charter lurked the multiple motives of the leading world players, particularly the USA. Though the Bretton Woods system conceived four institutional ‘pillars’, only two of them- the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank- survived as actually conceived. Among the other two, the International Trade Organisation was replaced by General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). Though the UN was conceived as the third ‘pillar’, it was stripped of the authority to supervise the IMF and the World Bank. Thus UN could never play a key role in economic management as it was originally envisaged. The international power play preceded the idealism of true international co-operation. The veto power of the Permanent Members of the Security Council appropriated the real decision making to the powerful countries.
The Bretton Woods system was supposed to enhance world trade (by reducing protectionism and ensuring convertibility of currencies), promote employment and development and protect the economy from the fluctuations in the market. These efforts were influenced by the ideas of the British economist John Maynard Keynes and the American economist Harry White. Central to the international system for peace, cooperation and development was a strong belief in the ability of strategic intervention by the state or multilateral institutions to redress the imperfections of the market and the need for planning to engineer positive economic change.
Marshal Plan was supposed to provide planned aid to reconstruct the war-ravaged Europe. The implicit purpose of the Marshal Plan was to accelerate the rapid economic recovery of the Europe to ensure that European market for the American goods are sustained. The Marshal plan was also a strategic act to neutralize the perceived influence of the Soviet Communism. The worth of Marshal Plan, by today’s prices, was over $200 billion, almost 4 times more than the total amount of international aid by the rich nations in 199613. It was in 1948, the first shipment of aid of 900 tones of wheat was shipped from Texas. Under Marshal plan, aid to the value of $15 billion followed, and the major of share of the aid went to Britain, France and Germany. There was also a separate programme for Japan, ‘Special Procurement Dollars’ to revitalize the Japanese Industry.
In the first twenty years, international aid system was more focussed on reconstructing the war-ravaged economies of Europe and Japan, and building the edifice of the nation-states and the ‘development’ of the newly independent ‘underdeveloped’ countries. In the 1950s, both the capitalist and the Communist system seemed to be focussed on a ‘social engineering’ top-down model of development perpetuated more on the basis of a Euro-centric experiences, ideas and models.
Following are some of the trends that marked the first phase of development discourse:
- Development as a ‘scientific method’ using technical knowledge to promote industrial base, economic recovery through increased productivity and market access.
- A state-centric paradigm of development wherein the state made social and economic interventions to redress market imperfection and redistribute resources to ensure social welfare and development.
Development aid as enlightened self-interest of the donor countries to promote trade and market demand in the recipient countries.
Emphasis on providing aid for big infrastructural projects like Dams, Roads, Power, etc.
Substantial use of food aid to support the poor countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Development aid primarily focussing on increasing industrial and agricultural productivity, livestock management and in many parts of the world for Population Control.
Development aid as ideological and strategic means to fight the Cold War.
Development aid as means to train and educate a section of professionals, academics and political leaders so as to contain the influence of adverse ideological projects in different countries.
Clear distinction between the role of the state as the primary development actor and the role of Charity Organisations as relief agencies to support the most needy.
It is the welfare approach with involved patriarchy and patronage that influenced the development discourse in the first twenty years. The notion of the welfare state was embedded in the idea of development.
However, the state–centric development model could not stop the disillusionment across the world in the later half of the 1960s, primarily among the youth across the world. The Cold war politics and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and the role of the welfare state in sustaining the status quo paved the way for wide range of disillusionment, dissent and various social movements for radical change in the later half of the 1960s.
Second Phase: Development as Delivering Services (1970s to early 1980s)
The key shift in the international political process and the strategic shift in the role and policies of the World Bank in the early 1970s became one of the important milestones in the theory and practice of development. In 1971, the demise of pegged-rate system redefined the contours of global economy14. This change in the finance and economic system coupled with the inability and lack of the capacity of many countries to deliver public good propelled new streams of thinking and action in the development discourse in the mid 1970s.
One of the key preoccupations of the development discourse was the limitation of welfare state in effectively delivering services, particularly to the poorest and the most marginalized. Though the development investment in the 1950s and 60s created basic infrastructure and other facilities (such as training for the civil servants, making institutions and systems of governance in many of the countries that got independence between from 1940s to 60s), and increasing agricultural and economic productivity, the first phase of development failed to reach the most marginalised and the poor. The development aid in the first twenty years by a large benefited a relatively small percentage of the ruling elites and the middle class in most of the countries in the global south. In 1950s and 60s, it was the charity and relief organisations that worked among the poorest and marginalised, though in a patronising and top-down manner.
