INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

(Instructor: Sikandar Tangi)

Course Description and Objectives:

The course is intended to be of introductory level which aims to familiarize the students
with major trends and important topics in the discourse of development. The course
covers a wide range of issues the Developing Countries are confronting with , it has tried
to look at those issues on different dimensions and defining them not merely from the
perspective of one discipline but from different socio- political and economical
dimensions.
Organization of the course
The module is planned of a period of 14-16 weeks, two sessions in a week each of 2
hours. The students are encouraged and expected to actively participate in the classes.
The instructor reserves the right to delete, substitute and add new material during the
course.
Course Assessment
1. Group or individual presentations with a written research paper of 1500 to 2000
words. (Soft copies of all the assignments and presentations must be emailed to
the instructor on the day they are due or before) [20%]
2. Monthlies. [40%]
3. Final/Comprehensive exam. [40%]

NOTE: There will be penalties for any assignments submitted after the deadline or
on retake quizzes. It should also be noted that late assignments and retake are
acceptable only on the three consecutive days after the original deadline.

CONTENTS

Meaning and views of Development.

Theories of Development.

Poverty and Development.

The Great Transformation.

Diversity in pre-capitalist societies

Colonialism, Capitalism and Development

The Power of Colonial State

o Colonial Strategies of Social Control

Sustainable Development.

Environmental degradation and Sustainability.

Democratization, Good governance and Development.

Agents of development.

Is the World Overpopulated?

Community Development and Empowerment.

Rural development.

Informal Economy.

Economic Problem of Man.

Gender and Development.

o Role of Women in Islam

International Development.

A World at War.
o The Concept of Jihad in Islam.

Readings:
As the course is interdisciplinary, therefore, there is no single textbook for the course.
Some of the books that contain a wide variety of topics have been put in the
recommended books list. In addition to referring to books, the students are advised to
consult a wide range of newspapers, magazines and e-journals that may be of use to
students in preparation for their assignments. The students are highly advised to read
newspaper and magazines on daily basis.

Recommended Books:
Allen, T and Thomas, A. (2000). Poverty and Development into the 21st Century.
Oxford University Press.
Beer De Frik and Swanepoel, H. (2000). Introduction to Development Studies.
Oxford University Press, South Africa.
Potter, B Robert and Desai, V. (2000). The Companion to Development Studies.
Oxford University Press Inc. New York.
Rist, G. (2002). The History of Development-from Western Origin to Global
Faith. Zed Books London.
Rapley, J. (1997). Understanding Development- Theory and Practice in the Third
World. UCL Press Limited, London.

SUGGESTIONS:

Skim all readings before lecture.

Reread after the lecture and participate in class discussion for better
understanding.
Identify main argument (thesis), importance and main supporting evidence/ logic.
Try not to get lost in esoteric details and language.

What is development?
"The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people's choices. In principle, these
choices can be infinite and can change over time. People often value achievements that
3

do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to
knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against
crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and
sense of participation in community activities. The objective of development is to create
an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives." Mahbubul
Haq
Development in its present theoretical shape is a western concept and its origin can be
traced back from the colonial era-the imperialist policies of civilizing mission could be
the best example. The colonialists had been always given this impression to the colonized
people of being uncivilized and backward, and to get them developed or civilized is a
kind of burden on the white men-a moral duty of the white men. In colonial definition
'development' had been defined to only infrastructural development (e.g. construction of
railway, telegraph etc) and other political and economic policies (e.g. English education,
democratization, westernization etc) of the colonizers. Development had become an
excellent tool of fulfilling the imperialist agenda of disempowerment

and

marginalization, this imperialist agenda was implemented with the help of local
collaborators acting as agents of development.
Many scholars believe that development age, in the post war era, with its new shape
officially started from President Trumans four point speech. We must embark on a bold
new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress
available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the
people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate.
They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty
is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in
history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these
people...the old imperialism-exploitation for foreign profit-has no place in our plans.
What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fairdealing. From this historical speech its very obvious that America had discarded its
isolationist policy and is very eager to replace Great Britain as the new superpower. With
its amazingly advanced scientific and technological power Americas believes that it does
possess all the ingredients of an imperialists power.

Since 1945, the concept of development is a highly debatable issue. We keep facing
different kinds of definitions in different periods of time, we have the colonialist
definition of infrastructural development to the capitalist definition of trickle down to
the socialists' bottom up approach, also the sturcturalists emphasize on state role to the
neo-liberal basic idea of restricting state interference and promotion of free trade. It has
been observed for decades that the definitions defined by the powerful west becomes the
prevalent definition and the meaning of development is being directed towards that
definition. It is something of great concerned that development if wrongly defined can
make the world, particularly the third world, more vulnerable and undeveloped.

With the end of cold war, the Third World having some break from the cold war politics
of exploitation and double standards, realized to the world particularly to the west, that
socio-ecological development is more important than mere economic policies, the
western concept of development based on modernization theory was challenged. Those
aids given to the third world by the superpowers didnt bring real change to the third
world. The West was made conscious that development has a subjective side that can not
be measured statistically. Development was no more considered an economic
development, and per capita GNP is not the only tool of measuring development. New
tools of measuring development were discovered e.g. Dr. Mahbubul Haq's Human
Development Index (HDI). The concept of infrastructural development tends to be
replaced by human centered development. Concepts of freedom, choice, empowerment,
participation, realization of human potential, sustainable development, justice and social
inclusiveness became the part and parcel of the definition of development.

Due to such developments we come across different definition of development. The

report of the south commission, produced under the chairmanship of the former
Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, says a process which enables human beings to
realize their potential, build self-confidence, and lead lives of dignity and fulfillment. It is
a process which frees people from the fear of want and exploitation. It is a movement
away from political, economic, or social oppression. Through development, political
independence acquires its true significance. And it is process of growth, a movement

essentially springing from within the society that is developing (cited in Rist, p.9, 2002).
Another definition which is same in its essence to the South Commission is given by
UNDP The Human Development Report of 1991, published by the United Nation
Development Program, state: the basic objective of human development is to enlarge the
range of peoples choices to make development more democratic and participatory. These
choices should include access to income and employment opportunities, education and
health, and a clean and safe physical environment. Each individual should also have the
opportunity to participate fully in community decisions and to enjoy human, economic
and political freedoms.

From the past history of development it can be said that the West is pretending itself as a
role model for the Third World Countries and giving this impression that the Third World
has to follow in the footsteps of those of the North to make a success of their own future.
Modernization is being tried to synonymize with westernization. Swanepoel (2004) has
pointed out three important items against the archetype ethnocentric definition of
development, that are: first it had to be 'human oriented', second local participation
should be must and thirdly all development projects have to be based on sustainable
development notion. This recent definition emphasizes the human factor of development;
participation has become the norm of development. Lack of participation will
disempower the stakeholders and consequently they wont enjoy the ownership of
development. It is greatly expected that sideling the locals from participation can also
cause the destruction of local values and local ecology, so consequently any development
without local participation can not bring positive results and that kind of development
could be mere waste of time and scarce development resources.
Another very simple definition of Development defined by Chambers (1997) is 'good
change', it is very difficult of achieving good change without destroying something
previously held dear such as traditional values. Again it is very important to know that
development is not a one-off process of change, its a multifaceted phenomenon, and it
implies an all encompassing change not just an improvement in one aspect. it is to be
noted that respect for local values, traditions , religion, spirituality, aesthetics and
agrarian virtues become more important in case of traditional societies like Afghanistan.

Bibliography
Chambers, R. (1997) Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, Intermediate
Technology Publications, London.
Rist, Gilbert (2002) The History of Development: From Western Origins to
Global Faith. Zed Books Ltd. New York.
Swanepoel, Hennie and De Beer, Frik (2004) Introduction to Development
Studies. Oxford University Press, Southern Africa.
Cramer, Christopher and Jonathan Goodhand (2002) Try Again. Fail Again. Fail
Better? War, the State and the Post-Conflict Challenge in Afghanistan.
Development and Change. Vol. 30, pp. 885-909
Knight, Mark and Ozerdem Alpaslan (2004) Disarmament and Demobilization of
former Combatants during the war to peace transition, guns, camps and cash?
Journal of Peace Research 41:4, pp. 499-516.

Development and Conflict Theory

By
Olympio Barbanti, Jr.
August 2004
The concept of "development" cuts across many levels. It refers to macro issues (such as
patterns of a nation's growth), as much as it refers to meso problems (such as river-basin
plans), or to micro problems (such as local community development). All three levels
macro, meso, and micro, are interwoven. And at all levels, many different dimensions
economic, cultural, religious and gender affect and are affected by development. This
research addresses the links between the promotion of social change associated with
development aid and conflict.
Development should be understood as a process, not a product. Societies are always
changing. Some improve, while others fail. Development theory aims at explaining both
processes. Development practice intends to provide tools that can be applied to entire
societies or specific communities. Such interventions are intended to move communities
or societies from a situation in which they are believed to be worse off to a situation in
which they are assumed to be better off.
Current links between development and conflict theory stress the provision of aid in cases
of violent conflict. Peacebuilding interventions after violent conflicts address the same
concerns as development interventions. Clearly, development is at the core of postconflict interventions, where the physical and social landscape has been damaged. In such
cases, development assistance is provided.
Yet development aid goes beyond development assistance. Aid refers to general support
for the improvement of Third World societies, which may or may not be, in violent
conflict. Perhaps because development aid does not deal directly with violence, conflict
and conflict resolution have not been topics of major concern to development theorists or
workers. This, however, has started to change.
The Millennium Development Goals illustrate how development is an interdisciplinary
field, which implements programs in various areas and deals with innumerable variables
such as economic, social, political, gender, cultural, religious and environmental
issues. The field is further complicated because these variables are highly intertwined.
Therefore, the analysis of gender issues must also consider the affects of and on linked
economic, religious, and cultural issues. Similar links exist with many other development
topics. Such links become clear in the findings of this research.

Development and Structural Change

Societal change most often requires structural change. While this may be true in any
country, it is probably more often true in the developing world. Yet most development

intervention is locally targeted and short-term. It does not try to implement structural
change across the entire society.
This disconnect creates something of a "Catch-22" a vicious cycle in which
development leads to conflict, and the lack of conflict resolution practices interferes with
further development.
Ignoring structural factors means not only overlooking dimensions that take place at the
macro level, but also not paying enough attention to the micro-level effects of
development and conflict in society. One shocking example was recently publicized by
an opinion poll, according to which 67% of Brazilians are functionally illiterate. That
means they have great difficulty in understanding very basic information. How can one
promote rational processes of conflict resolution in this situation?
Such functional illiteracy is caused, in part, by the fragility of the educational system.
Deteriorated schools mirror the economic crisis of developing countries as well as the
lack of importance attributed to education by the society. This is largely a result of longstanding social inequities maintained by an elite that benefits from the resulting patronclient relationship. These relationships are so strong that the structural problems continue,
even after some conflict resolution measures are taken, such as the empowerment of
powerless groups.

Development and Conflict

The interconnection of development factors often causes further conflict escalation. For
example, administrative chaos in under-financed governmental bodies often causes the
transference of responsibilities from the central state to NGOs, local governments, and
the private sector. The result is that such organizations assume duties that may go well
beyond their capacities, which causes further conflict. For example, NGOs, local
governments, and the private sector lack training in facilitation, mediation, and
negotiation, as well as the theoretical knowledge of conflict resolution. So conflicts
escalate, with no one knowing what to do about it.
There are few institutions in most developing societies that understand or engage in the
practice of conflict resolution. But even when they do, they tend to work with inadequate
win-win frameworks. In some cases, for example, negotiation through typical win-win
processes is blocked because the powerful within poor communities are criminals. In
Brazil, criminal elements are able to exert full control over large territories, mostly within
metropolitan areas, from where they traffic in narcotics and weapons. This is one of many
reasons why traditional interest-based, win-win negotiation does not work in many cases
in developing countries.
In Brazil, the criminal sector has been able to recruit children as young as nine years old.
The profile of the typical youth taken to reform schools is shocking. The majority are
around 13 years old, yet they are fathers and breadwinners. Most often, they turned to
crime because they do not have other employment options nor do they have an
expectation of a better life. Due to the economic crisis of the last ten years, permanent
and secure employment was largely replaced by "flexible," insecure contracts without the

guarantees of the official social security system. This has particularly affected women
and other vulnerable groups in society, who form the majority of those working in the
informal sector.
This informality has brought further constraints to conflict resolution in developing
countries. Many young people are already the second, or even the third generation of
families who are mainly employed in "flexible," or "odd" jobs. They lack the culture of
work, and the values attributed to it.
Social values are also often undermined by the official educational system, since
information disseminated by books in public schools is embedded with prejudice and
stereotypes that, for example, overvalue men in detriment of women.
Development aid tries to change such problems. These factors, among others, are the
target of the Millennium Goals. However, in many instances, development interventions
underestimate local politics, social realities, and belief systems. These are strong factors
affecting the opportunities for conflict resolution, which nevertheless have remained
overlooked by those working in the field of development theory and practice.
It is remarkable that conflict resolution theory and instruments are also not taken into
account either by indigenous organizations, or by international development agencies.
This is clearly evidenced by the Human Development Report 2003, published by the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The report reflects a deep concern with
armed, violent and military conflicts such as interstate or civil wars. However, it does not
consider other more subtle forms of conflict, or the notion that conflict processes can
preclude the achievement of development goals. An understanding of the nature and
effects of international development illustrates the reason for this.

Development History
Development practice is not new. It dates back to the European colonies, when colonizers
enforced a "civilized," ordered, white, male, Christian ethic. Organized, ongoing
development aid followed during the post-colonial period. Development theory, however,
came along much later, emerging as a stable, academic field of inquiry only after World
War II, when European countries were trying to keep their former colonies at arm's
length. Throughout these years, development theory and practice was strongly
characterized by the transmission of moral values from industrialized countries to lessindustrialized, rural countries.
The development field has always been highly influenced by economic thought, as
exemplified by the fact that development has been primarily measured by increases in
gross national product (GNP). According to Dennis Rondinelli, during the 1950s and 60s,
development intervention assumed that "successful methods, techniques, and ways of
solving problems and delivering services in the U.S. or other economically advanced
countries would prove equally successful in the developing nations." [1] Therefore, at the
very start of development theory, there was a notion of direct transferability, or a "one
size fits all" type of development assistance. However, delivering aid was not just a
technical matter; it also involved political concerns. For example, during the Cold War,

10

U.S. provision of aid was largely directed to those countries that were, or could come,
under Soviet influence.
The 70s were marked by rapid growth of American and European multinational
companies in the developing world. While these companies expanded markets and made
new goods available, they also exerted predatory competition on indigenous industries.
Two theoretical debates emerged in developing countries, especially in Latin America:
the dependency theory and the center-periphery theory. For dependency theorists such as
Paul Baran, Andre Gunther Frank, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, developing countries
were trapped in a cycle of dependence on international capital in which there was little
room to maneuver. The center-periphery (or metropolis-satellite) theory developed by
Immanuel Wallerstein, argued that movement within and between the center and the
periphery was possible.[2] This theory introduced the concept of a world economy, and
said that movement within and between the strata of this economy was regulated by
market forces.
Such movement became especially difficult, however, in the 1980s. Due to the financial
crisis of this decade, many developing countries could not pay their external debts, and
had to adopt economic adjustment measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Bank in order to borrow money. Such measures included cuts in
public expenditure, and the development of a more efficient, transparent and accountable
state [3]. Though the World Bank recommendation was that "an effective state not a
minimal one is central to economic and social development," in reality IMF and
World Bank requirements have resulted in large cuts in states' size and functions, and
little or no increase in accountability and transparency.[4]
During the 90s, the IMF maintained its structural adjustment plan, while the World Bank
gained a deeper understanding of other factors that can affect economic performance.
Academics such as Nobel laureates Robert Coase (1991), Gary Becker (1992), Douglas
North and Robert Fogel (1993), John C. Harsanyi, Reinhard Selten, John F. Nash Jr.
(1994), and Amartya Sen (1998) were amongst several authors who focused on
transaction costs, property rights, institutions, non-market behavior and welfare
economics in their development theories.
In the 90s, this renewed focus on institutions was combined with a series of world
summits organized by the United Nations to discuss development. Environment and
development was the theme of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro summit. In 1993, a human rights
conference took place in Vienna. Cairo hosted a conference on population and
development in 1994. Social development was discussed at the Copenhagen 1995 world
summit. Gender issues, especially the role of women, were discussed in 1995 in Beijing.
The last conference, Habitat-II, took place in Istanbul to discuss urban issues.

Current Development Theory

While much of development thinking and practice has changed, the moral and political
dimensions still remain. Critics of current development theory such as Jonathan Crush [5]
and Arturo Escobar [6], see development as a set of rational, managerial prescriptions
through which industrialized nations have largely imposed their views and models onto

11

the beneficiaries of their aid, forcing, to some extent, a change in the identities of those
who have been "benefitted." It is still common for academics and practitioners in
developing countries to believe that development is a direct transference of Western
values onto non-Western cultures. Organizations such as the World Bank and USAID are
believed to impose expertise and authority, silence alternative voices, promote a
dependent path to development, and keep their eyes closed to the power imbalances they
create.
However, development is not the only influence on a nation; local political processes also
have significant effects. Additionally, the development field helps to overcome human
rights abuses, protect the environment and empower women. While the debate about the
pros and cons of different approaches to development still rages, the constant critiques
have inspired a quest for diversity among development theories.
As was noted earlier, development interventions are intended to move societies from a
situation in which they are believed to be worse off, to situations in which they are
assumed to be better off. Certainly, there is a great deal of contention on what determines
who is "worse" and who is "better." The traditional paradigms of development theory
have historically been similar to those of economics. Specifically, the field of
Development Economics tries to explain differences in development conditions mostly
through macroeconomic factors. A country's GDP has been, for most economists, the
major parameter with which to measure development success.
Recently, the contributions of the Nobel laureates of the 1990s, who stressed the political
and social dimensions of development, have come under more consideration. Research
on development has become multi-disciplinary, embracing policy analysis and starting to
focus on the major symptom of failed development, poverty.
Such a multi disciplinary view of development opens an avenue for fresh thinking on the
human dimensions of development. The argument for such a view is that development is
not an end in itself, but rather a means for achieving better and more equitable living
conditions for human beings. Associated with this view, the focus on sustainable
development aims at integrating economic, biological, social, cultural, and political
dimensions.
Today, all approaches co-exist, and in many instances there is an attempt to reconcile all
views of development. There are, certainly, nuances. The two tables below show the
approaches to development topics from the World Bank and from the Eldis Gateway to
Development, which presents a more academic view of development. The Eldis Gateway
tends to emphasize anthropological and sociological approaches, while the World Bank's
literature tends to stress the economics of development.
[1] Rondinelli, Dennis A. Development Administration and U.S. Foreign Aid Policy,
Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, p.23.
[2] Wallerstein, I.M. (1979) The Capitalist World-Economy: Essays by Immanuel
Wallerstein, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12

[3] Messkoub, M. (1992). "Deprivation and Structural Adjustment." In Development

Policy and Public Action, eds. Wuyts, Mackintosh and Hewitt. (175-285), Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
[4] World Bank (1997). World Development Report: The state in a changing world,
Washington: World Bank.
[5] Crush, Jonathan (1995). Power of Development, London: Routledge.
[6] Escobar, Arturo (1995). Encountering Development. Princeton, N.J., Princeton
University Press.

