Lecture topic

Understanding Development – Multiple perspectives

PRM Course
Development Theory

Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan

Institute of Rural Management Anand
Dt. 17-18 December 2022
 What is development?

• Growth rate; rise in personal income

• Industrialization; technological advance

• Access to services; satisfaction of basic needs

• Social modernization

• Capabilities; freedom

Sen’s capability approach

• Satisfaction/happiness

Bhutan’s GNH

• Sustainable development
 Sen’s flute example

• Child A: the only one of the three that knows how to play it.

• Child B: is poor and has no other toy of his own to play with.

• Child C: has been working on the flute for months, so deserve it

Who should get the flute?

and Why???
(Sen, 2006)
Limitations of conventional notion of development

Shortcomings of GDP

Treats ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ as same:

Considers only economic value (not social value, not environmental

consequences)
Tobacco and health care – treated same
Power plant – do not take into account environmental consequences
Not account the damage to the assets resulting from pollution

Increases with polluting activities and again cleanups

(pollution: double benefit to the economy)

Crime, divorce, and natural disasters as economic gain

Example: transportation sector: bus travel vs. train travel
Limitations of conventional notion of development
Cont...
Shortcomings of GDP

Depletion of natural capital as income

Example – Income for extracting minerals recorded, but simultaneous
depletion is not.
Misleading signal on sustainable national income
– growth is through liquidation of natural capital:
short run ~ long run
For a natural resource dependent economies, GDP and saving are
overstated.
Limitations of conventional notion of development

Shortcomings of GDP

Ignore non-market activities

Childcare, elder care, other home-based tasks, and volunteer work
in the community go completely non-reckoned

Harvest of firewood or wild foods for own use.

Non-marketed goods provided by ecology – not accounted

(Example: recreation value of forests, forest provides watershed protection
– benefiting agriculture, hydro power, municipal water system)

Several features which cannot be monetized – beauty of a village

 Limitations of conventional notion of development
Cont...
Shortcomings of GDP

No account of income distribution:

Average; total

No account of quality of products:

Same economic value – quality of products may change

No account of quality of life:

Leisure
Capabilities

Challenging fundamental notion of GDP

Degrowth; Human Development; Sustainable Development
 Degrowth
Well-being of all, and maintains the natural basis of life
Antithesis of ‘faster, higher, further’
- “the only sustainable growth is degrowth”

“Degrowth is a political, economic, and social movement based on anti-

consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas”

“It raises the prospect of finally ejecting the twin demons of

productivism and consumerism that are responsible for so many
historical failures…”

(Graeber, 2015)
 Degrowth
Cont...
“Downscaling of production and consumption—the contraction of
economies—arguing that overconsumption lies at the root of long term
environmental issues and social inequalities…
(they) aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive
means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art,
music, family, nature, culture and community.
(Larson-Walker; 2014)

(SCORAI, 2016)
 Daly’s Continuum
Cont…

It relates natural wealth

to ultimate human
purpose through
‘technology’, ‘economics’,
‘politics’ and ‘ethics’, by
integrating means and
ends
Daly (1973); Meadows (1998)
 Thank You
Queries and Suggestions

E-mails:
happyhippu@gmail.com,
hippu@irma.ac.in