The increasing instances of poverty and marginalisation also gave space for social unrest and socio-political conflicts in many of the countries. In this context, the development discourse began to focus on historically marginalised groups such as women, children and the rural poor and emphasise on sectoral priorities like primary health, nutrition, education, income generation and population control.
The key transition of the development discourse in the early 1970s had involved the following critical shifts:
1. There was a strategic shift from a state-centred paradigm to a mixed development framework wherein independent associations and institutions began to play a supplementary as well as critical role in relation to the state-centred development agenda.
2. The top-down Euro-centric idea of development began to be critiqued rigorously by the activists and thinkers in the non-western world. The wider academic legitimacy of dependency theory developed by Latin American thinkers, the ethical and political acceptance of liberation theology and the emergence of a new civil rights movement drawing inspiration from M K Gandhi and Martin Luther King began to create a counter discourse to the mainstream idea of development and aid system.
3. The new streams of thinking and action emerged out of feminist and ecological critique of society and politics were two powerful streams in the 1970s that changed the very counters of the modern development discourse.
4. There was a shift from generalist notion of development, which focussed in the first twenty years on infrastructure development, agricultural development, food aid and famine relief to sector specific and targeted approach to poverty reduction based on sector specific prioritisation on population control, targeted poverty eradication, employment generation programmes and new focus on health, nutrition and education.
5. The relative secularisation of the Church oriented Charity Organisations in Europe and charity and welfare approach was gradually replaced by the broader ideas of development. On the one hand, the secularisation happened as a response to the new discourse of liberation theology and the consequent ideas of emancipation, conscientisation, participation and empowerment. And on the other hand, the secularisation was also a pragmatic response to channel fund from the bilateral international aid system.
6. The institutionalisation of social action and voluntarism with ‘monetary incentive’ was a key individual and institutional motivation to intervene in the arena of development. This institutionalisation gave birth to the term NGOs (Non- Governmental Organisation). The very term non-governmental in a way signifies the shift from the government–centred development approach to the critical role non-governmental actors. However it is also important to note that Non-governmental organisations in the beginning were defined as Para-governmental organisations to supplement the efforts of government in various arenas of development. This supplementary system-based and fund-driven institutionalisation and the very negative definition of NGOs in relation to the government had far reaching implications.
7. The idea of alternate development with stress on development as a political process and people’s participation in development project acquired more acceptability in the 1970s. A search for non-western models like neo-Gandhian approach and stress on environment and women’s development formed the core of such an alternate discourse on development.
It is the second phase of the development discourse that provided institutional space for many Charity, Relief and Voluntary Organisations to make substantial influence in determining the prioritisation and operationalisation of the development agenda. The shift in the strategy of the World Bank in the mid seventies also had a long lasting impact on the development discourse.
The critique of the welfare state, the lack of capacity of the government institutions to perform effectively and the rigidity and the high cost involved in the service delivery through government systems created new spaces for creative thinking, citizens leadership and voluntarism within the development sector.
In fact, the term NGO and Development Sector emerged out of those points of transitions in the development agenda and practice. Now development was beginning to be seen as a societal vision beyond the restricted mandate of the state, where voluntary, charity and relief organisations and Private Sector were supposed to supplement the role of the state.
Third Phase: Development as Sustainability (1980s)
The hike in oil price in the 1970s and the consequent debt trap in the early 1980s kicked off a new chapter in the development discourse in the 1980s. As a result of the accumulated debt and balance of payment crisis, many middle income and poor countries were forced to depend on IMF funding for their economic stability and survival. It is the economic marginalisation of many of the poor countries that forced them to accept the IMF conditionalities.
Due to the new shift in the development discourse, the role of the independent voluntary organisations and development institutions were promoted by the following factors:
1.The saturation of the Welfare State. While most of the states and the governments were rather ‘lean’ in the 1950s, most of them grew as huge machineries that flourished under the pretext of implementing development and delivering services.
The developmental Statism ensured the role of State not only in regulating and controlling the market, but also in determining the social and economic choices that people made. In the process, the state and the government machinery became too big to manage efficient and effective social or economic development.
