Why Development matters and what can CDR do for it?

Dr. Kapil D. Chandrayan

These days development has become a buzzword and we often see it being used very loosely. Let us first try to understand the term 'Development'. The Cambridge dictionary defines development as "the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced". From this simplistic definition let’s now have a look at more sophisticated definition by some economists. But before that one more confusion needs to be cleared and that is between 'Growth' and 'Development'. While understanding the difference we will also try to understand the definition of Development.

Many times Growth and Development are used interchangeably. But there is a great difference between the two. The famous American economic historian Charls Poor Kindleberger defines the two terms as follows: "Economic Growth means more output, while Economic Development implies both more output and changes in the technical and institutional arrangement by which it is produced and distributed. Growth may well involve not only more output derived from greater amounts of inputs but also greater efficiency i.e. an increase in output per unit of input. Development goes beyond this to imply changes in the composition of output and in the allocation of inputs by sectors."

In simpler words Growth is a quantitative term while Development is both quantitative as well as qualitative. Only increase in income of an individual or the economy may fall in the purview of Growth but will not necessary lead to development. If the increase in income is supplemented by changes in consumption pattern of the individual or the economy and / or leads to betterment of physical quality of life then it can be termed as Development.

Now that we have understood the concept of Development, let's try to understand its importance in the Indian context.The Indian economy has experienced lots of twists and turn since the independence era. The journey began from a rural agrarian economy with a devastated cottage industrial sector followed by the era of nationalization and socialist control during the Nehru & Indira era. Then came the 90s when the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization & Globalization) model was adopted and the economy was opened up. Since then, there has been as consistent drift of the economy towards being a more capitalist economy. These experiments with different economic ideologies had one central theme and that was welfare of the people of India. In the earlier times, especially prior to the pre liberalization era, the focus was more on Economic Growth while now we have a clear focus on Development. The concepts like Human Development have become very popular amongst the economic and social fraternity and have become a vital indicator of performance appraisals of state and federal governments.

In short the relevance of Development to Indian Economy can be summarized as follows:

1. Food Security to the vast population of India can be achieved through the development of Indian Agriculture. 2. Even today almost 59% population of India depends on Agriculture for their livelihood. Development of the sector will provide productive & sustainable livelihood the majority of population of the nation. 3. Development can assure a better quality of life to the citizens in terms of Housing facilities, Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, Electricity, clean& safe fuel, etc. 4. It can assure better preventive and curative healthcare ensuring increased life expectancy. 5. It can assure best quality of education from pre-primary to higher & technical education. 6. It can provide us gainful and productive employment and livelihood opportunities.

All in all development leads to expansion in the choices that we have. With more choices the quality and standard of life improves providing a platform for individuals and institutions to strive for the achievement of higher goals of life.

This is what the theoretical side of Development is, but it is also necessary to have a peep into the real life scenarios. Unfortunately the Indian development scenario has not been very encouraging in most of the sectors for most of the years post independence. The two important reasons behind this underutilized growth potential of India can be summarized as follows:

1. Every problem or issue gets politicalized and becomes a problem of politics rather than a problem of Development. 2. Since independence Political parties have been propagating that the duty of the citizens is to vote and everything else is the responsibility of the Government.

Due to the aforementioned reasons the role of public (citizens and groups) went on diminishing in the development process and the entire process of development became a child of the government alone. For every small thing we as public start looking at the government machinery for solutions. Thus our contribution to the process of Nation-Building is either nil or very meagre. In a democracy the role of people is not restricted to just electing their representatives but also demands larger participation.

As a small beginning in this regard, we at Centre for Development Research (CDR), have taken a small step to first study, understand and then present the real facts to the society. CDR would be a research institution which would be taking up

various research projects from Government and Non Government agencies and would publish the results for improving the public understanding. Also we would be organizing public lectures every quarter on issues of public and national importance. Eminent personalities and scholars from various areas of knowledge would be invited to deliver the lecture followed by interactive session with the audience. The outcome of these lectures and interactions will be published. Similarly to create a culture of research and academic understanding a research paper presentation competition will be organized every year where young students from various sections of education will participate.

The basic idea is to provide a platform for apolitical, development oriented and research based interaction of various thinkers, scholars and workers to improve public understanding of issues and to encourage active participation in the process of nation-building.

I take this opportunity to appeal to the readers to wholeheartedly participate in this endevour.