Use
the
following
to
cite
this
article:
Barbanti, Jr., Olympio . "Development and Conflict Theory." Beyond Intractability. Eds.
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado,
Boulder.
Posted:
August
2004
<http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/development_conflict_theory/>.

Sources of Additional, In-depth Information on this Topic

Additional Explanations of the Underlying Concepts:

Online (Web) Sources

von Meijenfeldt, Roel. Comprehensive Development Framework and Conflict-affected
Countries.
Available at: Click here for more info.
This paper seeks to identify the major challenges or issues in applying Comprehensive
Development Framework (CDF) principles in conflict-affected countries. This paper is an
initial contextual desk study based on World Bank in-house interviews. The paper asserts
that the four CDF principles (ownership, comprehensive analysis, accountability for
development results and partnership) are indeed applicable for assistance to countries in
or at risk of violent conflict. -From Abstract
Overton, John. Development in Chaos?. Institute of Development Studies (IDS).
Available at: http://www.devnet.org.nz/conf/Papers/Overton.pdf.
"This paper will examines the idea of development in the context of conflict and disorder
and looks at the relationship between development, peace and the state. It also reflects on
how such conceptions of development might contrast with conventional definitions of
development as an ordered, rational and programmed strategy." -From Article

13

Offline (Print) Sources

"Journal of Peacebuilding and Development." , 1900.
The Journal of Peacebuilding and Development (JPD) is a new triannual, refereed journal for practitioners, activists, policymakers and
academics that wish to share critical thinking and constructive action on
issues at the intersections of conflict, development, and peace.
Tschirgi, Necla. "Making a Case for a Regional Approach to Peacebuilding."
Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 1:1, 2002.
The author argues that a regional conflict lens will lead to more
effective peacebuilding.
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
Reconciliation: Theory and Practice for Development Cooperation.
Stockholm: Sida, 2003.
Source: http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/development_conflict_theory/

Conceptualizing Development
The concept of development is one of the most controversial in academic discourse.
There are conflicting definitions and interpretations of the term. These definitions and
interpretations are influenced by history, discipline, ideological orientation and training.
In fact, the post development school argues that the term is unjust, has never worked and
should be dismantled. In this short piece, I will try to conceptualize the concept of
development particularly as it applies to developing countries.

Chambers defines development as "good change". This definition envisages that

development is synonymous with progress. This progress should entail an allencompassing improvement, a process that builds on itself and involve both individuals
and social change. However, various scholars have pointed out that development should
be conceptually differentiated from progress. According to Alan Thomas, "Progress
implies continual development reaching higher and higher levels perhaps without limit,

14

whereas development, as an analogy form the development of living organism, implies

moving towards the fulfillment of a potential. Immanent development means a
spontaneous and unconscious (natural?) process of development from within, which may
entail destruction of the old in order to achieve the new. Intentional development implies
deliberate efforts to achieve higher level in terms of set objectives".

Cowen and Shenton have argued that the modern doctrine of development was invented
in the first half of the 19th century to control the social disruptions of poverty,
unemployment and human misery caused by capitalism. It must be pointed out that
various scholars relate the concept of development to capitalism differently based on
ideological orientations. At one extreme are the neo-liberals who insist that a selfregulated system of market will bring about spontaneous process of development. There
are also the structuralists who see development as involving changes in social and
economic structures. At the other extreme are the interventionists who argue that
unregulated capitalism will always bring about poverty, unemployment and human
misery and there is the need to intervene to regulate the market. An alternative view is
what is generally referred to as alternative development or people centered development.
There is also the post development school that rejects the whole concept of development.

According to Thomas, there are three perspectives from which we can look at the concept
of development. The first perspective is to see development as a vision, description or
measure of the state of being of a desirable society. However, different people have
different visions of what is desirable based on their ideological inclination. Three
different views can be delineated. The first vision is the vision of a modern industrial
society, which is elaborated by modernization theorists. The second is a society where
every individual potential can be realized in conditions characterized by the capacity to
obtain physical necessities (particularly food), employment, equality, participation in
government, political and economic independence, adequate education, women equality,
sustainable development and peace. This vision, which is otherwise referred to as human
centred development places a lot of emphasis on empowerment of the people. The third
vision is the one that sees development as reducing poverty, improving health, mitigating
environmental degradation etc. The second perspective of development is to see it as an

15

historical change in which societies are transformed over long period of time. Some
scholars have argued that the process that produces development in some parts of the
world was at the same responsible for producing under development in other parts. This
process has been dominated by the struggle between pro-market and protectionist
movements.
The third perspective of development is to see it as consisting of deliberate efforts aimed
at improvements on the part of various agencies, including governments and all kinds of
organizations and social movements. In this context, the important point to make is that it
is

crucial

for

people

to

be

the

agencies

of

their

own

development.

From the above, it is clear that development is a very complex concept that defies a
single interpretation. We believe that the people should be the centre of development. It is
therefore necessary to implement programmes that will consolidate democracy and
promote human centred, sustainable development. It has been documented that good
public policy is at the core of the process of development. This is why it is necessary to
focus on the conceptualization, implementation of centred development policies.
Participation of the people is crucial in this regard. In our considered opinion, three key
strategies are crucial in bringing about development in developing countries. First, there
is the need to conduct participatory researches into development strategies/policies in
developing countries with a view to determining appropriate ones. Secondly, there is the
need to build the capacity of government officials, civil society organizations and the
people to understand and analyze development issues. Finally, there is the need to
advocate for people centred development programmes and pro-poor policies. There is no
doubt that for this to happen require radical changes in the constitution, power relations,
gender relations, institutions and governance. Scholars, politicians, bureaucrats, civil
society activists and the people in developing countries must rise up to these challenges
in order to bring about the much needed development in developing countries.
* Otive Igbuzor,Lagos

http://www.thisdayonline.com/archive/2002/09/24/20020924let01.html

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MEANINGS & VIEWS OF DEVELOPMENT

The simplest definition of development by Chambers is good change.

It may be impossible of achieving good change without destroying something

previously held dear such that traditional values (disruption of established
patterns of living)

Development is the achievement of whatever is regarded as a general good for

society at large.

Also development is the idea of creating the conditions for the realization of
the potential of human personality (Seers, 1969)

Development is not simply good change; it is highly an ambiguous concept.

E.g.:
1. First, development generally implies an all-encompassing change, not just an
improvement in one aspect.
2. Development is not a one-off (happening only once) process of change, but a
process which builds on itself, where change is continuous and where
improvements build on previous improvements.
3. Development is a matter of changes occurring at the level of social change
and of the individual human being at on and the same time.
4. Development is not always seen positivelythat previous ways of life may be
swept away, with the loss of positive as well as negative features. (Development
may have losers as well as winners)

DEVELOPMENT (AN AMBIGUOUS CONCEPT) AND ITS RELATION

TO CAPITALISM

Capitalism: A system of production of goods and services for market exchange

(rather than consumption by their producers) in order to make a profit. The system
is based on a distinctive type of social relation between capital and labor, which
generates the two principle classes of capitalism. 1. Bourgeoisie (owners of the

17

means of productions). 2. Proletariat (working class: owners solely of their labor

power)
DEVELOPMENT AND CAPITALISM

A Process of Social Change: The growth of industrial capitalism as a global

system from the first half of the 19th century provides a real example of a process
of social change which has built on itself and which went alongside the creation
of new kinds of human being and new kinds of livelihood and of motivation.
The era of industrial capitalism has also been the period of the modern doctrine of
development (Cowen & Shenton 1996) According to the post-development school
that development was invented in the first half of the nineteenth century
precisely to control the social disruptions caused by the unchecked development
of capitalism.
Capitalism: It had been developing for several centuries up to this day and can be
expected to develop into the future
Capitalism is dynamic it tends to build on itself and grow from within. This is
immanent (inherent) development (spontaneous and unconscious), and should
be clearly differentiated from the intentional development which forms the
deliberate policy and actions of states and development agencies.
Great Transformation:-The sum total of a collection of changes that occurred
in Europe from about 1700 to about 1900two changes most central to the great
transformation are the growth of modern market economics in economic and
the development of modern nation states(state based- system) in International
Relations. Other changes are technological changes involved in industrial
revolution, advances in military technology, the expansion of franchise
(democracy) and erosion of aristocracy.
Polanyi argues that Great Transformation occurred mainly due to these two
changes (market economic and nation states) which led to the destruction of the
basic social order that had existed throughout all earlier history, which is why he
emphasized the greatness of the transformation. In other words, not merely the
economic aspects but the whole of human existence was governed by the

18

principles of a self regulating system of marketsall humans and societies

are limited by economic factors, this kind of concept of self regulating system has
commodified the factors of production land, labor , organization.
Polanyi argued that the movement towards commodification of the factors of
production gave rise to tremendous negative consequences for man, nature and
productive organization, and hence to movements to protect each of these (may be
socialism or communism). Eventually the conflict between these movements and
those which tried to promote capitalism would lead the latters downfall. Polanyi
thought that the event of the first half of the 20th century (two world wars, great
depression, the growth of the fascism and authoritarian communism) showed that
the capitalist market system was indeed self-destructing. But in fact it has
regained and increased its strength and become more fully a global system.

THE MAIN VIEWS OF DEVELOPMENT AND HOW THEY RELATE TO

CAPITALISM
These are differences in how development is seen to relate to capitalism
Development of

Development alongside

Development against

Rejection of

Capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalism

Development

Neo-liberalism

Interventionism

Structuralism

(Immanent

Devt) (intentional

development) (devt

Alternative

as Development,

(growth of Capitalism (those with a degree of power- changes in the people

is must for devt)

are all interventionists)

Post-development
(rejects the whole

centered notion of devt)

social & eco or another devt

structures)

Intervening

to Achieving

improve

social goals

market

by

efficiency

governing
the market

19

DIFFERENT SENSE (OR VISIONS) in which the term DEVELOPMENT is used:

1. Development as a state of being of a desirable society.
2. Development as an historical process of social change in which societies are
transformed over long periods.
3. Development as deliberate efforts aimed at improvement by various agencies.

1) DEVELOPMENT AS A STATE OF BEING OF A DESIRABLE SOCIETY.

First problem with this point is that different political ideals clearly lead to
different visions of what is desirable?
Is development only an economic concept? Or should social aspects be of equal
or even greater importance?

Ideals such as equity, political participation and so on may be in conflict with the
achievement of development in an economic sense, should the former be included
in a definition of development-or regarded as additional desirable elements?

For some its the idea of constant improvement or growth as part of what
constitutes a desirable statethat GNP per capita should not just be high but
always increasing.

To some extent the same is true of those who base their visions more on social
factors or on human needs. For some the desirable development is the peoplecentered development, which means not that development means a state where
everyones needs are met but one where conditions exist for all to develop
themselves to their full potential.

So we have now mentioned two very different visions of development: that of a

modern industrial society and that of a society where every individuals potential
can be realized.

Modern industrial society or modernization-following in the footsteps of the

West, which, in effect, is to say if you want what we have and have achieved,
then you must become like us, and do as we did and continue to do.

Modernization (particularly in 1950s & 60s) (in the field of agriculture (from
subsistence farming (personal production) to commercial farming), industries and
urbanization)

20

The most obvious distinguishing feature of those Western countries which are
thoroughly modernized and developed is that they have undergone industrial
revolutions which have led to Economic growth (increasing GDP) or economic
development (an increase in productive capacity) or industrialization. Another in
common is that these Western countries are liberal democracy. Liberal democracy
and capitalist industrialization- the only viable for development (Fukuyama)

Human needs centered development:

Another vision of development starts not from production but from people and from
human needs (alternative development school, which contrasts growth-centered
with people-centered)
Three basic principals of authentic development given by David Korten
1. Justice
2. Sustainability: Earths resources must be used in a shrewd manner.
3. Inclusiveness: representation, democracy.
The meaning of development which pointed out the importance of value
judgments in deciding what is or is not development.
Seers suggested that the realization of the potential of human personality is a
universally acceptable aim and development must therefore entail ensuring the
conditions for achieving this aim.
However, Seers was an economist arguing for an emphasis on human needs and
equity alongside economic growth, and as such did not go far enough for many
seeking an alternative which would provide a clearer break from economistic
development thinking.
Extending Seers condition for development to a list of nine gives:
1. Low level of material poverty (the capacity to obtain physical necessities
particularly food.
2. Low level of unemployment.
3. Relative equality
4. Democratization of political life (participation)
5. True national independence (both economically and politically)

21

6. Good literacy and educational levels

7. Relatively equal status for women and participation by women.
8. Sustainable ability to meet future needs
9. Human security (freedom from social dislocation, violence and war).

Another non economic strand of thinking on what is desirable for development

is given by Amartya Sen. He views poverty in terms not of poor material living
standards but of lack of choice or of capability: poverty meaning the failure to be
able to take a full part in human society. In these terms, development means not just
combating or ameliorating poverty but restoring or enhancing basic human
capabilities and freedoms. This is often seen in terms of participation and
empowerment, particularly by NGOs that promote participative development at a
local level.
Other visions are of empowerment, community based production, self help or
populist vision (the really helpful things will not be done from the center, they
cannot be done by big organizations, but they can be done by the people themselves)
localized or community based production.

2. DEVELOPMENT AS AN HISTORICAL PROCESS:

There are two distinct views of the historical development of capitalism and its
relationship to development as an historical process. The first emphasizes the internal
dynamics of capitalist economic growth as the engine of development but has room
for intentional development, while the second sees a political struggle between the
promotion of a self-regulating market society and its regulation from outside. Let us
consider each of these in turn in a little more derail.
a) The dynamics of capitalist growth: self-regulating market, profit maximization,
reinvestment. Here market competition is seen as the main force towards economic
progress. Successful capitalists are able to enter a positively reinforcing cycle: Profitaccumulation-reinvestment-growth-innovation-increased

productivity-increased

profits; and then can use those increased profits to continue the cycle.
Adam Smiths hidden hand of the market converts individual interests into the
wealth of nations.

22

More recently it has been suggested (e.g. Fukuyama, 1995) that another crucial
cultural factor is a propensity to associate or social capital (the ability of people to
work together for common purposes in a groups and organizations). Thus without a
combination of social capital and individual profit motive the reinforcing cycle of
reinvestment and increasing productivity will not get going to create economic
development.
Growth & development: Where as growth means more of the same type of
output, development implies more thoroughgoing changes, changes in the social and
technical relations of production. Thus the productive capacity of a society as a whole
has to increase, rather than just increasing productivity within its productive
enterprises. However, growth is almost always achieved at the cost of inequity.
b) A struggle between pro-market and protectionist movements... Polanyi
interpreted the history of the nineteenth century as a struggle between two
movements: on the one hand, pro-market forces; on the other, protectionism. It was
not a question of the natural working of the market against government, but two
competing movements, representing capitalist and those adversely affected by
capitalism respectively, struggling for influence within government.

Protectionists were quite successful up to the 1960s & 1970s, but in the early 1980s
pro-market interests have made headway. Many LDCs compete to attract investment
from TNCs by making a virtue of their tough anti-union legislation. (SAPs or
Washington Consensus).

3. DEVELOPMENT AS DELIBERATE EFFORTS AIMED AT IMPROVEMENT

BY VARIOUS AGENCIES.
In the third sense of the term, development means not a desired state or the
process of social change which might achieve it, but whatever is done in the name
of development. Is development is simply what development agencies do, then we
must ask what are development agencies and what entitles them to the name
Agency. But whose development? And those adversely affected are generally
powerless to help themselves.

23

Trusteeship: it means that one agency is entrusted with acting on behalf of

another, in this case to try to ensure the development of the other. Trusteeship
may be taken on by an agency on anothers behalf without the other asking to be
developed or even being aware of the intention to develop them.
But do the agencies have the legitimacy to act on behalf of others? And do they
have the power and capacity to do so?
For almost the whole of the period since the invention of intentional development,
the state has claimed both the right and the might to develop its people, however,
it can be argued that the idea of the developmental state is now discredited on
both counts, or at least that the state is no longer the sole source of development
action.
Ending remarks:
We saw above that for people to become their own development agents is the aim
of empowerment, and that for this to succeed implies radical changes to power
structures and institutional arrangements. How this is to be achieved raises
enormous questions about political feasibility as well as the question of whether it
is really possible to avoid the notion of trusteeship in this way. Surely
empowerment cannot be achieved without being promoted by some powerful
agent allied with those to be empowered? Perhaps some form of peoples
movement might fill the role of this agent, but even then the leadership of that
movement would be taking on a trusteeship role in a way. Stull, despite these
difficulties, the notion of people developing themselves is clearly an alternative to
the idea of different kinds of development agencies undertaking trusteeship for
development.

24

Poverty & (The End of) Development-----by Alan Thomas.

(Summary)

Meanings of development are hotly contested and indeed the very idea of
development is under challenge to an extent not foreseen even a few years ago.
Voices from the post-development school claim that, at best, development has
failed, or at worst it was always a hoax, designed to cover up violent damage
being done to the so-called developing world and its peoples. On the other hand,
governments and inter-governmental organizations continue to adopt ambitious
development targets: for example the aim agreed at the United Nations World
Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995 to reduce by half by 2015
the proportion of people living in extreme poverty.