The welfare state began to be identified with patronising, arrogant and ineffective bureaucracy, corrupt political class and political patronage to those who supported the ruling political elite. The fat government machinery was not economically sustainable, nor socially viable. This saturation of the welfare state paved the way for new national and international development organisations and NGOs to take up the task of delivering development.
In the emerging neo-liberal paradigm of development, reduction of expenditure in the social sector was accompanied by a trend to subcontract the development through the international and national development organisations.
The emergence of a right wing and conservative political regimes in USA and UK in the 1980s redefined the aid strategies to create more employment and market opportunities within the donor countries. As a result, instead of giving bilateral aid directly to recipient states, many of the donor countries channelled a substantial part of the aid through the international NGOs based in the respective donor countries. Such channelling of aid through international development NGOs created more job opportunities within the donor countries and in many cases created active market for consultancy business and supply of materials.
The need to create professionally competent and efficient NGOs led to the ‘professionalisation’ of development work, by creating a new labour market for development professionals. This process of institutionalisation and professionalisation created tension between the spirit of voluntarism and the paid professionalism in the development field. While the new institutionalisation attracted a lot committed and competent professionals within the NGOs, it also created fundamental ethical contradictions within the voluntary development sector.
It is not only the sustainability of the welfare state and development institutions that came into focus. The very sustainability of development as progressive advancement was itself in question. The new social movements and the idea of inter-generational justice formed a predominant stream of valid critique to the very idea of top-down, linear and social engineering model of development. Thus towards the end of 1980s the movement for sustainable development influenced the development discourse in a significant way.
The patriarchal and patronising character of the development discourse was exposed by the emergence of women’s movement in different parts of the world. The development discourse was no longer a neat and linear discourse controlled and regulated by the international aid system and the state. The development discourse became more diverse, multivocal and complex in the 1980s.
Development itself has become an amorphous arena with multiple actors with diverse perspective, professional background and institutional interests, influencing the development discourse at various levels in multiple ways.
On the one hand, the mainstream development discourse and aid system began to facilitate the dismantling of the edifice of the welfare state, and on the other, both the redundant welfare state as well as the hegemonic countries in the global north were critiqued.
In the early 1980s, development was beginning to be seen as a political process, with ideas of participation and empowerment forming the core of such political discourse. However, towards the end of the 1980s, the neo-liberal framework actively encouraged the depoliticisation of development with more focus on ‘managing development’. This dominant neo-liberal trend actively promoted development primarily as corollary to economic and social management. The managerial approach to development sought quick techno-economic solutions to the political problems of increasing inequality, marginalisation and the consequent political and social instability.
In many ways, the defining phase of the development discourse happened in the 1980s. On the one hand, this phase created new voices of dissent in the development sector and strong critique of the euro-centric development paradigm in the global south. On the other, this phase also witnessed development as means to coopt emerging leadership in the society and to push down ideas and concept through mix of funding coercion and consensus building strategies. During this phase, there has been a stress on ‘operational strategies for development’ with stress on skill building manuals, skill building trainings, organisational development, etc. Some of the powerful strategies like micro-credit/finance also grew in the shadow of a neo-liberal development paradigm.
Fourth Phase: Development in a Flux (1990s)
The fourth phase of development discourse in the early 1990s were influenced by the collapse of Soviet Union, the end of cold war and the technological revolution in the communication technology. The breath-taking changes in the international political arena, the unprecedented connectivity through new technology across the world and the explosion of information and images through television and Internet substantially changed the social, economic, cultural and political spheres. The end of cold war reinforced the American hegemony in almost all spheres and the bipolar international politics gave way to a unipolar world dominated by the USA.
In the wake of the apparent retreat of socialism, a new enthusiasm for unbridled free market capitalism was created through evangelising the ruling class across the world about the inevitability of the neo-liberal prescriptions for development salvation. The new policy framework, involving liberalisation, privatisation, free market and structural adjustment exported from Washington, through an understanding between the State Department of the USA, IMF and World Bank, dominated the development discourse in the 1990s.
