Development: Concept

Three concepts to describe and explain the goals of newly independent nations:

Growth

Modernization

Development

Recent development thinking has moved away from the limited objective of raising the GNP. Its new concerns-prevention of the degradation of environments, preservation of scarce natural resources or finding alternative to them, population control, and so forth-have wide ramifications in the domain of culture. Any consideration of the quality of life will be meaningless if it does not take into account deeply held cultural values. Similarly, human resource development has vital cultural underpinnings. The notion of basic or minimum needs-nutrition, education, health, housing, employment, and leisure-again is originally linked to culture. In this perspective, culture acquires still more significance. (Dube : 21)

Theory and practice in the influential Northern offices of development organizations which oversee policy development and exercise overall control of many programmes and budgets, argues that the current understanding and use of knowledge within the development sector is generally poor, and that this fact represents a major barrier to the effectiveness of development interventions. Furthermore, current trends in information, knowledge, and communications management practice within the sector are making matters worse, and that strategic opportunities offered by new technologies and new models of information exchange have not been properly understood, let alone exploited.

It is important to be clear why 'knowledge' and perception are so central to the value, purpose, and practice of development organizations. In order to do that, we need to reflect on the nature of development. The largely quantitative representation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-targeting percentages of the global population for access to vaccinations, primary education, and safe water supplies, among others-and the growing preference for meeting such targets through sets of contractual relations, reporting upwards to central authorities, give credence to a view of development as a set of deliverable actions at the end of which 'development' has taken place, as a giant service industry .(Powell: 518)

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015-from a blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries and all the world's leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world's poorest.

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

Defining Development:

Though most would agree that development means improving the living conditions of society, there has been much debate on just what constitutes improved living conditions and how they should be achieved.

Harka Gurung, in the forward of the book Nepal's Failed Development authored by Dr. Devendra Raj Pandey, states-"The author commences the book by referring to Paulo Freire on the notion of 'tyranny of words'. This encourages me to begin with debunking some dubious words prevalent in development lexicon. The first is the misconception that considers growth and development as being synonymous. Growth basically pertains to quantitative increment which may be independent of the process that induce change. Development, on the other hand, refers to transformation brought through structural changes in the operating forces. In Nepal's case, it has been mere growth in select indicators without any substantive alteration in the traditional set-up. In other words, what has gone through is only briddhi (growth) as accumulation but not vikas (development) with impact. That not all growth needs to be positive is evident from the country's increasing population and accentuating poverty."

Dr Pandey in Nepal's Failed Development states-" Development is a continuing (never-ending) process of change (towards a continuous improvement in human condition), we have been told almost from the time we ever heard this word in an academic or a professional context. And, indeed, that is what it must be in practice too. Can a continuous process be anything other than sustained and sustainable even as we should be careful not to confuse sustainability with continuity?"

Uma Narula says in Development Communication Theory and Practice-"Development includes the improvement of quality of life with programmes of nutritional status, maternal and child health and primary health care and the transformation of individuals as well as the social system. The present understanding of development is a unified socio-economic process."

She further says-" Development is a whole, it is an integral, value loaded, cultural process; it encompasses the natural environment, social relations, education, production, consumption and well-being."

Uma Narula's words-" Development is necessarily conceived as 'dynamic' in the service of the 'progress'. The progressive change is described as alternation in awareness, motivation and participation of the individuals. From a social point of view the development refers to the change in the social structure or in the functions performed by different groups and units within it. It is a process of innovation where one learns from the experiences of others and assimilates what is considered useful through a process of selection. Development is 'growth' oriented all time."

Development: First perspective

The first is modernization, based on neo-classical economic theory, and promoting and supporting capitalist economic development. This perspective assumes that the Western model of economic growth is applicable elsewhere, and that the introduction of modern technologies is important in development. Evidence of modernization can be readily observed in local-level projects that aim to persuade people to adopt technologies, and also in the macro-level policies of government and aid organizations that pressure Third World countries to sacrifice education and human services for economic growth.

Development: Second perspective

Critical perspectives constitute a second way of thinking about development. These perspectives challenge the economic and cultural expansionism and imperialism of modernization, and they argue for political and economic restructuring to produce a more even distribution of rewards in society. These perspectives do a good job of exposing and critiquing the flaws of modernization, yet they have been less successful so far in proposing concrete alternatives, and they seldom form the primary basis of funded development projects.

Development is usually understood to mean the process by which societal conditions are improved. However, there is much disagreement on what constitutes improvement. For instance, a modernization perspective, assumes that a western model of economic growth is universally desirable. Critical perspectives challenge the economic and cultural expansionism and imperialism of modernization, arguing for new economic arrangements to create more even distribution of rewards in society.

Professor K.E. Eapen has projected that three major factors must be considered in any discussion of development: economic growth, self-reliance, and social justice.

Paradigms of Development:

There have been several paradigms of development, each of which had a little different view of what development is.

First Development Decade: 1960s (In the 1950s and 1960s the development theorists and practitioners stressed and visualized that development can be achieved by modernization via industrialization and urbanization.)

Media-for-Modernization paradigm (1960 &1970s)

Western development aid and all facets of the process, including communication, have been challenged since the 1970s. (Many large and expensive projects promoting social change have failed to help their intended recipients, or have resulted in even worsened conditions for them. Development's primary focus on economic growth has ignored other crucial, yet non-material aspects of human need.)

The 1970s were giving rise to consideration of greater grassroots participation, more equality in distribution of the benefits of development, more inputs by recipient nations and local communities and enhancing the quality of life in developing countries.

Prior to the 1980s, development communication referred to a dominant paradigm in theory and research. It was top-down, non-directive, and relied on mass media technology to persude.Out of this grew the diffusion of innovations model, based on the idea that new ideas in the system would 'trickle down' to the masses, where they would eventually be adopted. Under this theory, information access was for the privileged, the masses had little input, and the knowledge gap widened. Then, in 1986, Rogers abandoned his top-down orientation in diffusion theory and introduced his convergence model, which asserted that communication is always a mutual process of information-sharing between two or more persons in order to reach a mutual understanding.

The international development theorists and practitioners in the second and the third development decades argued and practiced that development implies commitment to social goals as well as to multifaceted interrelated sets of economic, social, political and cultural variables.

In the 1960s development means a process of modernization modeled on industrial societies. The measure was economic growth. The programmes and projects in the economic and social structures were undertaken in developing countries. The paramount paradigm was knowledge transfer from developed countries to developing countries. The myth of the power of the mass media to transfer knowledge alone was turned to media and communication research. The idea was that technology will replace teacher. The passing of traditional society was inevitable. The major issue was diffusion of innovations.

But as the time passed, the indicators were that more complex socio-economic forces were at work for development rather than industrialization only. The gap was widening between the rich and the poor, the centrally planned interventions did not benefit the intended beneficiaries. The social growth along with economic growth were the development focii.Since definition of development has been changing due to variety of factors both in the developed and developing countries, the newer paradigms were emerging during these four decades with different focii.

The western model for development predominated in the 1950s and 1960s.Rogers called this the 'dominant paradigm' of development.The emphasize of this model was that modernization/development could be achieved by increased productivity, economic growth and industrialization, that is, heavy industries and capital intensive technologies, urbanization, centralized planning and endogenous factors of development. Development was measured by gross national product (GNP), total or per capita.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, several world events combined with the intellectual critiques began to crack the credibility of the dominant paradigm. Then alternative to the dominant paradigm emerged.