D. P. Singh1
Abstract
When we have to address the issues of social development, we are confronted with multiple and complex dilemmas. The biggest dilemma is that we seek to eliminate poverty, hunger, inequality, unemployment, social injustice by adopting a model of development which is driven by economic growth. There are scarce evidences that suggest that the economic growth takes place without any cost to human life. While, development is viewed as a change, it is almost always in clash with culture, traditional folk ways, established and tested social norms in practice. Most people resist or show reluctance to such a change, mainly because of its inherent incompatibility between varied and diverse human aspirations and choices. Apart from that, development practically remains centered around growth and profit maximization rather than on wellbeing of the people. People are largely treated as disposable tools where there is little or no consideration to the bare fact that human life is not just about money, consumption and economics but about peace, creativity, knowledge, imagination, spiritual realization and contentment. The present paper argues that linking and prioritizing the needs and aspirations of the people and reconciling them with the varied development perspectives of contemporary society has to be at the core of development. Social development has to be social in theory as well as in practice. There has to be a balance between development and sustainability. The social work professionals and other stakeholders have to work to diminish this wide gap between the economics and social dimensions of social development.
Keywords: Social Development, Human Development, Economic Growth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Introduction:
With the global economy changing faster than never before, in the next 10 to15 years the world will experience a total structural transformation, changing our lives to a great extent. The world’s GDP will have to expand bringing with it an increased pressure on our environmental, natural and social resources. Creation of infrastructure in terms of urbanization, change of land use, additional energy systems and other technological advancements
1 Professor and Head, Department of Social Work, Punjabi University, Patiala, Email:
would put huge burden on earth’s natural and mineral reserves besides entire biodiversity. Meeting the increasing demands for food, energy and water and other basic amenities, would be an insurmountable task for the governments and the civil societies. The actions initiated in the name of development will determine the future course, which possibly, would not be as good and sustainable as we might desire it to be. The challenge to strike a balance between economic growth and its negative impact on our social life will grow even bigger as technological advancements will continue to impact our lifestyles all the more. With the growth of economy and advances in technology, there is no doubt that the nations will grow, jobs will increase, human efficiencies will be astonishing but simultaneously this expansion will eat up the natural resources, damage biodiversity and environment, eventually leading to a collapse of our earth. According to a report by UN Environment (2019), approximately 60 billion tons of renewable and non-renewable resources like freshwater, biomass oil, gas and minerals are extracted every year globally. During the period 1992-2018, the areas under urbanization have doubled destroying our forests and wetlands. The indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers has created 400 dead zones in our oceans. Consumption of fresh water has increased many folds. For agriculture and livestock alone, the consumption of water is now about 75% of the available freshwater on Earth. The report further underlines that three quarters of the land of earth and the half of the oceans have been seriously altered by mindless extraction of raw materials, over-fishing, energy production and intense agriculture. The rates of extinction of animal and plant species and devastation of ecosystems and bio diversity have acquired alarming proportions. It expresses concern that with the present pace of development and technological advances, it is not unreasonable to predict that humankind might disappear in another few hundred years or so. So to strike a balance between development, conservation and life is not merely desirable but unavoidable. If we don’t change our ways of living, the day is not too far when the imbalance between development and sustainability will swallow up the whole earth.
The Indian Scenario:
With transformation of country’s economy, India’s challenges in areas of employment, education, health, sanitation, nutrition and transparency are likely to increase disproportionately. Employment which is an important subject in the development agenda of our country faces serious issues. Just not unemployment but severe under-employment and a large number of unemployable youths are major areas of future concerns. Our educational institutions, except the premier ones, fall short in producing the right kind of people for the right kind of jobs. About six out of ten Indian employers face difficulties in finding right kind of workers in terms of requisite skills. Of about 5-6 lakh engineering graduates passing out each year, almost 80% of them lack requisite employment skills (India Today: 2019). It raises serious questions on the quality of our education and training manpower. As regards health in India, the overall expenditure of healthcare is meagre even as the economy of the country in increasing rapidly. India spends roughly about 1 percent of its GDP on public health. It lags far behind in reaching global health standards. There is serious infrastructure deficit in terms of human resources, prevention of disease and achieving universal health coverage. For supporting a population as huge as 1.3 billion people, which is, about18 percent of the world’s total population, the healthcare infrastructure in India is very fragile. One of the critical concerns of country’s development is the creation of health services that could cater to each and every individual. No doubt, we have made considerable progress in the promotion of health but still a lot needs to be done. There is just one doctor for every 1000 population (Economic Times: 2017). Health indicators like the IMR, MMR, and morbidity are still on the higher side. Public sanitation, preventive healthcare, control of communicable diseases and health education needs lot of improvement. The number of hospitals, dispensaries, public health centers and other medical facilities are not sufficient; neither do they have adequate manpower of doctors and para-medical staff. Infrastructure required in the hospitals in terms of availability of medicine, furniture and equipment are too inadequate to meet the increasing demand. In addition to the diseases of poverty and malnutrition, non-communicable diseases related to urbanization, such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and cancer are a cause of concern. These diseases are not just individual
tragedies, but a major threat to India’s economy.