British economist John Williamson termed this new global public policy regime as the ‘Washington Consensus’. Washington Consensus included ten policy instruments that were supposed to ensure ‘third world development’. These ten policy instruments included: fiscal discipline, a rearrangement of public expenditure, tax reforms, financial liberalisation, competitive exchange rates, trade liberalisation, openness to foreign investment, privatisation, deregulation and the preservation private property rights15. The forcing down of neo-liberal policy framework created a strong sense of frustration and discontent among the people of the global south.
The bulldozing market capitalism and the unbridled unilateralism of the USA created frustration and discontent among large cross section of people in the global south and a simmering discontent among the middle class in Europe. The opportunities provided by the information and communication technology also created new synergies in an unprecedented way across the world.
Thus, a counter discourse to the Washington Consensus spread across the world. World Wide protest against WTO, the investment policies of the World Bank and the emergence of identity politics actually heralded a post-modern discourse on development. On the one hand, this phase of development, accompanied by bulldozing market capitalism, created a sense of helplessness and frustration among a large cross section of the vulnerable middle class across the world. On the other, it has also created a global elite, including developmental elites that reaped the benefits of globalisation of development. The development discourse was decentred in the 1990s, with series of global meetings beginning with Rio Conference on Environment and series of World Conferences on Human Rights, Women, Social Development, Racism and Sustainable Development. The global Meets created multiple synergies and discourses that often annul each other or swallow each other.
The collapse of the authoritarian socialist system in the Soviet Block created a new trend of democratisation, i.e. Civil Society and Governance as a key development agenda. A substantial chunk of the official development assistance was channelled towards the so-called strengthening of democracy, civil society16 and governance. But the end results of such initiatives were often to create new market opportunities.
Following are some of the key trends in this phase of the development discourse:
1. A gradual withdrawal of the state from the realm of social development and the dismantling and withering away of the welfare state
2. Networking as a powerful means to bring synergies within the countries and across the world
3. A new politics of knowledge that created a counter discourse through the critique of main stream development paradigm
4. Advocacy as a strategy to influence public policies, monitor governance and strengthen citizens’ participation in governance
5. The emergence of global advocacy campaigns such as Campaign against Land Mines, Jubilee 2000 for Debt Relief and the emergence of global networks like the Third World Network
6. A new emphasis on human development and economic, social and cultural rights
7. The emergence of post modern fundamentalism, partially as a reaction to forceful Americanisation of culture, politics and economy and partly due to demise of grand ideologies that captured the imagination of young people
8. The rise of right wing, conservative political forces that exploited the discontent of millions who are at the receiving end of the globalisation
9. Multiplicity of global synergies and network based on entirely different and often contradictory perspective and priorities. These protest networks, ranging from anarchists to church groups, feminists, Catholics, trade unions and free floating individuals, often get together in disorganised ways to express organised protest against the unethical and harmful trade policies and to protest against the adverse impacts of globalisation.
10. The reinvention of UN as a platform to negotiate multiple discourses, and UN’s mediating role in the development discourse with a newly acquired leverage to strategically use the politics of knowledge. viz. the role of Human Development Report in influencing the key development agendas
11. The strategic cooption of the language of rights, and concepts such as empowerment, participation and partnership by the state
12. The growing threat of HIV in many of the countries in Africa and Asia
Probably the 1990s saw fast changing perspectives, multiple discourses and decentred networks that got facilitated often through information and communication technology. The irony of such post-modern condition was that most vehement opponents of the globalisation are often the most globalised people. On the one hand, information provided new leverages for ordinary people and bridged the gap between nations and people. On the other, the digital divide and the New Economy also increased inequality. Thus the distance between New York and New Delhi could be measured in seconds, and ironically it also increased the distance between New Delhi and a village in the vicinity17.
Within a span of ten years, the balance sheet of Washington Consensus was a group of countries with ravaged economies and political instabilities. When the neo-liberalism of the late eighties and the early nineties failed to deliver the goodies that it promised, there was widespread scepticism even within the multilateral institutions.
The growing discontent and scepticism paved the way for unravelling of neo-liberal policy prescriptions. George Soros, one of the major players who substantially influenced the international finance market and made billions out of the deregulated finance market, began to seriously question the market fundamentalism of the unbridled capitalism saying, `arch enemy of the open society is no longer communist threat but the capitalist one18. Joseph Stiglitz, one of the key architects of the Washington Consensus and the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, admits the fallacies involved in a universal neo-liberal prescription and raises serious concern about the broken promises of globalisation and the growing discontent across the world19. Number of alternatives to the neo-liberal framework has been proposed, including Socially Responsible Capitalism and the ‘third way’ beyond the right and the left, proposed by Anthony Giddens20.
