Economic Development: Improvement Of A Nation

Economic development refers to the process of improvement of a nation. The term “Economic development” is frequently used in the 20^th century. It is concern with the well-being of the people of a region or well-being of people all over the world. Prior to 1970s, development was measured in terms of productivity and increase in GDP. However, economic performance like GDP or GNP, per capita etc. are measures of economic growth, which is also a key attribute to the economic development. Economic development includes the development of the health care system; education and safety and security as well. Development also considers the environment aspect. Development in the developing or less developed worlds is of major importance. It is often seen that a poor nation has improved in terms of output but there is no economic development has taken place. However, many have opined that economic growth will lead to development itself, as increase in income will be spent on human development. Ranis et al. (2012) stated that there is two-way relationship between growth and development. They have stated that, economic growth will increase the spending capacity of the people, which will further improve their well-being. Similarly, economic well-being of the people will further contribute to economic growth. However, economic growth does not ensure equality in the society. This paper will discuss the concept of economic development and it will also verify whether the Millennium Development Goals satisfy the meaning of this economic phenomenon. 

In the traditional economic theories, there is an overlap between economic growth and economic development. The concept of development was quite narrow. In the recent studies of development, the economists directly focus on the poverty; income distribution and unemployment of the nations. Since 1970s, the economic development has been redefined and reducing poverty; unemployment and inequality are the major concerns. It has been seen that in many developing nations the growth rate has increased but it showed little improvement in terms of decline in unemployment; inequality and poverty level (Batt 2012). Development has to be considered as a multidimensional process that also involves changes in the social structure, popular attitudes and national institutions. Through development process, the condition of life must move away from unsatisfactory condition towards a materially and spiritually better life.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen discusses development in terms of “capability approach”. According to him, development has to be more apprehensive with progressing the live people are living and freedoms people are enjoying. What matters for well-being is not what a person has, rather what use a person can do of the commodities available to him. In this regard, Sen has called it “functioning”.Controlling own life; freedom of choice is the main aspect of well-being. According to Sen’s approach, real income or consumption level is not always sufficient to measure the economic well-being.This is because; a person might have higher income but certain essential commodities like nutritious foods is not available and even if one has lot of commodity available they are not desired by the consumers. Well-being of people is psychological state that can be followedtogether with the functioning such as dignity and health. Capability is the freedom of choosing functioning given the personal features of the person and command over the commodities. According to him, human well-being is the sense of being literate; being healthy& nourished and long-lived. Sen has argued that, happiness is the human wellbeing. Utility in the sense of happiness is an important functioning relevant to well-being of a person.Level of happiness increases the average income of the country. Capabilities such as education; health and freedom are the major notions of happiness that indicates economic development.

Development is a broad concept and it is often questioned that what constitutes the good life and how entire society can be moved towards a better system. Three basic core values serve as a conceptual basis to understand the proper meaning of development. The core values are sustenance; self-esteem and freedom. These are the common goals for all individual in a society. Sustenance is the ability to meet basic needs of the people. Food; clothing and shelter are necessary to sustain life at the bare minimum level. Life-sustaining basic human needs also includes protection. When any of these needs is absent or lacking, then it is claimed that it is a case of absolute underdevelopment. Without these basic needs life would impossible and economic development is required to improve the quality of life. Self-Esteem is to be a person and not used by others as a tool for their own ends. It is a sense of worth and self-respect. It is a feeling of worthiness in a society that promotes human values like dignity; integrity; respect and self-determination (Todaro and Smith 2014). However, the self-esteem varies from society to society because of different culture. The more developed is a society, the more is the worthiness and esteem are attached to the people. Economic development is thus required to gain esteem.Freedom is the ability of people to choose.It involves the prolonged range of choices. It has been argued that economic wealth increases the range of choices. Wealth permits people to attain greater regulatory power over nature than a poor. Development as freedom allows people to choose leisure.

It can be said that development is both a state of mind and a physical reality that a society achieves through different economic; social and institutional process and secures better life(Green and Piel 2015). Regardless, the specific components of a better life development have three major objectives, such as:

• to upsurge the accessibility and extend the circulation of elementary life-sustaining goods, like food; shelter; health and security;
• To raise living levels in terms of high income, better education, facility of more jobs and devotion of cultural and human values, in order to enhance material well-being and individual self-esteem
• to enlarge variety of economic and social choice available to people of a nation by releasing them from slavery and dependence in relation to other people as well as from forces of ignorance and human desolation. In the following section, it will verify, whether Millennium Development Goals (MDG) fit into the concept of development discussed above.