Many of these health challenges are directly linked to sanitation and cleanliness. A clean environment is of paramount importance for increasing human capital productivity. Sanitation and cleanliness is an issue that we should have to look into as an investment and not as a cost. India faces a severe strain on water due to its large population. The Composite Water Management Index (2018) of NITI Aayog underlines that 600 million people in India face high-to extreme water stress while about 75% of households do not have drinking water on their premises and about a whopping 84% rural households do not have piped water access. 70% of our water is contaminated and India is currently ranked 120 among 122 countries in the water quality index. There is a wide gender gap in all development indices. This gap holds back economy in every society and more so India. Unless we value our women and work towards gender equality, attainment of development would always remain an unfulfilled agenda. Any kind of gender discrimination needs to be closely examined at family as well as community levels.
Social and economic disparities are a dark reality in our country. An Oxfam report released in January 2018 underlines the dramatic increase in economic inequality in the recent years. It underscores that about 73 percent of the wealth generated in the year 2017 went to the richest one percent, while 67 Crore Indians who comprise the poorest half of the population saw just one percent increase in their wealth. In the preceding year, this figure was about 58 percent as against 73% in 2017. This shows that distribution of wealth in India is ever increasing the economic inequalities in society (Business Today: 2019).
Yet another issue of concern about development in India relates to the lopsided and unplanned urban development. According to the UN data, about 41.6Crore Indians will be moving to cities and towns by the year 2050(The Hindu: January 27, 2019). They will be pushed to live in illegal colonies and urban slums. This would require innovative approaches to safeguard environment and human health. Transparency and corruption take a toll on
our daily life by hampering competitiveness, increasing inefficiencies and generating mistrust in government’s decisions.
From People’s Welfare to Market-driven Capitalistic Welfare:
India’s challenges accompanying development are multiple and complex. The adopted model, which is fuelled and sustained largely by consumerism, has largely failed to address peculiar problems that India faces today. The poor and the ordinary people have almost ceased to be the focus of economic policies. Instead, the rich have become the target of attention. The State is systematically withdrawing from social sectors of education, health and welfare. The minerals and the natural resources of the country are being handed over to the rich to set up industries and creating jobs. The corporate
in the guise of corporate social responsibility are being incentivized to
enter into the arena of social welfare. While the corporate is being given various incentives including loan waivers, the farmers and the peasants are fast losing subsidies. Of late, the word “subsidy” has become a dirty word for it is seen as a sheer waste of public funds while the word ‘’incentive’’ has gained unexpected glorifications. Since the economic reforms of 1991, the India’s social development model has shifted from a state-led welfare- oriented paradigm to a more market-driven capitalistic paradigm. Evidently, it has achieved very little towards the welfare of the poor masses in terms of creating employment opportunities, reducing poverty and narrowing the social and economic inequalities. The gap between development and sustainability is widening each passing year.
GDP is a Dumb Measure for Development:
Contemporary development discourse is largely driven by the economic indices such as GDP growth. GDP as such is not at all, a perfect measurement of development.
Since the negative activities such as polluting activities, increase in crimes, wars and conflicts also give a boost to the GDP figures, GDP growth doesn’t essentially capture everything that matters in one’s life. GDP is like a speedometer in a car. It tells you whether your economy is going faster or
slower. A speedometer is useful in a car but it doesn’t tell you everything that you want to know. It won’t tell you whether your engine is overheating, or about to run out of fuel. The speedometer doesn’t tell you whether or not, you are going in the right direction or following traffic rules or the tyre pressure is low or if it needs wheel balancing.