Though Development discourse substantially helped to influence the process of social, economic and political change, after five development decades it left more discontent. The predicament of development discourse in the post–modern condition was aptly expressed by Zygmunt Bauman
there are problems with no solutions, twisted trajectories that can’t be
straightened up, ambivalences that are more than linguistic blunders yelling to
be corrected, doubts which can not be legislated out of existence, and moral
agonies which no reason-dictated recipes can sooth21.
Fifth Phase: Emerging Discourse on Development
The discourse on development seems to have come to full circle. The World is precariously moving through a stage of political and economic uncertainty. Though the present sense of uncertainty is qualitatively distinct from the uncertainties in the early 1940s, in many ways, it brings back the original themes of development. That is, development as means to attain freedom, equality and rights.
The present predicament of development is accentuated by the unilateral military adventurism of the US and the change in political equations after the attack on World Trade Centre and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 by fundamentalist forces. The ideals of development as proposed in the opening lines of UN charter and as propounded by President Roosevelt seem to be standing alone in barren landscape of the new cynicism and highly unethical and extractive relationships between the powerful countries in the global north and the power less peoples in the global south.
One of the key characteristics of the emerging political discourse is the dissolving of the traditional distinction between the global north and the global south. There is an elite north in the global south, and there is a growing number of excluded south in the global north. The frustration about the unilateral military and economic strength of the USA, with full of double standards, fail to convince large number of peoples across the world.
Following are some of the key trends in the emerging discourse on development:
1 Emergence of a set of new strategies and ideas such as rights based approach to development; good governance, participation, citizen action, private-public partnership and corporate social responsibilities form the basis for an emerging post-Washington consensus22.
2 A shift from investing in the development hardware (involving construction of schools, roads, water tanks, infrastructure for agricultural development, etc) to development software (capacity building of the people, strengthening advocacy, networking, civil society formation, human rights, citizen activism, etc). However, many see this shift in consonance with shrinking aid budget. It has been pointed out, `funding citizens activism seemed to hold out the promise of low-cost way to achieve large scale effects. Thus Civil Society Programmes grew as aid budget shrank’23.
3 A major shift towards the advancement of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC). The ESC rights were ignored in the mainstream development discourse till the end of the cold war. There is a new stress on ESC rights and Rights Based Approach (RBA) to Development primary focus on advancing the capabilities of people to assert, exercise and claim their rights. Such RBA seeks to strengthen citizens’ movement for accountable and transparent governance. However, the recent enthusiasm for RBA needs to be taken with a pinch of salt because it has implicit ambivalence that can have long-term subversive potential. Firstly RBA stresses on the obligatory role of the state in respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights. However, the neo-liberal policy prescription pushes the countries to reduce the expenditure on health, education, water distribution, etc. So on the one hand, RBA encourages citizens to claim Economic and Social Rights, and on the other, the same actors seek to reduce the financial capabilities of the state to fulfil those obligations. Secondly, it is the new stress on the role of non-state actors to promote human rights. This envisages the involvement of corporate sector to provide public goods. This, in many ways, is to rationalise the privatisation of public goods.
4 Marketisation of Development: In the 1980s the stress was on depoliticising development. Today, some of the dominant discourse on development on the one hand tries to depoliticise rights to make use rights in an instrumental manner for further privatisation. The new stress on private-public cooperation needs to be seen in the light of the ongoing attempts to privatise essential public goods such as water, health and education. Many of the corporate consultancy agencies like Price Waterhouse, KPMG and Arthur Anderson earn millions of dollars in the development business.
5 The development discourse and the international aid are being increasingly moving towards those who are supposedly helping to fight the so-called global war on terrorism. The so-called war on terrorism has increased the threat to civil and political rights of citizens. It has also increased the new kind of intolerance to the voices of dissent. A large chunk of the money that used to support democratisation, etc. is channelled to deal with social conflicts in the context of the war on terrorism.