Poverty and development might at first appear virtually opposite: surely poverty
means a lack of development, whereas development implies moving towards
getting rid of poverty. However, in practice it has proved quite possible
historically for development to occur without alleviating poverty.

These days the debate is about development rather than improvement, but it is
still about whether there is any alternative to the kind of purely economic
progress which is achieved at great social cost. A question arises that is only
economic progress development? On social cost.

It is still the rich and powerful who are in the position to be able to promote
development. And they are likely to do so in ways which benefit themselves, and
although they will try to avoid social dislocation at least when that dislocation
affects them.

Over the past decades, the increasing inequality in wealth between different parts
of the world, the spread of localized wars, and the new importance of issues such
as environmental degradation, international debt, religious fundamentalism and
other forms of competing collective identity, all demonstrate the potential for
social dislocation turning into worldwide chaos.

The Era of Development: Has development failed?...the beginning of this era

of development has been traced to January 20, 1949, when Harry S. Truman took
office as President of the United States, declaring in his inaugural address that:

25

We must embark on a bold program for making the benefits of our scientific
advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of
under-development areas. The old imperialism exploitation for foreign profit
has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based
on the concepts of democratic fair dealing.

Sachs and Esteva are leading members of the post-development school and
argue that development was always unjust, never worked, and has now clearly
failed. According to Sachs, the idea of development stands like a ruin in the
intellectual landscape and it is time to dismantle this mental structure.

David Korten calls the global threefold human crisis of deepening poverty,
social disintegration and environmental destruction.

The Cold War and the Third World: Era of development has also been the
era of the Cold War. Throughout the Cold War development has been applied or
experimented to one part of the world, which became known as the third world.
Many sought a new form of democratic participation, neither the capitalist parties
nor the organized communist parties on the Eastern European model; they
remained non-aligned to any of the capitalist or communist camp. However, as
time went on, both economic differentiation and political polarization tended to
break up the rather fragile unity among third world countries and destroyed the
original idea of the third world as the non-aligned world. In economic terms there
were enormous and growing differences between the newly industrializing
countries (NICs), including the four Asian Tigers and some others such as
Brazil and Mexico, and the continuing poor agrarian countries such as most of
those sub-Saharan Africa. It has been seen that throughout the Cold War, the
choice has been between the two camps, not in some Third direction.

Into the twenty-first century1980sneoloberalism with its emphasis on

market mechanism became the dominant way of thinking about development.
New issues came to the forefront, notably the environment, international debt, and
the question of gender relations. Then at the end of that decade came the sudden
end of the Cold War. It looked briefly as though there was a possibility of the new
forms of democratic participation envisaged by those whose ideas gave rise to the
third world label back in the 1950s. With the demise of Soviet Union, although

26

the other socialist countries (China and Cuba) do exist but in front of US political
superiority they no longer constitute a viable alternative development model. The
United States in Particular saw an outbreak of triumphalism. In the word of Henry
Kissinger: There has been a war between capitalism and socialism and capitalism
has won. American commentators referred to the new world order, using
phrases such as Pax Americana and the coming American century. The essay
The End of History, (that the fusion of liberal democracy and industrial
capitalism now represented the only viable basis for modern human society),
by US State Department analyst Francis Fukuyama (1989), had already come to
epitomize this popular feeling. The notion that liberal capitalism is now the
only basis for development remains strong. However many would quarrel
with this proposition.

No alternative: since liberal capitalism is accepted as the dominant mode of

social organization and the basis for globalization, it can be argued that
development is now thought of mostly in terms of ameliorating problems rather
than searching for alternative modes of wholesale social transformation. The
importance of seeking an alternative remains, but is not manifest in the activities
of any major development agencies.

Gross domestic product "measures everything ... except that which makes life worth
living" (Robert Kennedy)

Conceptions of Poverty: despite the huge differences surrounding the idea of

development, what exactly it means and how it is to be achieved, there is general
agreement that it must include tackling poverty. The WB, for example, has this
view that reducing poverty is the fundamental objective of economic
development (WB)

Income measure of Poverty & Development: The WB measure poverty in

economic terms, by measuring a persons income and establishing a poverty line
which represents an income level below which a person is held to be in extreme
poverty. So according to the WB that in extreme poverty are those whose income
is less than US$1 per day. The indicator used by the WB as a measuring of the
development of different countries is GNP. Limitation with measuring

27

development in terms of GNP, it doesnt say anything about the distribution of

wealth between rich and poor.

Social exclusion: The process through which individuals or groups are wholly or
partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live
(European Foundation)

Relative poverty and social exclusion: This notion has been attacked by those
who argue that people in industrialized countries should not be regarded as poor
if, for example, they are unable to afford a TV or refrigerator or a few toys for
their children, so long as they are able to maintain a minimum level of nutrition.
Conversely, there may be objections to setting a poverty line at a higher level in
industrialized countries so as to take account of that fact that a minimum of
consumer goods is necessary to take part in ordinary living patterns in those
countries compared with less developed countries, on the grounds that this
downgrades the needs of those living in poorer countries. US$ 14.40 per day to
calculate the numbers in poverty in industrialized countries and US$ 1 per day for
the world as a whole.

Dimensions of deprivation and of development: The basic HDI is an average

of indices of what the UNDP considers to be the three most important aspects o
human development: the health of a population, measured by life expectancy; its
educational attainment; and its material standard of living, measured b GDP per
capita. More recently the UNDP has also produced a Human Poverty Index (HPI),
again with variants. In a similar way, the HPI is an average of three measures of
deprivation. Vulnerability to death at a relatively early age, deprivation in
knowledge, and lack of decent living standards. Interestingly, the UNDP had
developed two different HPIs, one for industrialized countries and one for
developing countries. Different standards for what constitutes deprivation are
used.

The End of Development:

28

THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
Sincrona Winter 2001
Four Main Theories of Development: Modernization, Dependency, World-Systems, and Globalization
Giovanni E. Reyes
University of Pittsburgh
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs -GSPIA-

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theory of modernization
3.Theory of dependency
4.Theory of world-systems
5.Theory of globalization
6. Bibliography

1. Introduction
The main objective of this document is to synthesize the main aspects of the four
major theories of development:

modernization, dependency, world-systems and

globalization. These are the principal theoretical explanations to interpret development

efforts carried out especially in the developing countries. These theoretical perspectives
allow us not only to clarify concepts, to set them in economic and social perspectives, but
also to identify recommendations in terms of social policies.
For the purposes of this paper, the term development is understood as a social
condition within a nation, in which the authentic needs of its population are satisfied by
the rational and sustainable use of natural resources and systems. This utilization of
natural resources is based on a technology, which respects the cultural features of the
population of a given country. This general definition of development includes the
specification that social groups have access to organizations, basic services such as
education, housing, health services, and nutrition, and above all else, that their cultures
and traditions are respected within the social framework of a particular country.
In economic terms, the aforementioned definition indicates that for the population
of a country, there are employment opportunities, satisfaction -at least- of basic needs,
and the achievement of a positive rate of distribution and redistribution of national

29

wealth. In a political sense this definition emphasizes that governmental systems have
legitimacy not only in terms of the law, but also in terms of providing social benefits for
the majority of the population.[1]

2. Theory of Modernization
According to Alvin so, there are three main and historical elements which were
favorable to the inception of the modernization theory of development after the Second
World War. First, there was the rise of the United States as a superpower. While other
Western nations, such as Great Britain, France, and Germany, were weakened by World
War II, the United States emerged from the war strengthened, and became a world leader
with the implementation of the Marshall Plan to reconstruct war-torn Western Europe.[2]
Second, there was the spread of a united world communist movement. The
Former Soviet Union extended its influence not only to Eastern Europe, but also to China
and Korea. Third, there was the disintegration of European colonial empires in Asia,
Africa and Latin America, giving birth to many new nation-states in the Third World.
These nascent nation-states were in search of a model of development to promote their
economy and to enhance their political independence.[3]
According to the modernization theory, modern societies are more productive,
children are better educated, and the needy receive more welfare.

According to

Smelsers analysis, modern societies have the particular feature of social structural
differentiation, that is to say a clear definition of functions and political roles from
national institutions. Smelser argues that although structural differentiation has increased
the functional capacity of modern organizations, it has also created the problem of
integration, and of coordinating the activities of the various new institutions.[4]
In a political sense, Coleman stresses three main features of modern societies: a)
Differentiation of political structure; b) Secularization of political culture -with the ethos
of equality-, which c) Enhances the capacity of a societys political system.[5]
The major assumptions of the modernization theory of development basically
are: Modernization is a phased process; for example Rostow has 5 phases according to
his theory of economic development for a particular society, and I will mention them
later.

Modernization is a homogenizing process, in this sense, we can say that

modernization produces tendencies toward convergence among societies, for example,

30

Levy (1967, p. 207) maintains that : as time goes on, they and we will increasingly
resemble one another because the patterns of modernization are such that the more highly
modernized societies become, the more they resemble one another.[6] Modernization is
a Europeanization or Americanization process; in the modernization literature, there is an
attitude of complacency toward Western Europe and the United States. These nations are
viewed as having unmatched economic prosperity and democratic stability (Tipps: 1976,
14). In addition, modernization is an irreversible process, once started modernization
cannot be stopped. In other words, once third world countries come into contact with the
West, they will not be able to resist the impetus toward modernization.[7]
Modernization is a progressive process which in the long run is not only
inevitable but desirable. According to Coleman, modernized political systems have a
higher capacity to deal with the function of national identity, legitimacy, penetration,
participation, and distribution than traditional political systems. Finally, modernization is
a lengthy process. It is an evolutionary change, not a revolutionary one. It will take
generations or even centuries to complete, and its profound impact will be felt only
through time.

All these assumptions are derived from European and American

evolutionary theory. [8]

These assumptions are as follows: a) Modernization is a systematic
process. The attribute of modernity forms a consistent whole, thus appearing in a cluster
rather than in isolation; [10] b) Modernization is a transformative process; in order for a
society to move into modernity its traditional structures and values must be totally
replaced by a set of modern values; [11] and c) Modernization is an imminent process
due to its systematic and transformative nature, which builds change into the social
system.
One of the principal applications of the modernization theory has been the
economic field related to public policy decisions. From this perspective, it is very well
known that the economic theory of modernization is based on the five stages of
development from Rostows model. In summary, these five stages are: traditional
society, precondition for takeoff, the takeoff process, the drive to maturity, and high mass
consumption society. According to this exposition, Rostow has found a possible solution
for the promotion of Third World modernization. If the problem facing Third World
countries resides in their lack of productive investments, then the solution lies in the

31

provision of aid to these countries in the form of capital, technology, and expertise. The
Marshall Plan and the Alliance for Progress in Latin America, are examples of programs
which were influenced by Rostows political theories. [12]
Modernization theory, on the other hand, was popular in the 1950s, but was under
heavy attack at the end of the 60s. Criticisms of the theory include the following: First,
development is not necessarily unidirectional. This is an example of the ethnocentricity
of Rostows perspective. Second, the modernization perspective only shows one possible
model of development. The favored example is the development pattern in the United
States. Nevertheless, in contrast with this circumstance, we can see that there have been
development advances in other nations, such as Taiwan and South Korea; and we must
admit that their current development levels have been achieved by strong authoritarian
regimes. [14]
A second set of critiques of the modernization theory regards the need to
eliminate traditional values. Third World countries do not have an homogeneous set of
traditional values; their value systems are highly heterogeneous. For example Redfield
1965, distinguishes between the great traditional values (values of the elites), and the
little tradition (values of the masses). [15] A second aspect for criticism here is the fact
that traditional and modern values are not necessarily always mutually exclusive:
China, for example, despite advances in economic development continues to operate on
traditional values and this appears to be the same situation in Japan. Moreover, it is not
possible to say that traditional values are always dichotomous from modern status, for
example, loyalty to the Emperor can be transformed to loyalty to the firm.
However, there are also important distinctions between the classical studies and
the new studies of the modernization school. For example, in the classical approach,
tradition is an obstacle to development; in the new approach, tradition is an additive
factor of development.

With regard to methodology, the classical approach applies a

theoretical construction with a high-level of abstraction; the new approach applies

concrete case studies given in an historical context.

Regarding the direction of

development, the classical perspective uses an unidirectional path which tends toward
the United States and European model, the new perspective prefers a multidirectional
path of development.

And finally, concerning external factors and conflict, the

32

classicals demonstrate a

relative neglect of external factors and conflict, in contrast to

the greater attention to external factors and conflicts practiced by the new approach. [16]

3. Theory of Dependency
The foundations of the theory of dependency emerged in the 1950s from the
research of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean -ECLAC-.
One of the most representative authors was Raul Prebisch. The principal points of the
Prebisch model are that in order to create conditions of development within a country, it
is necessary:
a) To control the monetary exchange rate, placing more governmental emphasis
on fiscal rather than monetary policy;
b) To promote a more effective governmental role in terms of national
development;
c) To create a platform of investments, giving a preferential role to national
capitals;
d) To allow the entrance of external capital following priorities already
established in national plans for development;
e) To promote a more effective internal demand in terms of domestic markets as
a base to reinforce the industrialization process in Latin America;
f) To generate a larger internal demand by increasing the wages and salaries of
workers, which will in turn positively affect aggregate demand in internal markets;
g) To develop a more effective coverage of social services from the government,
especially to impoverished sectors in order to create conditions for those sectors to
become more competitive; and
h) To develop national strategies according to the model of import substitution,
protecting national production by establishing quotas and tariffs on external markets. [17]
The Prebisch and ECLACs proposal were the basis for dependency theory at the
beginning of the 1950s.[18] However, there are also several authors, such as Falleto and
Dos Santos who argue that the ECLACs development proposals failed, which only then
lead to the establishment of the dependency model. This more elaborated theoretical
model was published at the end of the 1950s and the mid 1960s. Among the main authors

33

of dependency theory we have: Andre Gunder Frank, Raul Prebisch, Theotonio Dos
Santos, Enrique Cardozo, Edelberto Torres-Rivas, and Samir Amin.[19]
The theory of dependency combines elements from a neo-marxist perspective
with Keynes economic theory - the liberal economic ideas which emerged in the United
States and Europe as a response to the depression years of the 1920s-. From the Keynes
economic approach, the theory of dependency embodies four main points: a) To develop
an important internal effective demand in terms of domestic markets; b) To recognize
that the industrial sector is crucial to achieving better levels of national development,
especially due to the fact that this sector, in comparison with the agricultural sector, can
contribute more value-added to products; c) To increase workers income as a means of
generating more aggregate demand in national market conditions; d) To promote a more
effective government role in order to reinforce national development conditions and to
increase national standards of living.[20]
Although the modernization school and the dependency school conflict in many
areas, they also have certain similarities, the most important being: a) A research focus
on Third World development circumstances; b) A methodology which has a high-level
of abstraction and is focused on the development process, using nations-state as a unit of
analysis; c) The use of polar theoretical structural visions; in one case the structure is
tradition versus modernity -modernization-, in the other it is core versus periphery dependency-. [22]
The major hypotheses with regard to development in Third World countries
according to the dependency school are the following:

First, in contrast to the

development of the core nations which is self-contained, the development of nations in

the Third World necessitates subordination to the core. Examples of this situation can be
seen in Latin America, especially in those countries with a high degree of
industrialization, such as Sao Paulo, Brazil which Andre G. Frank uses as a case study.
Second, the peripheral nations experience their greatest economic development
when their ties to the core are weakest.

An example of this circumstance is the

industrialization process that took root in Latin America during the 1930s, when the core
nations were focusing on solving the problems that resulted from the Great Depression,
and the Western powers were involved in the Second World War.[23]

34

A third hypothesis indicates that when the core recovers from its crisis and
reestablishes trade and investments ties, it fully incorporates the peripheral nations once
again into the system, and the growth of industrialization in these regions is stifled.
Frank in particular indicates that when core countries recuperate from war or other crises
which have directed their attention away from the periphery, this negatively affects the
balance of payments, inflation and political stability in Third World countries. Lastly, the
fourth aspect refers to the fact that regions that are highly underdeveloped and still
operate on a traditional, feudal system are those that in the past had the closest ties to
core.[24]
However, according to Theotonio Dos Santos, the basis of dependency in
underdeveloped nations is derived from industrial technological production, rather than
from financial ties to monopolies from the core nations. In addition to Dos Santos, other
classical authors in the dependency school are: Baran, who has studied conditions in
India in the late 1950s; and Landsberg, who has studied the processes of industrial
production in the core countries in 1987.[25]
The principal critics of the dependency theory have focused on the fact that this
school does not provide exhaustive empirical evidence to support its conclusions.
Furthermore, this theoretical position uses highly abstract levels of analysis. Another
point of critique is that the dependency movement considers ties with transnational
corporations as being only detrimental to countries, when actually these links can be used
as a means of transference of technology. In this sense, it is important to remember that
the United States was also a colony, and this country had the capacity to break the vicious
cycle of underdevelopment.[26]
A predominant point of the new dependency studies is that while the orthodox
dependency position does not accept the relative autonomy of government from the
powerful elites, the new authors of this school perceive a margin of movement of national
governments in terms of pursuing their own agenda. These arguments originated mainly
from the writings of Nikos Poulantzas. For this political scientist, governments in Third
World countries have a certain amount of autonomy from the real axis of power within
the nation.[28]
One of the main current critiques of the theory of dependency and the theory of
modernization is that they both continue to base their assumptions and results on the

35

nation-state. This is an important point that allows us to separate these aforementioned

schools from the theoretical perspective of world-systems or globalization theory. These
last movements have focused their attention mostly on the international connections
among countries, especially those related to trade, the international financial system,
world technology and military cooperation.

4. Theory of World Systems

A central element from which the theory of world-systems emerged was the
different form that capitalism was taking around the world, especially since the decade of
the 1960s. Starting in this decade, Third World countries had new conditions in which to
attempt to elevate their standards of living and improve social conditions. These new
conditions were related to the fact that the international financial and trade systems began
to have a more flexible character, in which national government actions were having less
and less influence.

Basically these new international economic circumstances made it

possible for a group of radical researchers led by Immanuel Wallerstein to conclude that
there were new activities in the capitalist world-economy which could not be explained
within the confines of the dependency perspective.