In 2000, the member countries of United Nation committed to make considerable progress by alleviating poverty and to achieve other human development goal by 2015. The member nations have adopted eight goals is commonly referred as Millennium Development Goals. MDGs recognize multidimensional aspect of development and poverty eradication. This is one of the strongest international commitments taken together to reduce global poverty. The eight goals emphasize on: removing high poverty and hunger; attaining primary education for all; promoting gender equality in order to empower women; improving maternal health; fighting diseases like malaria; HIV/AIDS etc.; reducing child mortality; confirming environment sustainability and establishing global partnership for development (Todaro and Smith 2014). Each goals have some specific targets achievable by 2015.

The first goal addresses the problem of poverty. It targets to diminish to half the percentage of people, living below $1 per day and reducing the proportion of people by half who are suffering from hunger. The second goal addresses the problem of illiteracy. It targets to provide all girls and boys a full course of primary education. The third goal addresses the gender inequality and the need for woman empowerment. It targets to remove gender inequality in secondary as well as primary education by 2005 and attaining gender parity at all level by 2015 (Alkire and Sumner 2013). The fourth goal addresses the problem of child mortality. It targets to reduce child mortality rate by 2/3^rd. The fifth goal addresses the delinquency in maternal health. It targets to reduce maternal mortality ratio by 3/4^th. The sixth goal recognizes problem in terms of health hazards, it targets to inverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and reverse the occurrence of malaria and other diseases. The seventh goal recognizes the need for sustainable environment. This goal has to be achieved through integrating principle of sustainable development into the policies and programs of the government(Griggs et al. 2013). It has to reverse the loss of conservational resources. Percentage of people without sufficient access to safe drinking water has been targeted to reduce by half. Environment sustainability aimed to be ensured by improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. The eighth goal addresses the need for global partnership for development. It targets to assist least developed countries by accessing their export without quota and tariff; improved program for heavily indebted poor countries. More assistance would be provided to the countries that aims to reduce poverty. Corporation among developed and developing nation to implement strategies for a productive and decent work for youth.

The major focus of MDGs is to alleviate poverty. The sustainability in environment is essential for securing a way to move away from poverty. This is because; the targets of environment sustainability goal address the needs of the poor. Therefore, it can be said that without protecting the poor it is difficult to escape from poverty. MDGs have also faces some criticism. This is because; many believe that the targets are not ambitious as it only project to reduce past rates within 15 years in future. In some region, after reducing the indicators by half the level is still much higher than the desired level. The goals are not prioritized, as reducing hunger may hinder the achievement of other educational and health targets. However, the correlation of objectives of MDGs might be unspoken and they are treated as stand-alone objective, but actually they are complements of each other (World Health Organization 2013).  It is questionable whether MDGs can fit into the definition of development. This is for example, $1 per day is too low to attain the three core values, i.e. sustenance; self-esteem and freedom. The MDGs should have focused on reducing the subsidy on agriculture by the rich nation, which is the major obstacle for less developed nations. Moreover, MDGs do not emphasizes on improving the legal and human rights for poor. It misses the need for slowing down the global warming that has been causing potential harm to the African and south east Asian countries. MDGs targets to make primary education accessible to all. However, attaining this goal is not meaningful if there is no further opportunity for further higher education. This goal can only be achieved if there are school infrastructure and efficient teachers, which are not addressed by MDGs. Though MDGs targets to reduce existing disparity in gender but it less focuses on expanding gender equality (Comim and Nussbaum 2014). It has been argued that MDGs are hard to be achieved by the worst-off countries, thus no significant progress cannot be made by them (Sachs 2012). Measuring the changes in proportion is inappropriate to understand the actual improvement of well-being. For example, halving poverty rate of a country from 10% to 5% represents achieving the target (50% poverty reduction) that reducing poverty rate by another term from 50% to 35% (only 30% reduction). But in real term, the later one has shown better progress, as its baseline is far below. Moreover, the MDGs related to health only focus on child mortality; maternity health and some infectious diseases. This unrecognized several other health issues and overarched the goal of freedom from illness is missing in these objectives (Doddand Cassels 2013). The goals of global partnership are criticised by many authors, as it focuses on commitment of developed nations and ignored the consequences of resource transfer from developing nation. Therefore, empowerment of developing nations is hindered. Therefore, it can be said that MDGs do not meet the objective of the development completely.

Each of the goals are commendable, however, MDGs do have some inherent limitations. The paper has described the concept of economic development. It has identified the well-being parameters and opined that the development is related to human happiness. The Millennium Development Goals aims to achieve certain targets but it bypassed many major aspects of development. By attaining the targets, the society would be better-off but ultimate development of human well-being may not be achieved.

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