6 Competing fundamentalism and the rise of exclusive right wing politics in different parts of the world will have far reaching implications on development discourse. The growing Islamic, Christian and Hindu fundamentalism create new social tensions and conflict that can swallow up all the benefits of development intervention within days through rioting, planned pogram and anarchist attack on unsuspecting civilians. Many of such fundamentalist and fanatic outfits attack development organisations as the agents of the west, church, etc. Such cynical political manipulation raise serious challenge to human rights and development activists
The emerging discourse on development is far from conclusive. The ongoing uncertainty in the political and economic arenas poses great challenge to present system of international aid. Most of the international and national NGOs depend on the bilateral or multilateral aid for their very sustenance. An economic recession or a long drawn war can jeopardise the present system of official development aid. Such situation will either lead to the substantial marketisation of the entire arena of development or it will lead to situations wherein multinational corporation will begin to control not only multilateral organisations like UNDP, but also a number of international NGOs. A possible collapse of the aid system in the context of a grave economic recession or long drawn war can also open new possibilities for leadership and fresh way of addressing the crisis of governance, state and market.
3. CONCLUSION
The multiple discourses on development is more complicated by the universalisation of subversion. We are living in an age where every institutional space has become an arena of reciprocal subversion. As result it is very difficult to make out the real stand and conviction of different actors. Because the discourse keep changing as the space, time, context and actors change. Our present predicament is put succinctly by Robert Archer as,
we must run with economic and technological change
because it gives us the means to solve material problems,
and we must stand against it because if
we do not we will lose essential features of
ourselves24.
1. Quoted in Michael Edwards, Future Positive: International Co-operation in 21st Century, Earth scan, London, 2000
2. Henry A. Wallace, ‘The Price of Free World Victory’, address before the Free World Association, New York City, 8, May, 1942; reprinted in Russell Lord, ed., The Century of Common Man (New York: Reynal &Hitchcock, 1943)
3. Sachs, W (ed.) The Development Dictionary, Zed Press, 1992, London.
4. For a Socio-Historical Perspective on the Art of Giving, John Samuel (ed.), Social Action: An Indian Panorama, VANI, 2000.
5.. The Earl of Safestbury, on Child workers in the brickfields, 1871
6 . For a detailed analysis of such Development Praxis refer to Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press.
7 . Opskin, B(1996) ‘ The Moral Foundations of Foreign Aid”, World Development 24(1), pp21-44
8 . Wood, A(1994)North-South Trade , Employment and Inequality: Changing Fortunes in a Skill Driven World, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
9 . Russell Lord (ed), Ibid
10 . Henry Luce, ‘The American Century’, Life 17 February1941. This article was written ten months before the USA joined the World War II, the essay is reproduced in Diplomatic History 23, no.2 (1999): 159-71
11 . United Nations Charter
12 . Kunz, D (1997) ‘The Marshall Plan Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs 76(3), pp162-70, quoted in Michel Edwards (2000), Future Positive, Earth scan, London.
13 . Michel Edwards, Ibid, cited from Mulgan, G, in the Guardian February 1 1997
14 . For details refer to Eichengreen B (1996), Globalizing Capital: A History of International monetary System (Princeton University Press)
15 . John Williamson (1990), What Washington mean by Policy reform’ in Williamson(ed) Latin American Adjustment: How much has Happened (Institute for International Economics, Washington DC)
16 . For a more detailed Analysis of the concept of Civil Society, See John Samuel (1999) Civil Society and other Plastic Phrases, in Development Cola Served Chilled (NCAS, Pune)
17 . For a detailed Analysis see John Samuel (2001), Information Fever and Image Politics, in Zadek, Simon(ed) New Economy and Corporate Citizenship, Copenhagen
18 . Soros, G (1996) in the Atlantic Monthly, December
19 . Stiglitz, Joseph (2002), Globalisation and its Discontent
20 . Giddens A (1994) Beyond Left and Right: The future of Radical Politics, Cambridge University Press
21 . Bauman, Z (1993) Post Modern Ethics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
22 . There are multiple perspectives on each these concepts and approaches. For instance, the idea of Social Capital propounded by Rober Needham is highly contested, there are also multiple perspective on the of good governance, including the one which sees good governance as a management approach rather than an approach that seek political accountability
23 . Carothers, Thomas (1999), Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC
24 . Archer, R (1996) Should Private Aid be Reconsidered? Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, p13
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