These new features were

characterized mainly by the following aspects:

a)

East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore)

continued to experience a remarkable rate of economic growth. It became more and

more difficult to portray this East Asian economic miracle as manufacturing
imperialism;
b) There was a widespread crisis among the socialist states which included
the Sino-Soviet split, the failure of the Cultural Revolution, economic stagnation in the
socialist states, and the gradual opening of the socialist states to capitalist investment.
This crisis signaled the decline of revolutionary Marxism;
c) There was a crisis in North American capitalism which included the Vietnam
War, the Watergate crisis, the oil embargo of 1975, the combination of stagnation and
inflation in the late 1970s, as well as the rising sentiment of protectionism, the
unprecedented governmental deficit, and the widening of the trade gap in the 1980s, all
signaling the demise of American hegemony in the capitalist world-economy.[29]

36

Wallerstein and his followers recognized that there are worldwide conditions that
operate as determinant forces especially for small and underdeveloped nations, and that
the nation-state level of analysis is no longer the only useful category for studying
development conditions, particularly in Third World countries. Those factors which had
the greatest impact on the internal development of small countries were the new global
systems of communications, the new world trade mechanisms, the international financial
system, and the transference of knowledge and military links. These factors have created
their own dynamic at the international level, and at the same time, these elements are
interacting with the internal aspects of each country.[31]
Today this is not the situation especially when we consider the important
economic role of transnational corporations, the international political climate, the
interdependence that affects the governments of poor nations, and the role of speculative
investments. For the world-systems school, present economic conditions are not fully
explainable within traditional development theories.

This criticism of the capitalist

system has been present since its birth. Under current international conditions, there are
specific features of monopoly capital, its means of transaction, and its concrete operations
worldwide which have affected international relations among nations to a considerable
degree.
The principal differences between the world-systems approach and the
dependency studies are: a) The unit of analysis in the dependency theory is the nationstate level, for the world-system it is the world itself; b) Concerning methodology, the
dependency school posits that the structural-historical model is that of the boom and bust
of nation states, the world systems approach maintains the historical dynamics of worldsystems in its cyclical rhythms and secular trends; c) The theoretical structure for the
dependency theory is bimodal, consisting of the core and the periphery; according to the
world systems theory the structure is trimodal and is comprised of the core, the
semiperiphery and the periphery; d) In terms of the direction of development, the
dependency school believes that the process is generally harmful; however, in a world
systems scenario, there is the possibility for upward and downward mobility in the world
economy; e) The research focus of dependency theorists concentrates on the periphery;
while world systems theorists focus on the periphery as well as on the core, the
semiperiphery and the periphery.[33]

37

5. Theory of Globalization
The theory of globalization emerges from the global mechanisms of greater
integration with particular emphasis on the sphere of economic transactions. In this
sense, this perspective is similar to the world-systems approach. However, one of the
most important characteristics of the globalization position is its focus and emphasis on
cultural aspects and their communication worldwide. Rather than the economic, financial
and political ties, globalization scholars argue that the main modern elements for
development interpretation are the cultural links among nations.

In this cultural

communication, one of the most important factors is the increasing flexibility of

technology to connect people around the world.[35]
The main aspects of the theory of globalization can be delineated as follows:
a) To recognize that global communications systems are gaining an increasing
importance every day, and through this process all nations are interacting much more
frequently and easily, not only at the governmental level, but also within the citizenry;
b) Even though the main communications systems are operating among the more
developed nations, these mechanisms are also spreading in their use to less developed
nations. This fact will increase the possibility that marginal groups in poor nations can
communicate and interact within a global context using the new technology;
c)

The modern communications system implies structural and important

modifications in the social, economic and cultural patterns of nations. In terms of the
economic activities the new technological advances in communications are becoming
more accessible to local and small business. This situation is creating a completely new
environment for carrying out economic transactions, utilizing productive resources,
equipment, trading products, and taking advantage of the virtual monetary
mechanisms.

From a cultural perspective, the new communication products are

unifying patterns of communications around the world, at least in terms of economic

transactions under the current conditions;
d) The concept of minorities within particular nations is being affected by these
new patterns of communications.

Even though these minorities are not completely

integrated into the new world systems of communications, the powerful business and

38

political elites in each country are a part of this interaction around the world Ultimately,
the business and political elite continue to be the decision makers in developing nations;
e) Cultural elements will dictate the forms of economic and social structure in
each country. These social conditions are a result of the dominant cultural factors within
the conditions of each nation.[36]
The main assumptions which can be extracted from the theory of globalization
can be summarized in three principal points. First, cultural factors are the determinant
aspect in every society. Second, it is not important, under current world conditions to use
the nation-state as the unit of analysis, since global communications and international ties
are making this category less useful. Third, with more standardization in technological
advances, more and more social sectors will be able to connect themselves with other
groups around the world. This situation will involve the dominant and non-dominant
groups from each nation.
The theory of globalization coincides with several elements from the theory of
modernization. One aspect is that both theories consider that the main direction of
development should be that which was undertaken by the United States and Europe.
These schools sustain that the main patterns of communication and the tools to achieve
better standards of living originated in those more developed areas. On this point it is
important to underline the difference between the modernization perspective and the
globalization approach. The former follows a more normative position -stating how the
development issue should be solved-, the latter reinforces its character as a positive
perspective, rather than a normative claim.[37]
Another point in which the modernization and the globalization theories coincide
is in terms of their ethnocentric point of view. Both positions stress the fact that the path
toward development is generated and must be followed in terms of the US and European
models. Globalization scholars argue that this circumstance is a fact in terms of the
influence derived from the communications web and the cultural spread of values from
more developed countries.
Globalization theories emphasize cultural factors as the main determinants which
affect the economic, social and political conditions of nations, which is similar to the
comprehensive social school of Max Webers theories. From this perspective, the
systems of values, believes, and the pattern of identity of dominant -or hegemony- and

39

the alternative -or subordinate- groups within a society are the most important elements
to explain national characteristics in economic and social terms.[38] It is obvious that for
the globalization position this statement from 1920s Weberian theory must apply to
current world conditions especially in terms of the diffusion and transference of cultural
values through communication systems, and they are increasingly affecting many social
groups in all nations.
Based on the aforementioned elements it is clear that the globalization and worldsystems theories take a global perspective in determining the unit of analysis, rather than
focusing strictly on the nation-state as was the case in the modernization and dependency
schools. The contrasting point between world-systems theory and globalization, is that
the first contains certain neo-marxist elements, while the second bases its theoretical
foundations on the structural and functionalist sociological movement. Therefore the
globalization approach tends more toward a gradual transition rather than a violent or
revolutionary transformation. For the globalists authors, the gradual changes in societies
become a reality when different social groups adapt themselves to current innovations,
particularly in the areas of cultural communication.[39]
The globalization and world-systems theories take into account the most recent
economic changes in world structure and relations that have occurred in the last couple of
decades, for example: a) In March 1973, the governments of the more developed nations,
began to operate more flexible mechanisms in terms of exchange rate control. This
situation allowed for a faster movement of capital among the worlds financial centers,
international banks, and stock markets; b) Since 1976 trade transactions base their
speculations on the future value of the products, which is reinforced through the more
flexible use of modern technology in information, computers, and in communication
systems; c) The computer revolution of the eighties made it possible to carry out faster
calculations and transactions regarding exchange rates values and investments, which
was reinforced by the general use of the fax machine; d) During the nineties the main
challenge is from the Internet which allows the achievement of more rapid and expansive
communication. The Internet is increasingly creating the conditions to reinvigorate the
character of the virtual economy in several specific markets.
Under the current conditions, the main aspects that are being studied from the
globalization perspective are: a) New concepts, definitions and empirical evidence for

40

hypotheses concerning cultural variables and their change at the national, regional and
global level; b) Specific ways to adapt the principles of comprehensive sociology to
the current global village atmosphere; c) Interactions among the different levels of
power from nation to nation, and from particular social systems which are operating
around the world; d) How new patterns of communications are affecting the minorities
within each society; e) The concept of autonomy of state in the face of increasingly
flexible communication tools and international economic ties, which are rendering
obsolete the previous unilateral effectiveness of national economic decisions; and f) How
regionalism and multilateralism agreements are affecting global economic and social
integration.
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------------------------------0------------------------------[1] See Pico, J. Teorias sobre el Estado de Bienestar. (Madrid, Espaa: Siglo XXI editores,
1995), pp. 32-41.; and Razeto, L. Economia de Solidaridad y Mercado Democratico. (Santiago,
Chile: Academia de Humanismo, 1995), pp. 56-61.

43

[2] So, A. Social Change and Development. (Newbury Park, California: SAGE, 1991), pp. 1723. Liz, R. Crecimiento Economico, Empleo y Capacitacion. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: PNUD,
1993),pp. 27-32.
[3] Chirot, D. Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The creation of a Balkan colony. (New
York:
Academic Press, 1993), pp. 32-34; 56-59. Ramirez, N.
Pobreza y Procesos
Sociodemograficos en Republica Dominicana. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: PNUD, 1993), pp. 3442.
[4] See Smelser, N. Toward a Theory of Modernization. (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp.
268-274.
[5] Ibid, pp. 276-278.
[6] Levy, M. Social Patterns and Problems of Modernization. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 189-207.
[7] Tipps, D. Modenization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A critical
perspective. (New York: Free Press, 1976), pp. 65-77.
[8] See Huntington, S. The Change to Change: Modernization, development and politics. (New
York: Free Press, 1976), pp. 30-31; 45-52.
[9] See So, A. Op. Cit, pp. 92-95.
[10] Hermassi, E. Changing Patterns in Research on the Third World, Annual Review of
Sociology 4, 1978, 239-257.
[11] See Huntington, Op. Cit. Pp. 58-60.
[12] McClelland, D. Bussiness Drive and National Achievement. (New York: Basic Books,
1964), pp. 167-170.
[13] See, So. Op.Cit. pp. 89, and Vaitsos, C. Una Estrategia Integral para el Desarrollo. (Santo
Domingo, Republica Dominicana: PNUD, 1992), pp. 45-53.
[14] Killing, J. The Quest for Economic Stabilization: The IMF and the Third World. (London:
Overseas Development Institute, 1984), pp. 45-56.
[15] Redfield, R. Peasant Society and Culture. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp.
35-43.
[16] See So, A. The South China Silk District. (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1986).
[17] See Bodenheimer, S. Dependency and Imperialism: The roots of Latin American
underdevelopment. (New York: NACLA, 1970), pp. 49-53.
[18] Prebisch, R. The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems.
(New York: United Nations, 1950).
[19] Ibid.
[20] Dos Santos, T. The Structure of Dependence. (Boston: Extending Horizons, 1971). 225-233.
[21] Foster-Carter, A. Neo-Marxist Approaches to Development and Underdevelopment. Journal
of Contemporary Asia 3, 1973, 7-33.
[22] Friedrichs, R. A Sociology of Sociology. (New York: Free Press, 1970), pp. 34-36.
[23] Frank, G. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1967).
[24] Frank, G. Latin America: Underdevelopment and Revolution. (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1969).
[25] Landsberg, M. Export-led Industrialization in the Third World: Manufacturing Imperialism.
Review of Radical Political Economics, 11, 1979, 50-63.
[26] Dos Santos, T. Op. Cit.
[27] Cardoso, F. and Falleto, E. Dependency and Development in Latin America. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979). Fagen, R. Theories of Development: The question of class
strugle. Monthly Review 35, 1983, 13-24.
[28] Poulantzas, N. Estado y Sociedad en Naciones Dependientes. (Mexico: Siglo XXI editores,
1989). Pp 56-67; 78-83; 101-112. Alford, R. Los Poderes de la Teoria. Capitalismo, estado y
democracia. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Manantial, 1991).
[29]So, A. Social Change and Development, Op.Cit. pp.46-49.
[30] Bergesen, A. Long Waves of Colonial Expansion and Contraction in Studies of the Modern
World-System. (New York: Academic Press, 1984). Goldfrank, W. The World-System of
Capitalism: Past, and Present. (Beverlly Hills, California: SAGE, 1986).
[31] Wallerstein, I. World-System Analysis. (Standford: Standford University Press, 1987).

44

[32] Wallerstein, I. Africa: The Politics of Unity. (New York: Random House, 1977).
[33] So, A. Op. Cit. Pp. 110-116.
[34] Wallerstein, I. (1987), Op. Cit. Akzin, B. Estado y Nacion. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1988). Bell, D. El Advenimiento de la Sociedad Post-Industrial. (Madrid: Ed.
Alianza, 1987).
[35] Kaplan, B. Social Change in the Capitalist World. (Beverly Hills, California: SAGE,
1993). Gough, I. Economia Politica del Estado de Bienestar. (Madrid, Espaa: Blume, 1992).
[36] Moore, M. Globalization and Social Change. (New York: Elseiver, 1993). Isuani, E. El
Estado Benefactor. Un Paradigma en Crisis. (Buenos Aries, Argentina: Mio y Davila, 1991).
[37] Portes, A. Labor, Class, and the International System. (New York: Aberdeen, 1992). Held,
D. Modelos de Democracia. (Madrid, Espaa: Alianza Editorial, 1992).
[38] Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (New York: Scribner, 1988).
[39] Etzioni. E. Social Change. (New York: Basic Books, 1991). Galbraith, J. La Cultura de la
Satisfaccion. (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1992). Hirschman, A. De la Economia a la Politica y Mas
alla. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1987).
Return to Sincrona General Index
Return to Sincrona Winter 2001

45

THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION

COLONIALISM AND DEVELOPMENT

STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL CONTROL:

The question of how to rule the massive population and vast area of the colonies
was of first concern to the colonialists; the search for native collaborators was the best
solution for this concern of the colonial states. As Britain had longer, effective and more
continuous colonial experience than others imperial powers, therefore I have taken
British Colonialism and Colonial India as a case study in my essay. How is it possible for
a so few British to hold down so many people? In this essay I will try to figure out some
of the ways and strategies in which the British Colonial state sought to maintain Social
Control in the Colonial India.
The colonial era in India started from the conquest of Bengal by the East India
Company in 1757. The far most challenge was the consolidation of the much more
diversified Indian society, this need of controlling the diversified Indian society made
the colonizers to carry out their own style on Indian government.
The company power rose from the victory of Bengal, because it had provided a
secure financial base for its powerful mercenary army-the Land Revenues of Bengal
allowed the companys Indian operations against other Indian kingdoms.
THE CREATION OF THE BRITISH INDIA:
Cohn (1996:5) the British conceived of governing India by codifying and
reinstituting the ruling practices that had been developed by previous states and rulers.
Knowledge of the history and practices of Indian states was seen as the most valuable
form of knowledge on which to build the colonial state. The British Colonial state, with
great care and consideration, reorganized and molded the pre-colonial setup to carry
out, effectively, its colonial aims. Jalal (1998: 67) the early colonial edifice was
undoubtedly built on the foundation of existing indigenous arrangements, institutions and
identities which had not lost their vitality during the phase of political decentralization
prior to colonial advance. But it is important not to lose sight of the colonial state as a key
actor in bringing about major changes within economy and society. To some modern

46

writers (Baylay 1988:156) pre-colonial cast system and religious practices were fluid,
eclectic and uncodified. Families could change their cast ranking in quite short periods of
time. Traditional India was not a rigid society, it was British rule which made it so,
codifying many localized and pragmatic customs into a unified and Brahminised Hindoo
law and classing people into immutable castes through the operation of courts and
ethnographical surveys. The British brought major changes with in the economy and
society of the colonial India, though the colonialists didnt create this interpretation of
India, rather they speeded up and transformed social and ideological changes which were
already in use. To Fuller (1989:36) the traditional India vanished under the British Raj. I
submit that what anthropologists are prone to call traditional

India is in fact, British

India.

THE JUST RULE:

Looking at the British colonization of the Indian subcontinent, an important
dimension was the colonialist mentality. (Judd 1972) How did the British justify their
subjugation of other peoples? Though the industrial Revolution gave the Western
countries a view of their superiority, but in addition to the technical superiority was a
growing vision of moral superiority. The idea of the just rule, that if they were not
superior, then God would not have given them the colonies. Potter (2000) mentioned
two clusters of ideas, in his book, which were central to the British colonial ideology of
just rule in India, for example. One was that the British were benevolent, just, and
gradually modernizing or developing Indian economically, socially and culturally. The
second cluster of ideas centered on the belief that the colonial rulers were invincible, it
was futile to oppose them, and that Indians were too weak and disunited to oppose them
successfully. These principal ideas about benevolence and invincibility were an important
asset for the British in their struggle to maintain their rule.
The British rulers assumed that Indians had lost their right to self-rule through
their own weakness, which led to their subjugation by a succession of foreign rulers. And
now it is the foreign rulers responsibility for the maintenance of an equitable form of
government (Feudal not Representational) which would benefit the ruled. And since
the British had lived through feudal stage in their own history, hence theoretically the
present feudal society of India could also evolve into a modern one in the distant future.

47

For all this an Indian aristocracy had to be recognized and or created, which could play
the part of loyal feudatories to the British queen. (Cohn: 166-7)
(Especially in case of Africa) Christian missionaries called for European
intervention to end slavery and barbaric practices (such as human sacrifice) which
provided a moral rational for European political and economic ambitions. These
ambitions (Scramble of Africa) were officially legitimated and negotiated at the Berlin
conference of 1884-1885, when European leaders agreed to partition the African
continent into neatly bordered spheres of influence.