From Social to Human Development:
There are serious limitations with the GDP growth model. Owing to these limitations, the GDP growth model of development has been questioned by the scholars, and thinkers with time (Tomlinson, 2019; Moss and Lanman, 2017). In the1990s, the concept and measurement of human development was introduced underscoring as to what development should be and how we must go about quantifying it more comprehensively. Ways were suggested to measure human well-being in terms other than income or consumption. The welfare economists like Amartya Sen (1999) and Md. Yunus (2007) have underlined that socialdevelopment is about human development. As a development approach, we must be concerned with advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy. Human development vis-a-vis social development is seen as being more comprehensive and holistic concept since it recognizes the important role of social, political and environmental aspects as the means of expanding people’s capabilities. For long, the welfare economists have been striving hard to put the concept of human development into practice but still the GDP growth model of social development had, by and large, remained unchallenged. The economies still continue to be sorted on the basis of economic variables like GDP figures, purchasing power, exchange rates, public debts and government borrowings. The central importance on money, markets, production and technological innovation has not diminished in the development discourse. The efforts made to describe the contribution of education, training, skills, aspirations, laws, social systems and social institutions are yet to reduce the gravitational pull of GDP.
As discussed earlier, the general understanding of development is still close to the Western capitalistic model. It implies that a nation is not truly
developed till its annual GDP figures and the socio-political and educational structures do not resemble to that of a developed country like the United States of America. In this situation, what can be the role and response of professional social workers is an important question that needs answers?
Sync Human and Social Development: A Response of Social Work
Social work is about organized and systematic efforts to secure the highest personal and social satisfaction for individuals, groups and communities. That way, the goals of social work and social development are overlapping. It’s not incorrect to say that while social work is a mean, social development is an end. So simply put, the response of professional social workers is to make social development ‘social’ in theory as well as in practice.
As pointed out earlier, social development is not about creating more roads, railways, airports and weapons but about people’s creativity, their inherent ability to evolve into superior human beings. It is about a fulfilling life of compassion, cooperation, spirituality and peaceful coexistence. The extent and pace of development is affected by the level of education, knowledge and aspirations of people, attitudes and skills of the people. Development, in that sense, is the actualization of the motives and the latent urges of the individuals of a society. Ignoring education, health, environment, ecology and choosing to live in concrete jungles called cities, beyond doubt, is a disastrous preposition. If social development doesn’t bring peace, harmony and satisfaction in people’s life, how can it be called as social development? In real development, the people have to be seen beyond being variables of just eating and consuming. The social workers, therefore, must seek answers to these questions. Social workers must question as to what the people in the ‘developed’ nations are developing in the name of GDP growth? Should the people be made slaves to the economy and technology or should they be the masters of their own lives?
Social workers must ask, what good the wealth does, if it is limited in few hands and a majority of the people have to do odd jobs to survive, or if the
jobs are temporary, or if the people are hired only to be fired anytime? How developed are the developed countries? If the US is really so developed, why does about 15 percent of their people still live in poverty? Why there are so much drug abuse and crimes? Why children are increasingly indulging in shootings? Why no one is assured of a job? Why US spend trillions of dollars in carrying out military operations in some far-off countries like Iraq, Philistine or Afghanistan?
These are some searching questions that would decide as to what response the social workers should have and in what direction the development should go? In general, the social workers should view development as a by-product of all knowledge, social situations, institutions and life processes. As such, development is about the nature of the relationships and the processes that govern the interaction of all stakeholders including the flora and fauna and all ecosystems. It does not single out a specific set of social or economic variables but represent itself as a social phenomenon of knowing the whole rather than the parts. In that sense, development is viewed as a unified and integrated system of knowledge about social interactions and life processes, not merely about human beings but every existence on the Earth.
Social Development as a Quest for New Skills
Development is essentially a human process driven by the energies and aspirations of the people. While it increases the urge in people to learn new skills and processes, it also gets increased by itself with the rising aspirations of the people. As the societies have to move on a wide spectrum of psychological motives for its survival and self-preservation, the urge for seeking social status and power remain unending. In the pursuit of advancement of a society, every individual has been compelled to instil and inculcate new competencies and skills all along. The rising expectations of people are a powerful force that propels the process of development pervading all sections of a society. (G. Jacobs and H. Cleveland, 1999). The social workers, therefore, should view social development as an urge of learning new skills and new processes. Beyond doubt, new skills, new work processes, and new technologies have to be the basics of development of any society but they should not, in any way, compromise the quality of
living. For development to occur, people have to be motivated to learn new skills and adapt to new work processes, thereby, raising aspirations and expectations and acquiring new forms of behaviour to achieve greater results.
Social Development as a Self-Conception:
It is often assumed that development is largely influenced by the external conditions but that is not true. Development necessarily is a process of human beings. It is determined by the choices and responses of the individuals in a society. External forces do propel the process of development but it is erroneous to say that the external forces alone determine this process. Development is a function of knowledge, achievement motivation, attitudes