What does ‘development’ mean? From economic development to growthand happinessFrancine Mestrum, PhDwww.globalsocialjustice.com

Failing efforts in development cooperation have given rise to a now intensivedebate on what ‘development’ should mean or should try to achieve. The nextquestion then, is what ‘development cooperation’ should try to achieve? Theanswers to these questions are not easy, but the vagueness of some of theanswers is not necessarily innocent. ‘Development’ is a highly controversialideology. Three of the main reasons for this are obvious.The first reason is very clear. One can find it in the books of William Easterly orthe recent success of Dambisa Moyo. Markets are much better instruments thanStates and solidarity is an unknown and useless concept. These market-orientedthinkers have good arguments to be against development cooperation. However,giving up solidarity in a world with huge inequalities does not seem to me to beacceptable.Secondly, some development actors think that the ‘road’ is more important thanthe ‘arrival’. ‘There is progress, but there is still a long way to go’. It means thatone doesn’t know exactly where the road is going, that past efforts have beenmainly unsuccessful, but that the few positive results are a reason for hope andcontinuous work. It is the answer of those who work in the aid industry and whocannot imagine, in spite of all the criticism, a world in which their presencebecomes redundant. They prefer to continue and take a ‘leap in the dark’ as thesecretary of one major NGO recently declared. The third reason can be found with those who, equally, cannot admit theirfailures but who constantly search for ‘new paradigms’. ‘We learn from ourmistakes in the past’, they say, ‘from now on things will be better’. Theyintroduce concepts as ‘participation’ and ‘ownership’ and ‘accountability’ or‘governance’. They forget the concrete objectives of ‘development’ in the 60s –to close the gap between ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘industrialized’ nations – and nowaim for poverty reduction. Whereas it is certainly possible to give approximatemeasures of individual income poverty, they prefer to talk of ‘multidimensionality’ which is hard to measure, and even of ‘wellbeing’ or‘happiness’. For them, the perception of poverty is at least as important as thereal hunger people are suffering from.It is this third phenomenon that I want to analyze in this article. I would like toexplain how the ambitions of development cooperation are constantlydowngraded and how the approach has become purely subjective. To-day, more1

and more people speak of ‘gross national happiness’. The question is: does itmean anything?

Fifty years of independence

In 2010 it will be fifty years since the decolonization process started. From 1960onwards, African States became independent and became members of theUnited Nations. Thanks to Latin American countries – which had already morethan one century of independence -, they knew that political independence wasrather meaningless if there was no economic progress.An analysis of the UN-documents from the 50s, 60s and 70s tells us what wasmeant by ‘development’ at that time. Industrialization was a major demand sinceall rich countries were indeed industrialized. International trade wascontroversial, but there was an agreement to say that fair prices had to be paidfor the commodities third world countries were exporting and that the terms of trade had to be improved. One possibility was to give the new states a fair part inthe services sector (banks, transports, insurance …). The new States also wantedto have a say on the multinationals that worked in their countries in order tohave some of the profits re-invested. They wanted a transfer of technology. Andin order to fill the financing gap, the now famous objective of 0,7 % of GDP of richcountries was introduced. The new States wanted to fill the gap between‘underdeveloped’ and ‘developed’ nations. ‘Development’ was a national processof economic modernization and collective emancipation. This generous development discourse did not last for long. It is difficult to saywhether the rich nations have ever really been willing to give in to the demandsof their former colonies. But it is clear that one major mistake was made –consciously or unconsciously - from the beginning. ‘Development’ was beingconsidered as a consensus issue, as if everyone agreed that it necessarily had tohappen and that everyone wanted it to happen. But development practice inNorth and South clearly pointed in another direction. Moreover, the 0,7 % of GDPwas never realized.In 1970, the UN-resolution on the second ‘development decade’ was adopted andit was stated that the gap between rich and poor continued to grow. Today, theseventies are seen as the ‘decade of social development’, since povertysuddenly became an issue, as well as social protection, basic needs and theinformal labor market. But beginning of the 70s, the US abandoned the BrettonWoods agreements whereas the oil exporting countries tripled the price of thecommodity that had become so vital for the West. This was the beginning of aneconomic crisis that led, in the 80s, to neoliberalism which thirty years later ledto the current financial and economic crisis.Development assistance never really got back on the right trail. Between 1975and 1990 it never was more than 0.30 to 0.35 % of GDP. After the Wall of Berlincame down, it dropped to 0.20 %. To-day, it is rising again though the currentcrisis could put a spoke in the wheels. The most recent UN-report on theMillennium Development Goals speaks already of a certain decline.2

Neoliberalism

After the external debt crisis began in 1982 in almost all developing countries,the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were ready to help. Newloans were given to settle the old ones and in return the indebted countries hadto accept ‘structural adjustments’. The history of these is amply documented andwe know that it has brought a certain macro-economic stability and a lot of human suffering. According to the UNDP, the social indicators in many countries,as well as the human development fell back. There was massive unemployment,women came to the informal labor market, schools and health centers wereclosed.In 1990 the World Bank re-invented ‘poverty reduction’. It had done so before inthe 70s though it never really put it into practice. At that time, poverty was stillrelated to social protection. The poverty discourse that emerged in the 90s wasvery different. Social security was now seen as serving ‘vested interests’,minimum wages were said to be contrary to the needs of the poor and with theexception of the social funds that were supposed to help some of the extremelypoor people, the main solution for poverty was said to be the market. Poverty, soone can read in all major documents, is mainly a consequence of discriminationand limited access to markets. Nothing in the first poverty programs of the 90swas different from the structural adjustments. Even after 1999, when the IMF joined the poverty efforts and poor countries were asked to introduce PRSPs(poverty reduction strategy papers), the IMF and the WB continued to imposetheir conditions, mainly the liberalization of trade and of capital accounts and theliberalization and privatization of the economy, including public services. The development agenda of the 60s and 70s had totally disappeared. Prioritywas now given to poverty reduction though it should be clear this can only be theconsequence of an economic development process. All neoliberal reforms thatwere imposed were said to be – in the long term – in the interest of poor people. The market would promote growth and growth is for the poor. Today, we know –once again - this did not happen. It became obvious that once again, theambitions of rich countries had been seriously downsized. Closing the gap hadtotally disappeared from their discourse. ‘Redistribution’ became unmentionable.Agriculture was neglected.

A new poverty discourse

In 2000 the World Bank published its second major poverty report. In 1990poverty was considered to be a question of lack of education and of health care.In 2000 the definition was broadened. Poverty, the report states, is vulnerability,lack of empowerment and lack of voice. Poverty, then, was definitely‘multidimensional’. The poor will rarely speak about income. This is how theWorld Bank interprets the poor’s discourse, though other interpretations arecertainly possible.In fact, it means that another important and dangerous step is being taken. Afterdownsizing the ambitions in the 1990s, the next step was to forget the3