THE INDIRECT RULE: (in search of loyals/collaborators)

The numerical presence of the British in colonized India was never very
significant. Yet, the British were able to maintain a vast and stable empire in the Indian
sub-continent for almost two centuries. Although there is no doubt that physical violence
(including torture) were important elements of British domination in India, equally
important were the success of political strategies that took full advantage of rivalries
amongst native rulers and exploited divisions arising caste, religion, class and other
sectarian differences. As stated by Potter (2000:278) there was no way that the British
could control their vast empire in India by using only the police and the army. No
government lasts long on the basis of force alone. The British had to have traditional
authority figures in Indian society on whom they could rely for political support and
who could bring to the new state the cloak of legitimacy.
In her article on colonial Africa Elizabeth Heath explains the rationales of
indirect rule by the colonial states. She argues that under direct rule, colonies were
divided into districts administrated by European appointees. These appointees were
responsible for regional tax collection, labor and military recruitment, public works,
education, local court cases and the execution of dictates handed down from the colonys
governors. They were also expected to maintain public order and discourage offensive or
backward local customs. Thus direct rule was seen as a means of civilizing as well as
controlling the colonies. But the indirect rule was preferred over the direct rule due to
certain practical problems, such as, the European governments lacked the personnel
needed to administer their colonies effectively, also these few administrators were
responsible not only for large subject populations, but for vast territories. Travel over

48

distances was slow and arduous and communication difficult, as a result, colonial
governors had little contact with remote areas. Finally, colonial officials limited
knowledge of local languages and customs, combined with their often total of
legitimacy, undermined their ability to recruit labor, collect taxes or carry out other
administrative duties effectively. In the end, both the great chiefs and local village chiefsprovided indispensable to the project of colonial administration. For all these reasons,
most European powers began to modify their approach to colonial rule in the early 20th
century.
The great proponent of indirect rule- Lord Lugard, in his book, The Dual
Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), advised the British administrators that White
officials were to be more advisors than direct governors. He recommends
preservation as much as possible; change should take place by evolutionary processes
which would allow adaptations to take place while maintaining a good deal of continuityno sharp breaks with the past. But Lugards idea of indirect rule was not a static one. He
believed in changing and adapting-modernizing, and hoped to do this using traditional
chiefs and princes.
The assistance of anthropologists and missionaries, in this process of colonial
administration, cannot be ignored. But with whom the colonialists had trouble or
dissatisfaction, were replaced with other considered more loyal. In Rhodesia (present-day
Zimbabwe) in 1927, the British administration abolished hereditary rights of succession
and assumed the power to appoint chiefs, thereby minimizing the chances of chiefly
disobedience.
In British India, those territories or princely states which were outside the direct
administration of the British were entered into treaty arrangements, who acknowledge
British over lordship in return for a measure of autonomy in their respective domains.
This colonial construct of indirect rule as stated by Jalal (1998:69) was an ingenious
device that complemented and did not contradict the efficacy of direct British colonial
rule in other parts of the sub-continent. Power may have been exercised through indirect
means, but it was not in any more than a formal sense limited in its potential to stamp out
resistance.

49

REWARD OR RIGHT:
As stated earlier that the administration of the British colonies was generally
guided by the principle of indirect rule. This indirect rule as we know was made possible
with the help of the native Indian collaborators or loyalists. The feeling of loyalty rooted
amongst section of the Indian elite and the princes, was the main political force in the
British India operated by the British. To intact this feeling of loyalty, rewards were
presented to these collaborators for their services and allegiance to the British Raj.
Cohn(1983:169) the offering of these rewards and honors (Nazar and Peshkash) were
seen as paying for the favor, which the British then translated into rights relating to
their trading activities.

REVENUE COLLECTION:
The chief concern of the military and bureaucratic institutions of the Colonial
British State was the security and stability of land revenue-the principle source of its
income. A variety of mechanisms were created in different parts of India to generate
revenue without revolt. Different revenue systems were applied in different areas,
according to the need, for example, in Bengal the Zamindari system (fixed taxes in
perpetuity in return for ownership of large states) was established, however, in Madras
and Bombay the Ryotwari (peasant) settlement system was set in motion, in which
peasant cultivators had to pay annual taxes directly to the government. Jalal (1998:70) in
the early nineteenth century the colonial state armed the Zamindars with formidable
powers of extra-economic coercion, including distraint and eviction. The entire period
from the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century was characterized by
revenue and rent offensive by the colonial state and its Zamindari intermediaries.

OFFICILIZING:
British made visible their power by officializing procedure that established and
extended their capacity in many areas. They took control by defining and classifying
space, making separations between public and private spheres; by counting and
classifying their populations, replacing religious institutions as the registrar of births,
marriages, and deaths, and by standardizing language and scripts. The state licensed some
activities as legitimate and suppressed others as immoral or unlawful. The schools

50

became the crucial civilizing institutions and sought to produce moral and productive
citizens. (Cohn 1996:3)

ENGLISH JUDICIAL SYSTEM:

The legal system that accompanied British colonialism is characterized by a
mixture of different laws related to the principle of indirect rule (Mathieu, 1994). The
customary laws of the colonies were only accepted on the conditions that it did not
conflict with the basic principles of British laws, which were in any case considered
superior on a presumed evolutionary scale of legitimate legality.
In 1772 an elaborate judicial system, known as Adalat, established civil and
criminal jurisdictions, both Hindu Pundits and Muslim Qazis were recruited to aid the
presiding judges in interpreting their customary laws, but in other instances, British
common and statutory laws became applicable. In extraordinary situations where none of
these systems was applicable, the judges were enjoyed to adjudicate on the basis of
justice, equity and good conscience. Jalal (1998:73) the introduction of English judiciary
was the most important policy for upholding their power; it was to mask their essentially
amoral political behavior that the British retained some of the colonial trappings of precolonial state ideology. The East India Companys officials consulted Mughal law
officers-Qzis, Muftis and Pundits, all this pragmatic policy for a newly colonizing power
was explicitly aimed at minimizing the threats of social reaction. According to Dirks
(2001) it was in fact the British law mostly responsible for regulating the colonial Indian
society.

EDUCATION POLICY:
The education policy introduced by the colonialists was intended to reinforce
existing lines of socio-economic division in society rather than bringing general
liberation from ignorance and superstitions. While the strategy of divide and rule was
used most effectively, an important aspect of British rule in India was to groom and
artfully tutored the elites into becoming model British subjects. In 1835, Thomas
Macauly articulated the goals of British colonial imperialism most succinctly we must
do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom

51

we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions,
in words and intellect.

CASTE SYSTEM:
Is India's caste system the remnant of ancient India's social practices or the result
of the historical relationship between India and British colonial rule? Dirks (2001) elects
to support the latter view. Adhering to the school of Orientalist thought promulgated by
Edward Said and Bernard Cohn, Dirks argues that British colonial control of India for
200 years pivoted on its manipulation of the caste system. He hypothesizes that caste was
used to organize India's diverse social groups for the benefit of British control. Bayly
(1988:157) argues that in early nineteenth century, however, the spirit of hierarchy and
rituals distinction became more pervasive. The British peace speeded the rise of high
Hindu kingship, Brahmanism and the advance of principles of purity and pollution in the
countryside. Cohns (1983) work in particular, provided a new understanding to Indias
caste system. His work revealed that although the caste system had existed in India
before the British took control, the system took on a new meaning when the British
established laws to codify it. Cohn argued that the British imagined India as a very
hierarchical society and used laws and rituals to control the country that made it
more hierarchical.

POLICING:
After the territorial boundaries of the colonial regime were secured, a period of control
was set in. The emphasis of colonial rule now switched from military security to the
formation of a colonial police force for civil duties. (As in most of Africa) Armed with
rifles, the central function of the police force was to collect hut taxes and obtain labor for
employment in the European estates. The army troops were gradually reduced and
matters of internal security given prominence since it was thought that the African
population would no longer resist British rule. The emphasis on coercive control
generally declined in favor of closer collaborations with the local chiefs and princes.
Most police work, nonetheless, was not so much involved with the prevention and
detection of crime, but focused on the economic foundations of colonial power. During
the Second World War, the police was still of relatively small size and had little influence

52

in the rural areas which were by and large unexplored. While the police gradually
engaged more in the enforcement of various criminal laws, its economic functions
remained crucial. Police agents also functioned as prison wards for natives that could not
pay taxes, or they kept women hostage to force their husbands to pay. In addition, the
police protected European property in the towns and tried to enforce laws against liquordistilling and native witchcraft movements. Most other police activities during the war
were military and political. For instance, enemy aliens were arrested and detained by
agents of the newly created Political Intelligence Bureau (Mathieu Deflem: 1994). As
pointed out by (Deflem: 1994) that the British colonial administration based on the
imperial notion of martial race adopted the strategy of multi-ethnic recruitment. The
British belief, those members of the native population could provide a necessary link with
the British rulers to increase the efficiency of police work. Therefore, it was carefully
arranged that native policemen did not serve in their own region of origin or residence,
which was considered too dangerous, but were to police other regions of the conquered
colony. In case of British India, the British Indian Army (Jalal: 1998:98) was organized
and mixed the regiments in such a way that, as the secretary of state put it in 1862; Sikhs
might fire into Hindu, Gurkha into either, without any scruple in case of need. As
justification for the new recruitment patterns, the colonial masters devised a new-fangled,
anthropological theory of martial races and castes.
ENDING REMARKS:
These were some of the ways in which the British colonial state sought to
maintain social control in its colonies. The imperial powers paid little heed to native
culture or political units, as a consequence, the social map was changed beyond
recognition, African and Asians state boundaries were frequently divided into ethnolinguistic, racial and religious groups. Economic infrastructure and production patterns
were shaped by the interests and needs of the colonial powers (Professor Gerhard
Rampel). The persistence poverty and backwardness of the Third World is still blamed to
colonialism. David Potter (2000) Political sovereignty did not necessarily bring with it
economic independence. This led some to question whether formal independence was
indeed nothing more than a formality. Certainly the colonial experience resulted in ties
with world economic order that long outlived independence. Neocolonialism, as these

53

inequitable ties became known, cannot be discounted. As stated by Talbot (2000:10) The
British were always pragmatic rulers, more preoccupied with law and order than with
developmentalist concerns. Talbot (2000:13) Ever since the publication in 1978 of
Edward Saids seminal study Orientalsim. Some scholars have recognized that
European orientalist knowledge, classification, definition and representation of nonwestern societies were more about the power to control than about intellectual curiosity.
Writers as Stocking (1991) have revealed how ethnography and philology were tools of
colonialism.
References:

Bernard Cohn (1996) Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in
India, Princeton University Press.

Bernard Cohn (1983) Representing Authority in Victorian India in Eric

Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Eds) (1983) the Invention of Tradition.
Cambridge University Press.

C.A.Bayly (1998) Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire: The New
Cambridge History of Indian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chris Fuller (1989) British India or Traditional India? Land, caste and power in
Alavi and Harris (Eds) Sociology of Developing Societies: South Asia.

Deflem, Mathieu. 1994. Law Enforcement in British Colonial Africa: A

Comparative Analysis of Imperial Policing in Nyasaland, the Gold Coast, and
Kenya. Police Studies 17(1):45-6.

Dennis Judd, The British Raj, (Avon, England: Wayland Pub., 1972)

Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind (2001): Colonialism and the making of

Modern India. Princeton University.

David Potter (2000) The power of Colonial States in Poverty and Development
in to the 21st Century. Oxford University press.

Elizabeth Heath: Colonial Rule; Encarta Africana (www.

Africana.com/research/Encarta/tt_382.asp).

Ian Talbot (2000) Inventing the Nation: India & Pakistan. Oxford University
Press.

54

Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Evanston: Northwestern

University Press, 1968); Michael Crowder, Colonial West Africa: Collected
Essays (London: Frank Cass, 1978).

Professor Gerhard Rampel, Lecture on Colonial Africa. Western New England

College(http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/colonialafric
a.html)

Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (1998) Modern South Asia. Routledge 1998.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education,"

Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G. M. Young (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1957), pp-721-24,729.

55

IS THE WORLD OVERPOPULATED?

(By Tom Hewitt & Ines Smyth)

Two extreme views of population :Malthusianism Vs New Consensus (ICPD)

Population a problem: 'the unprecedented surge in population combined with rising

individual consumption, is pushing our claims on the planet beyond its natural limits'
Population growth is an impetus behind human progress:increased population
density can induce the necessary social and technical changes to bring about better
living standards'

Questions:
1. Is the world overpopulated and, if so, in relation to what?
2. Is the majority of the world's population poor because there are too many
people and not enough resources to go round or does the world's population
continue to grow as a result of the poverty of the majority of people?
3. Is the population debate about more than population policies and birth
control? Does the Programme of Action of ICPD offer new solutions based
on a global consensus?

Population growth rate is much higher in low-income countries

Population growth has declined in both high-income and low-income countries,

although the decline has been less dramatic in the later. It should be noted that the
lowest income countries continue to have an annual population growth rate of 26% on average, and in some parts, for example sub-Saharan Africa, this growth
rate is higher still (UNFPA, 1998)

From the current level of 6 billion people, the world's population is projected to
increase by 80 million per year 2025 most of this increase will be in developing
countries.

56

Q: But why does population grow and why do low-income countries have higher
population growth rates?

(1)MORTALITY AND (2) FERTILITY and (3) Distribution of Population

Match between mortality and fertility rates: Mortality rates decline fertility rates also
decline
Why fertility rate increases
Improved health and diseases
Other reasons of why fertility rates are high or low

(Social, cultural and economic factors)

1. the proportion of people married
2. contraceptive use
3. the prevalence of abortion
4. post-birth infertility

(Industrialization and development process)

1. urbanization, which increases the cost of raising children
2. A fall in the production value of children due, for example, to education, the
introduction of labor laws, increased demand for skilled labor.
3. increased education and age of marriage for women
4. the changing role of women and increased earning opportunities outside the
household
5. intervening religious and cultural values
6. a shift to grater individual control of fertility decisions
7. lower infant and child mortality
8. higher returns for education of children
9. more welfare and insurance schemes for the elderly
10. grater availability of contraception

(Micro level explanations)

See page. 129

57

(3) Distribution of Population

Population density is uneven in the world

Half of the world's population was urban in 1995 an that this is projected
to increase to nearly 60% in 2015, with the fastest urban growth rate
occurring in the least developed counties.

Population density varies greatly between and within continents.

The causes of unevenness in the distribution of population range from ecological

endowments, colonial history and forms of production, to national and international
migration and resettlements (or combination of these).

Demographic Transition Theory: The Demographic transition model (DTM) is a

model used to represent the process of explaining the transformation of countries from
high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates as part of the
economic development of a country from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economy.
The transition involves four stages, or possibly five.

In stage one; pre-industrial society, death rates and birth rates are high and
roughly in balance.

In stage two, that of a developing country, the death rates drop rapidly due to
improvements in food supply and sanitation, which increase life spans and reduce
disease. These changes usually come about due to improvements in farming
techniques, access to technology, basic healthcare, and education. Without a
corresponding fall in birth rates this produces an imbalance, and the countries in
this stage experience a large increase in population.

In stage three, birth rates fall due to access to contraception, increases in wages,
urbanization, a reduction in subsistence agriculture, an increase in the status and
education of women, a reduction in the value of children's work, an increase in
parental investment in the education of children and other social changes.
Population growth begins to level off.

58

During stage four there are both low birth rates and low death rates. Birth rates
may drop to well below replacement level as has happened in countries like
Germany, Italy, and Japan, leading to a shrinking population, a threat to many
industries that rely on population growth. As the large group born during stage
two ages, it creates an economic burden on the shrinking working population.
Death rates may remain consistently low or increase slightly due to increases in
lifestyle diseases due to low exercise levels and high obesity and an aging
population in developed countries.

As with all models, this is an idealized picture of population change in these countries.
The model is a generalization that applies to these countries as a group and may not
accurately describe all individual cases. The extent to which it applies to less-developed
societies today remains to be seen. Many countries such as China, Brazil and Thailand
have passed through the DTM very quickly due to fast social and economic change.
Some countries, particularly African countries, appear to be stalled in the second stage
due to stagnant development and the effect of AIDS.
Migration:

VIEWS ON POPULATION:
1. Malthusian View: Overpopulation is a problem in itself.
2. Social View: Overpopulation is not a matter of too many people, but of unequal
distribution
In relation to what is the world overpopulated? Is it, as some believe, in relation to
available resources such as food, or is the problem the distribution and, therefore, access
to such resources?

The food production has outstripped population growth in the last decades

But sub-Saharan Africa is the exception

So is there a problem of overpopulation in the world? For some the question has
to be asked not in absolute terms but in relation to distribution of, access to and
use of resources.

NEW (NEO) MALTHUSIAN VIEW: (population growth is the major cause of

poverty)

59

'Let us act on the fact that less than five dollars invested in population control is worth a
hundred dollars invested in economic growth.' (President Johnson, speech to the UN,
1965)
Population and Environment:
Rich and poor countries utilizing non-renewable resources:

THE SOCIAL VIEW: 'Development is the best contraceptive.'

Women at the center: Recognition of the centrality of women.

While dramatic enough to be described as an "explosion, this growth in

population seems almost modest in comparison to the expansion of the global
economy in the same period

A NEW CONSENSUS: ICPD

World Bank's World Development Report 1984 states that 'Rapid population growth is a
development problem' and that 'there are appropriate public policies to reduce fertility.'
While there is welcome recognition that poverty can be a direct cause of high fertility
(elements of the social view)
But despite some acknowledgement of the importance of social factors, the
official view is still largely the New Malthusian on which argues for direct population
control measures (alongside development policies).

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

60

Environment a Collective Good Issue:

Global threats to the natural environment are a growing source of

interdependence.

Collective good: A sustainable environment is a collective good, and states

bargain over how to distribute the costs of providing that good.

International community failed to provide the collective good of sustainable

fisheries.

Because the world's states did not solve the collective goods problem of world
fisheries, they are paying $20 billion a year in subsidies to bankrupt fishing
industries in their respective countries.

Tragedy of the Commons: it is a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting

independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited
resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this
to happen.

Enclosure:

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

By Phil woodhouse

By the 1990s concern with 'the global environment' had become one of the most
potent factors shaping politics in industrialized counties, engendering a debate
that concerns not only the environmental consequences of economic development
through

industrialization,

but

also

environmental

degradation

in

non-

industrialized economies.

Transformation of the physical environment has been an integral part of the

development of human society since its inception.

The Conquest of Nature: Until comparatively recently human transformation of

the environment was considered a necessary and creative activity. Perception of a
negative impact only began with the advent of industrial production and
concerned the visible threats to health posed by 'the two great groups of

61

nineteenth century urban killers-air pollution and water pollution, or respirator

and intestinal disease'.

The accumulation of insecticide in successive stages of the food chain reaching

toxic levels in the higher stages, thus killing large numbers of mammals and birds.
E.g. The case of Minamata disease found in Japanese fishermen. (Neurological
disease from mercury poisoning: a severe degenerative disease of the nervous system

caused by mercury contamination, especially through eating mercury-tainted seafood).

'The Limits to Growth' published in the early 1970s: 'if the present growth trends
in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource
depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached
sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a
rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial
capacity.

The Brundtland Commission (1987): p.142

Montreal Protocol (1989) 'perhaps the single most successful international

agreement to date': The first international agreement on the various global effects
of atmospheric pollution-to protect the ozone layer. In this agreement 22 states
agreed to reduce CFCs by 50% by 1998. In 1990s, the timetable was accelerated
and the signatories expanded 81 states agreed to eliminate all CFCs by 2000. The
ozone hole continued to grow lager in 2006, but was projected to slowly shrink
back over the coming 50 years if current arrangements continue.

Environmental degradation in less industrialized countries:

In the discussions of global environment by the Brundtland Commission and

others, two specific concerns stand out in relation to environmental degradation in
less industrialized countries.

Firstly, there is a fear that as these countries do industrialize there will be a large
increase in pollution, particularly the atmospheric pollution which it has been
claimed will cause catastrophic climatic change. The Brundtland commission
claimed that in order to supply everyone in the world with a level of consumption
equal t that now enjoyed by those in industrialized countries, global energy

62

consumption would need to increase fivefold, entailing a similar increase in the

atmospheric pollution which results from energy generation through burning coal,
oil or gas. Other have argued further that, whereas technological change has
increased the efficiency of energy use in industrialized counties, large-scale
industrialization using older (and more polluting) technology will cause a
disproportionate increase in global pollution levels. (dirty technology)

Environmentally hazardous projects: (large scale projects) Three Gorges Dam,

Aral Sea Basin project, (small scale industries) Gold mining in Brazil, Tanneries
in India.

2. While the spread of industrialization typifies one set of environmental

concerns, the lack of industrial development is often associates with another set of
environmental pressures. This view sees increasing rural population in nonindustrial counties as the main cause for concern, not because they have high
levels of consumption, but because their poverty is held to drive them to seek
survival through means which degrade the resources on which they depend.

A variety of technical and social factors have a central role in determining the
environmental impact of human populations. Thus, where environmental
degradation is concerned, we should not be concerned with numbers or even
densities of people, but rather with how they gain their livelihood. It is
livelihoods which establish the relationship of human populations with their
environment. If we wish to identify elements of environmental degradation
characteristic of non-industrialized countries, we need therefore to consider the
nature of economic activity in such countries and how it might have a different
relationship to the environment from that in industrialized countries.

Livelihoods and Environment in the Global Economy:

Relating livelihoods to the environment
All human activity exploits the environment:

Through the use of natural resources as raw materials (renewable

resources in the case of plants and animals, wind and water power; nonrenewable in the case of minerals for production and fossil fuels)

63

Through the use of the environment to accept waster products. The

capacity of the environment to transform water into harmless forms can be
regarded as a 'renewable' environmental resource.

The intensity of exploitation of these resources determines the environmental

consequences, in terms of the depletion of non-renewable resources and
degradation of renewable resources. An important distinction we need t make in
economic

activity

is

between

primary

commodity

production

and

manufacturing. The important point here is that complex manufacturing, which

forms its products from a combination of different raw materials, offers more
flexibility of resource use than primary commodity production. Whereas in
primary commodity production the composition of the commodity (e.g. copper, or
groundnuts) is fixed, and therefore so are the environmental resources used to
make it, there is considerable scope to alter the composition of manufactured
products: copper piping can be substituted by plastic or even steel; cooking oil
can be made from a variety of different vegetable oils besides groundnut oil.
The importance of the distinction between primary commodities and
manufacturing from an environmental standpoint is that an increase in output of
primary commodities is more likely to be achievable only through increasing the
intensity of exploitation of local resources, with attendant risks of degradation of
those resources (exhaustion of mineral reserves, depletion of fish stocks,
reduction in soil fertility etc.). By contrast, manufacturing output may be
increased, if the capital and cheap energy supplies are available, by drawing on a
multiplicity of more or less distant sources of raw materials. The local
environmental impact from manufacturing is the waste energy and materials that
cause pollution.

Implications of dependence on primary commodity production

During the latter half of the 20th century prices of primary commodities have
undergone a long-term decline relative to those of manufactures, with the
exception of the period of economic boom following the Second World War.
During the 1980s the fall in commodity prices became precipitate, reaching the
lowest levels recorded in the 20th century. Only in the mid-1990s did the fall in

64

commodity prices appear to have slowed. The decline in commodity prices can be
traced to four main changes in the pattern of demand, production, and trade in the
industrialized countries.
1. Demand for primary commodity exports is closely linked to overall economic
activity in industrialized countries, and this slowed down after the 1970s, relative
to the boom of postwar period.
2. The structure of consumption in industrialized economies has altered, with
consumption of manufactured goods growing less quickly than consumption of
services, which require little of no input of primary services.
3. Technological changes in manufacturing processes, involving greater efficiency
in the use of materials, increased recycling of scrap materials, and increased
substitution by synthetic materials, have reduced dependence on primary
commodity inputs.
4. Agricultural protectionism has increased in industrialized counties. In Japan, the
United States, and the EU counties, a willingness to pay high prices to local
agricultural producers has stimulated overproduction of agricultural surpluses,
which then need to be sold, often at much lower (subsidized) prices on the world
market. This practice, which not only affectively closes markets for agricultural
commodities in industrialized counties to overseas exporters, but also generally
lowers the world price for such commodities, was the object of trade liberalization
measures negotiated during the Uruguay Round of GATT.
These trends have two main results. Firstly, the consumption of primary
commodities is either declining or rising less than economic growth in general.
Secondly, for countries whose export income depends on primary commodities,
falling prices has meant reduced income. Each unit of output of primary
commodities can be exchanged for a decreasing number of units of manufactured
goods.
Governments of economies dependent on primary commodity production have
responded to this situation by cutting imports, by borrowing, and by increasing
the output of primary commodities and reducing the cost of output. There is
evidence, however, that these responses have improved matters:

65

o Reduction of imports has reduced the capacity of manufacturing industry to

maintain or replace equipment, thus further diminishing local manufacturing
output.
o In 1980s, the drop in commodity prices and the increase in interest rates increased
the debt liability of many primary commodity producing countries, while
simultaneously reducing their capacity to repay. The burden of debt greatly
increases the need for greater economic production, without producing any
improvement in living standards or consumption in the indebted nation. In Brazil
and Indonesia in 1988 the interest due on outstanding debt was equivalent to 42%
and 40% of export earnings respectively.
o For governments of countries dependent upon exports of primary commodities,
the need to 'service' their debts may present little option but to maximize output of
these commodities, to try and recover lost revenues through greater volume of
production. Indeed, this strategy was the one advocated by the World Bank in its
prescriptions of 'structural adjustment' for indebted nations. However, increased
production of the same commodity by different countries tends to depress prices
further, and in some cases has precipitated a collapse in the market.
The pursuit of increased output of primary commodities may intensify the
exploitation of environmental resources to the point where degradation of
livelihoods may be catastrophic. It has been argued that the Sahelian famine of the
1970s was an outcome of this kind, the result of reckless extension of groundnut
cultivation into marginal rainfall areas.

Conclusion: The specific form that environmental degradation takes in different

pars of the world has its roots in the structure of the world economy. It is not that
environmental degradation in less industrialized economies is worse than that in
developed countries, but that it appears to many that it is less amenable to
intervention because it is the result of economic desperation rather than profligate
consumption.

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RETHINKING GENDER MATTERS IN DEVELOPMENT

Video: United Nations Millennium Campaign - Goal 3 - Gender Equity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNj4n8RN0uo

Female

Male

Women are half or more than half of the population

70% of the world poor are women

2/3 of the world illiterate population are women

At least half a million women die each year from complications to pregnancy.

While women represent 41% of all workers in developing countries, women's

wages are 30-40% less than those of women for comparable work

No society treats its women as well as its men (UNDP)

The Gender-related Development Index value of every country is lower than

its Human Development Index value (UNDP

Gender inequality is a structural impediment to poverty elimination. It is in

everyones interests to remove it (DFID, 1999)

The gaps between the health status of rich and poor are at least as wide as
they were half a century ago, and are becoming wider still (WHO)

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ROLE OF WOMEN IN ISLAM

Equality and Justice

Authority and Responsibility

Family Life: And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among
yourselves that you may dwell in tranquility with them and He has planted love and
kindness between you. (30:21)

Men and Women are Equal:

People! keep your duty to your Lord, who created you from a single being and
created its mate of the same (kind), and spread from these two many men and
women. And keep your duty to Allah by Whom you demand one of another (your
rights), and (to) the ties of relationship. Surely Allah is ever a watcher over you.

And do not covet that wherewith Allah has excelled one of you above another. To
men shall be the portion of what they earn and to women shall be the portion of
what they earn. And ask Allah for some of His grace. Verily Allah is all knowing.

Holy Prophet (sws) has cursed the women who try to make their appearance
similar to that of men.

Hazrat Abu Hurraira (ra) narrates that Holy Prophet (sws) has cursed men who
dress up like women and women who dress up like men.

Hazrat Ayesha (ra) narrates that Holy Prophet (sws) has cursed he women.

Men are the maintainers of women, with what Allah has made some of them to
excel others and with what they spend out of their wealth. So the good women are
obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded.

68


): (




And just as according to [societys] norms these women have obligations [towards their
husbands], they also have rights, although men [as husbands] have a status above women.
(2:228)
Both the Old and New Testaments hold the same view in this regard: `Unto the woman He said ... thy
desire shall be thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' (Gn. 3:16) `Wives submit yourselves unto your
own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the
church; and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be
to their husbands in every thing.' (Ephesians. 5:22-24)

Sex and Gender: gender rather than sex is the key concept here because we are
concerned with the social roles and interactions of men and women rather than their
biological characteristics. In all aspects of social activity, including access to resources
for production, rewards or remuneration for work, distribution of consumption, income or
goods, exercise of authority and power, and participation in cultural, political and
religious activities.
What is considered male or female work or male or female attributes, behavior or
characteristics, varies considerably between different societies and different historical
periods. But it is also important to realize the notions of gender identity, and thus what is
fitting for men and women to do or to be, may have a strong ideological context. E.g.
UK's Ministers of State for Social Services' statements (see p 385-6)
In rural sectors of many low-income countries both men and women often report to
census enumerators that women do not do any productive agricultural work, or they are
just involved as family helpers or they carry out only domestic work. In fact, most rural
women spend the majority of their waking hours on a diverse series of activities.

GENDER AND SEX

SEX
(Biological; born with)

GENDER
(Socially constructed; not born
with)

Cannot Be Changed

Changeable

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1. Only women can give birth.

1. Women can do traditionally

male jobs as well as men.

2. Only men can supply sperm.

2. Men can take care of children as

well as women.

GENDER does not equal WOMEN

Feminism is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual
and economic rights to men. It involves various movements, theories, and philosophies,
all concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women and that
campaign for women's rights and interests.
Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western
society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's
legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily
integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access
to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection from domestic violence, sexual
harassment and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and
against other forms of discrimination
In the late 1980s and 1990s postmodern feminists argued that gender roles are
socially constructed, and that it is impossible to generalize women's experiences across
cultures and histories

Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women, extending from the
biological to the social. Biologically, the male gender is defined by the presence of a Ychromosome, and its absence in the female gender. However, there is debate as to the
extent that the biological difference has or necessitates differences in gender roles in
society and on gender identity, which has been defined as "an individual's self-conception
as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex." Historically,
feminism has posited that many gender roles are socially constructed, and lack a clear
biological explanation, but find their explanation in unequal (male/female) economic
power and other power relations

70

Since the birth of 'gender' in the mid 1970s the feminists 'new wave' generation
has been demanding women to integrate them into the development process. This has
resulted in an increasingly high profile given to women's issues and gender issues within
development policies, programmes and projects.
It is widely accepted in these times that development must be informed by gender
analysis and that particular attention must be paid to the needs of poor women. Many
would argue that the ways in which gender matters have been integrated into
development thinking and practice indicate a high degree of co-option of politicized
feminist objectives rather than their success in transforming the development agenda.

WOMEN AND GENDER: FEMINISM AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTIONS

As development co-operation has grown in the decades of the 20th century, so has the
realization that women should be key participants in and beneficiaries of policies,
programmes and projects concerned with both poverty eradication and the achievement
of social and political improvements in people's lives.

Women's voices not just heard but incorporated: Several international conferences on
women have produced blueprints for eliminating discrimination against women and for
ensuring that women's interests and needs are reflected across the whole gamut of the
development issues-not just in traditional women's areas of health, family planning and
education.
UN agencies, EU, DFID, CIDA, DANIDA, and WB all strongly consider gender in their
projects.
In many ways then, we could argue that gender in terms of ensuring that women do not
get left out of the development process, has triumphed in development. Both
development analysis, and the policies that spring from it, are now fully gender
balanced, rather than being male biased as in previous decades.

But some critics are skeptical of such claims; they argue that development activity
has co-opted gender issues and internalized them into mainstream development
activity rather than allowing them fundamentally to challenge ideas and institutions.
Other argues that gender as a universalizing framework and reference point has become

71

another manifestation of the ways in which Western (Northern, ex-colonial) priorities and
discourses have dominated development activity, a kind of neocolonial imposition on
communities and countries where there are other priorities and other understandings of
gender difference and gender roles.
Does gender really matter in development?

FROM WID TO GAD

Early conceptions of WID (The five Es)
Equality before lawlegal protection
Education as critical needto equal opportunity
Employment of women professionalsto break barriers and help others
Empowermentchanging power structures (early on this was not emphasized)
Economic developmentgreater economic power translates into more political
power

By the 1980s, WID was accepted and adopted internationally as a strategic

emphasis aiming to achieve womens integration in all aspects of the development
process. International acceptance of the need to overtly place women on the development
agenda was accompanied by the formulation of WID policies and the institutionalization
of various mechanisms, among both development agencies and recipients of international
development assistance, to address the concerns, needs, and contributions of women.
This led to a plethora of WID programs and projects aimed to improve the condition of
women and to deliver development to women.
Agency and independent reviews by the early 1990s of these WID projects,
approaches, and institutional mechanisms drew virtually unanimous conclusions about
the strengths and weaknesses of the WID approach. Reviews of the under-resourced and
often marginalized government womens units indicated they were unable to effectively
influence national policies or to bring about the gender equity that was envisaged at their
establishment. Targeted and segregated women-only projects operated to further
marginalize and isolate women from the mainstream of development. Relegating the
responsibility for improving the status of women (50 percent of the population) to
one department rather than to all sectoral ministries simply ghettoized women.
Treating women as a unified and special category divorced from other social relations,

72

including economic and social processes, would not accommodate or accurately reflect
the various groups of women or the different voices of women. More importantly, the
reviews and evaluations revealed that such approaches had not succeeded in significantly
narrowing the gap between women and men. Women only projects were often poorly
conceived and funded, and sometimes added to womens already heavy workloads with
few compensatory benefits.
These reviews, analyses, and conclusions led to significant rethinking of the WID
approach. It became evident that projects focusing exclusively on women implied that the
problem, and hence the solution, could be confined to women. For example, population
programs that exclusively targeted women were often unsuccessful, since their male
partners, whose consent was integral to project success, were not targeted.
Contraceptive acceptance often required the explicit consent of men. It became
obvious that, unless men were sensitized to the dangers of repeated and frequent
pregnancies, improvements in womens health and reductions in fertility rates could not
be achieved. Such approaches failed to recognize the critical role of men in decisions
regarding womens lives. Likewise, education projects that targeted only girls by
building schools exclusively for them did not always achieve the desired results because
men were not sensitized to the benefits to be achieved from educating girls, or the
socio-cultural environment was not adequately assessed.
Relying on women as the analytical category for addressing gender inequalities meant a
focus on women in isolation from the rest of their lives and from the relations through
which such inequalities were perpetuated and reproduced. This led to the major shift from
women as the key focus of analysis to a focus on gender relations, i.e., the social relations
between men and women that generate and perpetuate gender inequalities.
The rethinking of the WID approach also led to a move away from assessing the
adverse impact of development on women to examining the adverse impact of womens
exclusion on development. Women need development was replaced by
development needs women.
Social justice and equity arguments were complemented with arguments of economic
efficiency. The marginalization and isolation of women from the mainstream of the
development process came to be seen as economically inefficient and hampering

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economic growth. Hence, welfare-oriented and equity approaches were increasingly

replaced and complemented with mainstreaming and efficiency approaches.
Criticism of GAD: However, there were two highly influential criticisms of the economic
efficiency approach from leading womens advocates. These criticisms pointed out that
(i) mainstreaming women into development does not question the nature of the
development itself, which may be contrary to womens interests and concerns; and (ii)
taking account of and supporting womens actual roles in production does not challenge
the often inequitable basis by which these roles are allocated within society. These
criticisms have led to a new strategic emphasis on womens empowerment within
the development process. It aims to support measures that empower women to
contribute to setting development agenda, and to challenge socioeconomic systems that
place them at a relative disadvantage to men.
The evaluation of past failures also led to the realization that the development process
itself needs engendering. Hence, there is a need to refocus the strategic emphasis from a
narrow WID approach to a more dynamic GAD approach. In the GAD approach, the
strategic emphasis is widened to include womens rights, womens role as active way
participants and agents in development, and their role as actors with a specific agenda for
development. Compare this with the earlier WID approaches that perceived women
simply as reproducers (family planning), and passive recipients of resources (basic needs
and services).
Hence, welfare-oriented, add women and stir approaches that treated women as
passive recipients of development were replaced by approaches that attempt to
engender development, empower women, and perceive women as active agents in
their own right.
Ending remarks on WID & GAD: The difference between WID and GAD is essentially
based on the approach to assessing and dealing with womens unequal position in society.
GAD does not dislodge women as the central subject. Rather, while the WID approach
focused exclusively on women to improve womens unequal position, the GAD approach
recognizes that improvements in womens status require analysis of the relations between
men and women, as well as the concurrence and cooperation of men.
Emphasis is placed on the need to understand the ways in which unequal relations
between women and men may contribute to the extent and forms of exclusion that

74

women face in the development process. There is also an overt recognition that the
participation and commitment of men is required to fundamentally alter the social and
economic position of women. This recognition led to a shift away from an exclusive
focus on women to a GAD approach that also factors into the equation males and the
broader socio-cultural environment.
In the 1970s the birth of 'gender' in development as very much influenced by the 'new
wave' of feminism in the West which had emerged in the wake of the civil rights and
anti-colonial struggles of the 1960s. It was generally agreed to employ gender as a major
axis of identity and to build policy and analysis on the basis that there are significant
commonalities in women's experience.

GENDER MAINSTRAMING: The widespread enthusiasm for applying gender

analysis to all aspects of development, rather than just to women or women's issues, has
been termed 'gender mainstreaming'.

GENDER MATTERS: It is argued that the concentration on women and the neglect of
men and masculinity has impoverished gender analysis and diminished its radical and
transformatory potential in development. In recent years social scientists have turned
their attention to problematizing men and masculinity in advanced countries in the face of
seemingly intractable problems including: high unemployment, low labor and educational
attainment of young men, an increase in irresponsible social behavior including drugtaking, criminality and sexual irresponsibility, and the breakdown of the traditional
family.

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DEMOCRATIZATION, 'GOOD GOVERNANCE' AND DEVELOPMENT

By David Potter

Q. What is democratization? Why has it occurred?

Q. Does democratization stimulate development?
Q. What is 'good governance'? How does it relate to debates about the relation between
democratization and development?

Political regimes and democracy: regime is a relationship between the state and
civil society that specify the forms of political accountability and the manner by
which political leaders come to occupy the position of political authority.
Three most common types of political regime at the level of the nation state are
(1) Liberal democracy, (2) Partial democracy and (3) Authoritarian. The main
distinctions between these three relate to two broad attributes of the state
(accountable government and free/fair elections) and two broad aspects of civil
society (civil/political rights and associational autonomy).

Distinction between a communist party authoritarian regime model and

capitalist authoritarian regime:

Communist party authoritarian regime: strong leadership, not accountable to

citizens through competitive elections, mobilizing the entire society and
promoting socialist ideology by utilizing state machinery. Liberal communist state
accommodates 'market socialism'. China and Vietnam in the 1990s are examples.

76

Capitalist authoritarian regime: state ideology is of less consequence

politically, the economy is free in the sense that private entrepreneurs and
managers are able to pursue profit relatively unhindered by an interventionist state
(though freedom is not extended to workers), severe punishment for antigovernment political ideologies, secrecy in the affairs of state, alternative sources
of information do not exist, opposition suppressed. Indonesian and Nigeria in the
1990s are examples.

A Liberal Democracy:

Partial Democracy: in which the accountability of government to citizens is

restricted; military, traditional and other non-elected establishments within the
state restrict the effects of elections and compromise the authority of the elected
government, elections are held, but organized to ensure that only certain
candidates can be elected; opposition parties may exist and even make some
impact but the electoral system is organized to ensure that normally they would
neither win an election nor form a government. Restriction on the rights to
freedom of expression and access to alternative information, anti-government
organizations exist but are carefully monitored by the state.

Other forms of liberal democracy:

Involving people at local levele.g Vietnam in the early 1980s, when the
Peasant Union, the Trades Unions, the Women's Union and other mass
organizations and their local branches were tied into the decision-making
structures of the party; and although these organizations were usually considered
by critics as only manifestations of political mobilization, there was no doubt that
they also debated policy proposals vigorously and frequently modified them, even
important policies. It can argued that such arrangements have extended and
depended democracy for ordinary people beyond what is provided in liberal
democracy, but so far none has lasted long.
Another example is Uganda in the late 1980s and 1990s.

77

Democratization is the transition to a more democratic political regime. It may

be the transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy or transition
from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic political system. The
outcome may be consolidated (as it was for example in the United Kingdom) or
democratization may face frequent reversals (as it has faced for example in
Argentina). Different patterns of democratization are often used to explain other
political phenomena, such as whether a country goes to a war or whether its
economy grows. Democratization itself is influenced by various factors, including
economic development, history, and civil society.

Table 17.2, page no. 369

Waves of democratization
Explaining Democratization: all explanations of democratization combine elements of
agency and structure. Part of an explanation involves some agency-the actions, choices
and initiatives of persons or groups causing the democratization. And part of an
explanation involves some structure-a set of physical and social constraints, a set of
opportunities, a set of norms and values that shape or determine the content of the
actions, choices and initiatives. How agency and structure are combines, and the
weighting assigned to one or the other, are maters on which the various explanations of
democratization disagree.

Factors associated or causes of democratization:

1. Socio-economic development: Lipset, Diamond and many other scholars using a
modernization approach, positive correlations between development (defined in
terms of rising per capita income, growing per capita energy consumption, etc.)
and democratization are profoundly significant.
2. Social Division: capitalist development produces changing class divisions in
society (divisions based on wealth and life chances). Changing class structures are
a central feature of structural explanation of democratization. The rise of the
working class (employed manual labor outside agriculture) has been historically
the most important economic interest pushing for extensions of the suffrage and
other aspects of democratic development.

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Political Elites: Divisions between political elites are vial in transition

explanations of democratization. In such explanations it is the action of eliteswhat they do when, where and how-that drives democratization forward. In the
early stages of a democratic transition from authoritarian rule, various political
elites get involved. These include 'hardliners' and 'soft-liners' within the
authoritarian coalition, and 'opportunists', 'moderates' and 'extremists' within the
opposition. Comparative evidence from Latin America suggests that transitions
are more likely to be successful if they are controlled by a coalition of 'soft-liners'
and 'moderates', with 'radicals' kept out. During later stages of democratic
transitions the consolidation of liberal or partial democracy involves historical
paths that are complex and uncertain, but here again the character of the political
elites involved is critical to success.
3. Historical Legacies: Modernization theorists have argued that the 'democratic
prospect' has varied significantly with the historical and cultural legacies of the
colonial experience.
4. State Power and Political Institutions: A very powerful and almost entirely
autonomous state in relation to dependent social classes or to a weak civil society
has provided a most uncongenial setting for democratization. This has been so
especially where the military and the police have been strong within the state
apparatus. A very weak state is also a problem, because as state must have some
autonomy and power in relation to dominant classes or other social forces so that
it can act against dominant interests when responding to subordinate class
demands for democratization. Democratization has had more chances of success
in the middle ground between too much and not enough state power.
5. Civil Society: autonomous groups i.e. students, women, trade unions, church
members, consumers, the environmentalists, farmers, media, lawyers and other
professionals
6. Transnational and International Power: democratization cannot be explained
only in terms of structures and forces within a country. Processes of transnational
globalization are increasingly important. The effects of transnational economic
and financial processes, the global division of labor, global communications and
so on can be positive or negative for democratization. The relaxation of

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international tension and the end of the 'cold war' may also have assisted the third
wave of democratization.

Democratization and Development:

1. Democratization stimulated development: this position was widespread in
official Western aid circles and amongst their academic support. It was
referred to, not very accurately, as the 'Washington consensus'. Essentially,
the view was that a combination of liberal market capitalism in an
international context and liberal democracy and 'good governance'
domestically wee mutually reinforcing (a 'virtuous cycle') and provided core
elements of a comprehensive strategy for development success equally valid
for all types of society.
Greater freedom (both economic and political) lead to improved economic
growth and social development.
2. Democratization can impede development in poor societies: 'I do not
believe that democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe that what a
country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. The exuberance
of democracy leads to indiscipline and disorderly conduct which are inimical
to development.' (Lee Kwan Yew). 'if eliminating the continuing offence of
poverty and misery is real target, then unlimited liberal democracy and
unrestrained economic liberty may be the last thing the developing world
needs to it whirls towards the 21st century.' (Leftwich, 1993)
3. Authoritarian regimes are better than liberal democracies at stimulating
economic development in poor countries: this view was fairly prominent in
US government and academic circles during the cold war. Galenson (1959)
observed, 'the more democratic a government is the greater the division of
resources from investment to consumption'. Huntington and Nelson (1976)
argued that 'political participation must be held down, at least temporarily, in
order to promote economic development.'
4. Democratization in poor countries is unrelated to subsequent economic
growth:

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GOOD GOVERNANCE (sound management of a country's economic and

social resources for development)
The World Bank's position is that for development to succeed in any country
there must be sound development management, a well-run market economy and
an effective liberal democratic political regime. The connection between 'good
governance' and liberal democracy is more explicit in the definitions by many
donor agencies. The whole package came to dominate official western
development thinking in the aid agencies and elsewhere in the early 1990s. At the
core of the package was the belief that 'good governance' and liberal democracy
'are not simply desirable but essential conditions for development in all societies
(Leftwich, 1993).

Criticism on 'good governance': A central part of the critique (of this 'virtuous
cycle' of liberal democracy, market capitalism and 'good governance') was the
recognition that there were many different development paths and no single
(western) formula for development was likely to work in disparate circumstances.
For example, how appropriate was it for foreign donors to insist on 'traditional'
government bureaucracies converting quickly to 'good governance' in the 1990s
while conflict and internal war were escalating in increasing numbers of countries
in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

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A WORLD AT WAR

The founders of the UN saw conflict prevention as the ultimate criterion against which
the post Second World War order would be judged. Thus, the first article of the UN
Charter committed governments to:
'Maintain international peace and security, and to that end to take effective
collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the
suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.'
But as the human suffering mounts, the international community's response to
conflict appears ever more inadequate.
Yet, in stark contrast some commentators suggest that things are actually improving.
Wallensteen and Sollenberg of Uppsala University and British military historian John
Keegan have argued that there is a clear pattern of global reduction in armed conflict'
which does not correspond to the common understanding of the world as becoming more
insecure after the end of the Cold War.

Questions:
Q1. What is the scale of contemporary war?
Q2. Are there special characteristics of contemporary wars, which make them particularly
awful?
Q3. What are the prospects for 'human security' in war-torn area?

THE SCALE OF CONTEMPORARY WAR

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A basic problem with tying to make an assessment of the scale of contemporary war is
that what is war? A standard dictionary definition of war is: 'strife, usually between
nations, conducted by force, involving open hostility and suspension of ordinary
international law' (the Concise Oxford Dictionary). But if this is what war is, then most of
the recent events which are commonly described as wars are exceptions.

War is a protean (changeful) activity. Like disease, it exhibits the capacity to mutate.

Disagreement about the definition of war, to some wars have been declining (Keegan,
Wallensteen and Sollenberg)
post 1945 peace...north America and western Europe have mostly enjoyed peace in
post 1945 periodthat is why Keegan et al are more optimistic about the scale of wars.
to avoid this ambiguities of the term is by deciding upon a specific set of measurable
indicators.
SIPRI definition is based on measurable indicatorspage no. 165
Wallensteen and Sollenberg (1998) classifying 3 kinds of conflicts (page no. 166)
Flaws in SIPRI definition
1. It is usually impossible to know if combat-related casualty rates are accurate.
E.g. Bosnia in 1992-95 vary from 400 000 in one UN Source, to the most commonly
quoted figure of 200 000 to as little as 20 000 in The World Disasters Report,
published by ICRC. The variation is obvious...
An increasing ease of access to sophisticated light weapons escalates and lead to more
casualties. Example of Omo Valley war in south-west Ethiopia (Nyangatom and Mursi
people) this incident does not come in the definition of SIPRI, because government forces
have not been directly involved.
2. What about non combat-related deaths? In many modern wars, being a combatant
can be relatively safe. According to some sources, at the beginning to the 20th
century, 90% of all war casualties were military, whereas today about 90% are
civilian (UNDP, 1994). This too can be no more than a good guess, and it also
begs the question who is a civilian in a civil war?
Hamburg study:
All three studies reviewed here are in agreement on two things

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1. most wars are not being openly fought between states (fig. 8.3, P. 168)
2. and not being directly waged by rich states (fig. 8.4, P. 169)

Another approach is to assess levels of displacement.

Refugees and displace populations is over 50 million.
But again we need to be cautious about such estimates (page 170)
Conclusion: p. 172

CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY WAR

A reason often given for why many contemporary wars seem to be so awful is that they
are civil conflicts. Many commentators have suggested that the end of the Cold War has
lifted the lid on a social pressure-cooker, and scores of ethnic groups are ferociously
competing for power and influence. In this view, what we have witnessed in Bosnia,
Liberia, Rwanda and elsewhere is the expression of long-repressed primordial identities.
Johm Keegan argues that the: 'withdrawal of subordinate authority has cast the
populations back into a condition thatis certainly a regression from civilized
order.
Contemporary wars are not throw-backs (as Keegan says) to an uncivilized past, but
are the products of modern political economy.

Civil wars are prone to extreme forms of social trauma:

1. Civilians who tend to the object of the fighting and who bear most of the
consequences.
2. The protagonists in civil wars know each other, and if constraints on violence are
abandoned, they can find ways of hurting each other in special ways that make it
impossible for people to return to former ways of life.
3. Civil wars usually linked to alternative conceptions of social cohesion. War has
played, and continues to play an important role in the formation and regulation of
human societies in that it promotes internal cohesion in relation to an enemy, and
also tends to justify modes of social control, hierarchy and conformity.
4. There is less regulation on levels of violence in civil wars.

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because most of the international conventions and protocols do not apply to wars
occurring within states. Especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, attempts have
been made to broaden their reach so that they could be applied to civil wars, but this
has proved very difficult.
Reasons of civil wars conflict:
1. Economic Exclusion: several recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that
civil wars can have a highly negative effect on economic growth and welfare
indicators. But it would be an error only to see war as the cause of
impoverishment. It is also the case that economic deprivation is a cause of war.
2. the decline of state institutions
3. Ethnic essentialism
4. the arms trade
5. New modes of fighting: in the post Cold War period, external support for both
government forces and insurgents may still be forthcoming- sometimes form a
major power but often from an intermediate one, such as Iran. But the scale of
assistance is far less than was sometimes on offer in the past, so it may not be so
essential for a warring faction to maintain a particular relationship. Also, there are
now other means of obtaining arms and equipment. This means that cohesion and
discipline of warring groups may be less important, and both government forces
and insurgents are likely to become more fragmented. A consequence has been
increased privatization of warfare, with governments and insurgents allowing
soldier to run business enterprises in war zones.
Child soldiers
Beneficiaries and victims of war

PROSPECTS FOR 'HUMAN SECURITY'

The Human Development Report of 1994 calls for a new approach to international
affairs, premised on 'human security', but the change has been in the opposite direction.
Bilateral and Multilateral aid: 1980s-1990s rise, after 1990s fall in aid: A decline in
ODA: after remaining at a roughly constant level during the 1980s and early 1990s, total
ODA has decreased.

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The mid 1980s to 1993:

UN's role is being limited, NGOs come to the forefront: The UN's role has been
largely one of peace-keeping, which essentially meant monitoring case-fire arrangements.
The seeds of change were sown in Africa, with precedents initially being set by
international non-governmental organizations.
In addition to the continuing restrictions on the activities of UN agencies, a growing
reluctance of aid donors to channel funds through African state institutions on the
grounds that they were corrupt or unaccountable, and demands from electorates in rich
countries for an adequate response to heart-rending media reports about the human costs
of wars and droughts. A consequence was that, in effect, many international NGOs
became contracted to the major donors.

Invasion of NGOs: taking over the civil-administration of different countries.

There was also some evidence that the willingness of international NGOs to work
in war affected areas helped institutionalize armed conflict, and supported local
war economies. In such circumstances, humanitarian neutrality was inevitably
seen to be compromised.

UN/NGOs collaboration:

The co-ordinating role assumed by the UN failed to result in more cohesive or

longer term approaches to humanitarian assistance.

Armed Humanitarianism: As it became apparent that negotiated 'corridors of

tranquility' were not going to serve these purposes adequately, a more dramatic
response was probably inevitable. In the early 1990s, the logical next step was
taken, and humanitarian assistance became associated with armed action.

'An Agenda for Peace': 'the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty has
passed'.

1994 to the present: following the debacle in Somalia, there was a marked shift in the
international approach to civil wars. Initially this was not reflected in a decline in
emergency aid flows, but there was a new reluctance to deploy military forces.
e.g: Rawanda

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Conclusion: the current mood seems to be one of resignation. In the immediate future
it is unlikely that there will be attempts at UN-endorsed, armed intervention to
enforce peace and provide humanitarian aid (let alone to stop genocide).
A renewal of humanitarian commitment is needed; however, it would seem that
few are listening. Far from there being widespread belief in the possibility of
achieving global peace, there in now a disturbing acceptance that large parts of the
world are going to be very violent for a long time.

THE CONCEPT OF JIHAD IN ISLAM

FROM POLITICAL ISLAM TO MILITANT ISALM

AGENCIES OF DEVELOPMENT

To ameliorate the global problems we give more emphasis to issues of agency

rather than structure.

TRUSTEESHIP: 'The intent which is expressed, by one source of agency, to

develop the capacities of another'.

Trusteeship is one of the problems of development (Cowen and Shenton)

who will take on the task of acting on behalf of others to promote
improvements? to develop them? The very notion intentional development
requires development agencies to be taking on trusteeship roles in this way. This
leads to the question of evaluating development agencies in terms of their
legitimacy and their capacity (political and technical). In other words, do they
have the right to implement development on behalf of others, and do they have
the power to do so?

Since the invention of intentional development there has been an assumption that
it is the state which is the agency best able to take on this trusteeship role.

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In practice the state had a virtual monopoly of development activity within its
boundaries. However, the lack of alternatives did not mean the state was always a
positive force for development.

In the last years of the 20th century various trends have weakened the state's claim
to this monopoly.

Other agencies of development have been gaining a higher profile, notably IGOs
such as UN and its affiliated agencies (the WB, IMF and others) and nongovernmental organizations.

THE STATE AS A DEVELOPMENT AGENCY

Key features of state:

Each state claims the right to regulate affairs within the boundaries of its own
territory and aims to provide security from foreign intervention.

The state's claims to a monopoly over the use of force within its boundaries.

The state also provides identity and cohesion.

The state sustains relationships with other agents within society.

State requires bureaucracies

THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN DEVELOPMENT

From these features we can see that the state must always play a major rule in
development.
1. The state itself can be a primary agent for development initiatives in
society. Political decisions can be taken regarding development as
contained in national and local plans; development departments can be
established employing trained personnel with development expertise;
funds and other resources can be obtained and allocated; bureaucratic
rules and regulations can be laid down regarding how the development
programme is to be implemented and so on.
2. The state can provide an enabling structure for development by other
agencies.
3. The state can be a structural obstacle to development.

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THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE

The fact that the state is supposed to have a capacity to exercise legitimate
coercion and at the same time is supposed to represent the will and desires of the
nation, helps explain why state-induced development gained such a currency, and
retained it for so long. The idea of state as agency of development remained
dominant in the development thinking throughout the 1960s and most of the
1970s, and only began to be questioned seriously from the early 1980s, with the
shift towards neoliberal strategies.

Leftwich suggested that both autocratic and democratic states could be

developmental, since what was required was a question of political capacity
which could be achieved under more than one political system. Leftwich also
suggests another condition for a developmental state to succeed: a relatively
weak civil society.

Peter Evans (1995) has pointed out the importance of embeddedness as well as
autonomy. This implies that while, for effective development to occur, the
political and administrative elites have to able to act relatively independently and
forcefully on behalf of the nation as a whole. Thus the idea of the developmental
state is broadened to include notions such as hat of social capital and relates
strongly to contemporary debates about democratization and good governance.

THE DECLINE OF THE STATE AS A DEVELOMNET AGENCY

Post Cold War Period:
'The time of absolute and exclusive sovereigntyhas passed; its theory was never
matched by reality' (Boutros Ghali, 1992). This reflected a widespread recognition
that state institutions were becoming more constrained.

OTHER DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES

1. Official Development Agencies.
2. Non-governmental Organizations.

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Official Development Agencies: The UN system, the WB and IMF, and official aid
programmes.
ODA: Official Development Assistance: A term used by the development
Assistance Committee (DAC) of the organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). It refers to grants and soft loans which are provided by
OECD members, with the 'promotion of the economic development and welfare of
developing countries' as the main objective.

The UN System: The preamble of the Charter calls for an 'international mechanism
for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all the people', and
Article 55 states that the UN shall promote 'higher standards of living, full
employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development'.
Post War period: the dominance of the major powers within all the UN's principal
organs meant that there was initially little recognition of a need to address structural
arrangements underpinning international economic relations.
UN First Development Decade, declared in 1962: inequalities existing between the
Core and Periphery. Annual Human Development Report plays an important role in
critiquing the effects of neo-liberalism during the early 1990s, and drawing attention
to issues of poverty and deprivation. It also helps explain why the US and several
other governments have been so unwilling to pay their assessed contributions to the
organizations'' regular budget on time or in full. Another consequence has been the
growth of a host of specialized agencies and progammes which are engaged in
development activities, but are not funded through the core UN budget. These are
mostly dependant on ODA, and therefore have to take care not to bee too critical of
the main aid donors.
The Regular UN Budget: is derived from assessed contributions (which do not
include ODA). Peacekeeping operations are funded separately, with contributions
being made as the need arises.
The General Assembly
The Security Council
The Secretariat
The International Court of Justice

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The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

The Trusteeship council
The UN Specialized Agencies: UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, FAO, WHO

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund

They were set up essentially to regulate the global economy under the sponsorship
and direction of the US, initially with the acute needs of war damaged Europe in
mind.
UN affiliated agencies are nominally managed on a country-a-vote basis
WB & IMF are run on a dollar-a-vote basis

The voting power fluctuates, and is weighted according to financial contribution.

Thus, within the WB, the US vote counts for around 17%, and the UK vote counts
for around 5%, whereas that of India and China both count for about 3%. The voting
weight of the North as a whole is well over 60%, while that of the South (excluding
the affluent East Asian countries such as South Korea) counts for around 30%.

Together with the IMF it audits the economies of countries, and without its approval
it is very difficult to obtain finance from other sources. Moreover, from 1960s the
WB became responsible for the administration of an ODA supported, soft-finance
facility known as the International Development Association (IDA), and has become
a leading think-tank on Southern issues.

Marshall Plan Vs IDA

WB taking control of the IDA

WBs policy of project lending:
McNamara as WB president: McNamara led the Bank away from exclusively
project-oriented lending during the 1970s, towards programme lending. Larger sums
of money were loaned, with the intention of encouraging fundamental
transformations in recipient countries. Inevitably, the approach went hand in hand

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with much tighter conditionality on the loans, because ultimately the objective was to
alleviate poverty by changing social structures and, less explicitly, to combat more
effectively the spread of communism.
Neo-liberal Ideas of 1980s: Following McNamaras departure from the Bank, and
the shift towards a neo-liberal ideology in the US, the Bank moved away from direct
poverty alleviation towards an emphasis on free-market strategies. At the same time,
the oil price rises and the debt crisis had greatly increased its importance, particularly
for the poorest countries. The Bank moved much closer to the IMF, and the two
organizations used the programme-lending approach to promote structural
adjustment vigorously throughout the 1980s.
1990s: More recently, the Bank has shifted again. Since 1990s, poverty has been put
back on the agenda, and there has been a growing emphasis on institution building.
The Bank now makes recommendations in just about every area of development,
from the health sector to information technology. Again this reflects a shift in
emphasis in the US, but it is also a response to the growing influence of Japan within
WB (Japan has wanted to give more emphasis to the role of government), and to the
rise in private capital flows to developing countries. At the turn of the millennium,
the Bank in keen to reinvent itself as the worlds major repository of knowledge on
poverty and how to eradiate it.

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THE INFORMAL SECTOR

The informal sector is economic activity that is neither taxed nor monitored by a
government; and is not included in that government's Gross National Product (GNP); as
opposed to a formal economy.
Although the informal economy is often associated with developing countries where
up to 60% of the labor force (with as much 40% of GDP) works, all economic systems
contain an informal economy in some proportion. The term "informal sector" was used in
many earlier studies, and has been mostly replaced in more recent studies which use the
newer term.
The English idioms "under the table" and "off the books" typically refer to this type of
economy. The term black market refers to a specific subset of the informal economy in
which contraband is traded where contraband may be strictly or informally defined.
Regulation and the informal sector:
The single most important factor which persists in contemporary definitions of the
informal sector, however, is regulation. Regulation primarily implies legality, but it is
also the case that legality itself is a multi-dimensional concept. Tokman (1991: 143), for
example, identifies three types of legality pertinent to the demarcation between formal
and informal sector enterprises:
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1. Legal recognition as a business activity (which involves registration, and possible

subjection to health and security inspections)
2. Legality concerning payment of taxes
3. Legality vis--vis labor matters such as compliance with official guidelines on
working hours, social security contributions and fringe benefits.

Recent trends in informal employment

From the 1980s onwards, most of the growth in informal employment has been forced by
recession and neo-liberal economic restructuring. People have been pushed into informal
employment through cut-backs in public employment, the closure of private firms and the
increased tendency for formal employers to resort to sub-contracting arrangements.
Another reason of moving firms into informality is the inability to pay registration, tax
and labor overheads.
The nature of the informal sector during recession and restructuring
According to ILO figures for Latin America and the Caribbean, there was a 42 per cent
drop in income in the informal sector between 1980 and 1989. In turn, although the
informal sector has continued to expand during the years of crisis and restructuring, it has
not been able to absorb all the job losses in the formal sector. In Argentina, for instance,
urban unemployment in 1991 was 20.2 per cent, compared with 5.6 per cent in 1986.
Limits to further expansion of the informal sector are threatened by lower purchasing
power among the population in general and greater numbers of people entering the
workforce.
The informal sector in urban economic and employment policies:
No explicit policy towards the informal sector:

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Reluctance of economists and civil servants to acknowledge informal activities as

anything other than a parasitic unproductive form of disguised unemployment. In effect,
the informal sector was (and in many circles still is) viewed as an employer of last resort.

Indirect discrimination and bureaucratic procedural hurdles to become legal

However, government authorities along with planners and social scientists have come
round to the notion that the informal sector is more of a seedbed of economic potential
than a poverty trap.

De Soto: argues that the informal sector is a product of excessive and unjust regulation
created by governments in the interest of the society's powerful and dominant groups.
Emphasizing the ways in which the existence of the informal sector relieves
unemployment, provides a gainful alternative to crime, and harnesses the entrepreneurial
talent of the disaffected masses.
De Soto (1989) had an essentially legalist conception of informality. According to
this view, informal economic activities circumvent the costs but are excluded from the
benefits and rights incorporated in the laws and administrative rules covering property
relationships, commercial licensing, labor contracts, formal credit, and the social security
system.
Accepting that the informal sector is likely to persist for the foreseeable future,
measures are arguably needed to help it operate more efficiently and with better
conditions for its workers.

Prospects for the informal sector:

It is likely that the informal sector will continue to be a significant feature of Third World
Urban labor markets in the twenty-first century.

IS THE INFORAMAL SECTOR A POVERY CUSHION? (in Pakistan)

Informal sector acts as a shock absorber

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Through an informal and community-based welfare and support system, the people have
developed a way of tackling poverty by intra-and inter household transfers that substitute
for the paltry transfer payments to the poor made through government budgets.
Skeptics of this view argue, however, that it is difficult to visualize a situation where the
informal economy can continue to show sustained growth on a long-term basis in the
presence of a stagnant or declining formal economy.

Questions: The question that arise relate to the nature, size, and role of the informal
economy is that does it behave in a counter-cyclical or pro-cyclical manner with respect
to the formal economy? What is its labor absorption capacity, and as it expands in
employment what happens to income levels? What kinds of households engage in giving
support and what is the nature of the recipients? How large is the informal support system
and how much poverty does it alleviate?

MEASURING THE INFROMAL ECOOMY

because of its nature (unobserved or undocumented) measuring the size of this
economy is an extremely complex task.
Approaches to measure it: surveys, information extracted from population censuses, also
indirect approaches applied to macroeconomic data to get annual estimates. More
recently, the Currency Ratio method had become popular in the literature for sizing the
informal economy.
Currency Ratio method: Currency has a basic comparative advantage over checks for
payment of purchases of services and goods that individuals can hide from the authorities
SCR method depends on that aforementioned comparative advantage. According to SCR
method, a rise in currency stocks and payments are indicator of transactions, which are
not registered by Government.

It has been observed that most of the demand for cash originated either in the informal
economy or agriculture.

Informal Economy

Formal Economy

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small-scale manufacturing

. large-scale manufacturing

construction (private)

. construction (public)

road transport

.mining

wholesale and retail trade

. electricity and gas

ownership of dwellings

services

illicit activities

(smuggling, drug trafficking, etc)

.railway, air transport and telecommunications

.finance and insurance

.public administration and defense.

Estimates: in 1980-81, the informal economy represented about 42 per cent of the
national economy. By 1998-99, the share had increased to 46 per cent.

It is also significant to note that the informal economy grew faster during the 1980s,
when the formal economy also showed relatively rapid growth. During the 1990s, the
annual growth rate of the informal economy fell to about 5.5 per cent from 7 per cent.
In line with a sharp drop in the growth rate of the formal economy from over 7.5 per
cent to 3.5 per cent. This is the first evidence that growth in the informal economy is
pro-cyclical in character.

According to currency ratio method, a crucial determinant of the relative size of the
informal economy, with respect to the formal economy, is the ratio of currency in
circulation to demand deposits with the banking system. During years when this ratio
is rising/falling, then the implication is that in these years the informal economy is
growing relatively quickly/slowly in relation to the formal economy.
See page 48 of the SPDC annual review of 2000: no much change in the currency to
demand deposits ratio during 1980s causing slow growth in informal sector during
that decade. During the 1990s when the effect of foreign currency accounts is
removed, then the ratio appears to show a gentler rising trend in the 1990s. As such,
we conclude that the informal economy grew somewhat faster than the formal
economy during this decade.

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IS THE INFORMAL ECONOMY COUNTER CYCLICAL OR PROCYCLICAL?

In Pakistan, growth of value added in the informal economy is pro-cyclical,

and not counter-cyclical, with respect to the formal economy.

Growth of employment in the informal economy is counter-cyclical with

respect to growth of employment in the formal economy and agriculture
sector.

The contrasting behavior of value added and employment in the informal

sector has important implications for changes in real income and wages.

LEVEL OF INFROMAL TRANSFERS:

An important reason why the prevailing high level of poverty has not yet resulted in
large-scale social breakdown is because of the informal, joint household and communitybased welfare and support systems which people have developed to counter rising
poverty.
Informal transfers in 1996-97 received by households is over Rs. 71 billion.
Rural households rely on informal transfers more than Urban households.
Remittances account for over 80% of transfers in both the urban and rural areas.
The distribution of transfers is highly skewed in favor of the provinces of Punjab and
NWFP.

IMPACT OF INFORMAL TRANSFERS:

The poverty-alleviating impact of informal transfers hinges on three factors: 1. their
targeting efficiency, 2. coverage level, and 3. adequacy of support.
1. Targeting efficiency: on the whole, about 63 per cent informal transfers flow to
poor households (Rs. 45 billion)
2. Coverage: Approximately 1.6 million of Pakistan's poor households (i.e., about 31
per cent) receive transfers in some form.
3. The final crucial evaluating criterion is the adequacy of transfers; are they large
enough to bring households out of poverty? As many as 19 per cent of the poor

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households (20 per cent in rural areas; 16 per cent in urban) do not remain poor
because of income supplementing informal transfers. This is a very important
finding, and unambiguously highlights the effectiveness of informal transfers in
alleviating poverty in Pakistan.
Summary: the analysis substantiates the significant role played by informal transfers
in mitigating poverty in the country. In particular, the role of remittances from within
Pakistan should be emphasized. The analysis shows that informal transfers are
income-equalizing in character, as demonstrated by the high targeting efficiency,
good coverage level, and adequacy of support. As many as a million additional
households throughout Pakistan would be living in poverty if they did no have access
to informal transfers.
Economic Problem of Man

Islam does not provide a complete economic system. A detailed system of

directives has not been divinely revealed to guide mankind: only a broad outline
has been given in the form of a set of rules and regulations which must be adhered
to. Bearing this in mind, intellect and reason must evolve a system suited to the
requirements and needs of a society. In other words, the shariah, which is a set of
rules and regulations is divine and, therefore, eternal, but the system evolved upon
this shariah is a human inference and, therefore, flexible. This flexibility,
obviously, has been left to accommodate changing circumstances and
evolutionary developments of human societies.

Therefore, instead of extracting an economic system from the Quran and Sunnah
which, of course, does not exist, all out efforts should be made by Muslim
scholars to derive the economic shariah of Islam. The task of formulating a
system on its basis should be left to the economists and to those who understand
the intricacies of this field.

Purchasing power and Selling power (commodities should be available in the

market for consumers)

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For a smooth economy a balance is must between purchasing and selling powers.
But how to maintain this balance?

The first condition is that economy should always be running smooth. Circulation
of wealth should not be limited to only one group

Industrial Revolution transformed the economies of the world into a

capitalistic system. Interest becomes the base of the base of the capitalistic
economy.

Creation of modern Banking System-an outcome of the industrial capitalistic

system: Heavy machines had been installed to make high level production, when
the capitalists faced the problem of small capital which was not enough for their
industrialization process they created the modern day banking system. The
banking system provided the much needed capital from their account holders
savings.

In a capitalistic system man considered as a factor of production: so

therefore his wages are determined by the principle of demand and supply
thus ignoring the basic reality and needs of man.

Communism challenges it and ends up on another extreme by totally

rejecting the notion of private ownership.

After the fall of communism capitalist system stands high again

Capitalism based on borrowing (Investment done on borrowed money):

Humans aware of the dangerous associated to this approach are still not willing to
change it; despite its problems borrowing is regarded as a necessity for
investment.

Keynes gave the concept of deficit budget, which means that investment can be
made on credit. At that time borrowing was a temporary remedy, but this sugar

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coated pill made man deeply addicted that made borrowing a permanent base of
investment and industrialization. When borrowing becomes a necessity in world
economic system two principles get attached with this system automatically. 1.
Credit would be given to only that person who is eligible for it and who can
utilize the credit properly. It means that if you already have credit and you are a
successful investor only then you are eligible for further credit from the bank. 2.
Credit would be given to that person who has the potential for paying it back.
Need is not the criterion for borrowing, but only that person can be given credit
who has the ability to return it back.

When capital is considered as a factor of production and if it is further given as

credit for this facility charges are being demanded and this is what interest is.
Justification for this is that if rent can be asked for land services and wages are
given to laborers then why not interest over the credit given. If rents and wages
are paid without considering the profit so should be interest (money charged on
capital as a service) paid.

Islam forbids service charges asked on capital (interest) and does not encourage
loan but only in case of urgent need.

Versus regarding usury (interest) Al Baqara (chapter 2)

275. Those who devour usury will not stand except as stand one whom the Evil
one by his touch Hath driven to madness. That is because they say: "Trade is like
usury," but Allah hath permitted trade and forbidden usury. Those who after
receiving direction from their Lord, desist, shall be pardoned for the past; their
case is for Allah [to judge]; but those who repeat [The offence] are companions of
the Fire: They will abide therein [for ever].

276. Allah will deprive usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of
charity: For He loveth not creatures ungrateful and wicked.

277. Those who believe, and do deeds of righteousness, and establish regular
prayers and regular charity, will have their reward with their Lord: on them shall
be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

278. O ye who believe! Fear Allah, and give up what remains of your demand for
usury, if ye are indeed believers.

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279. If ye do it not, Take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger: But if ye
turn back, ye shall have your capital sums: Deal not unjustly, and ye shall not be
dealt with unjustly.

280. If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time Till it is easy for him to repay.
But if ye remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if ye only knew.

Quran categorically terms usury or interest un-Islamic, but still we see an effort in
this regard to somehow invent a banking system without interest.

Loan and interest in a capitalist system: if borrowing is considered as a necessity

then how come one deny the existence of interest

Western idea of Taxation: No taxation without representation

Islamic concept of taxation: No tax other than Zakat

'Then if they repent, are diligent in the prayer and pay Zakah, leave them to
themselves' (9.5)

The ills attached with the power of imposing tax by the state

Factors of world economic system: Credit being the base of economy, interest as
service charge over capital and governments being given the right of taxation.

Islam encourages charity than savings. Building economy on the bases of savings
gives birth to interest and wealth gets confined to limited number of rich
capitalists.

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