{"id":4084,"date":"2017-05-20T12:01:45","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T12:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/?p=4084"},"modified":"2018-06-22T11:53:23","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T11:53:23","slug":"ecumenical-development-thought-today-dr-paulos-gregorios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/?p=4084","title":{"rendered":"Ecumenical Development Thought Today \/ Dr. Paulos Gregorios"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pmg_5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ecumenical Development Thought Today \/ Dr. Paulos Gregorios<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ecumenical Development Thought Today<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nDr. PAULOS MAR GREGORIOS\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Concept of Development came into wide-ranging ecumenical \r\ndiscussion following the declaration of the First U. N. Development \r\nDecade in 1961, and was assisted by M. T. T. Professor Walt Rostow\u2019s \r\nStages of Economic Growth, and before that by Harvard Prof. \r\nSchumpter\u2019s The Theory of Economic Development in the early decades \r\nof our century. \r\n\r\nI. TAKE-OFF-ISM AND MAGIC FORMULAS \r\n\r\nWalt Rostow\u2019s idea was that sustained economic growth is initi- \r\nated in a brief but decisive interval of 20 to 30 years, after which it \r\ntakes off and becomes more or less automatic. The important thing, \r\naccording to Rostow, was to make sure that productive investment \r\nfrom savings rises to 10% or more of the national income. This \r\nalone would help the national output substantially to outstrip popu- \r\nlation growth, so that there is a steady increase of per capita income, \r\nand consequently cause radical changes in production techniques, and \r\nin distribution of income. According to Rostow, the take-off happened \r\nin Great Britain during 1783-1802, in France during 1830-1860, in \r\nthe U. S. A. during 1843-1860, in Germany during 1850-1873 and in \r\nJapan during 1878-1900. The necessary minimum conditions are: \r\n\r\n(a) rise in saving and investment from less than 5 % of national \r\nincome to more than 10%. \r\n\r\n(b) the development of one or more of the leading sectors \u2014 \r\nagriculture or industry. \r\n\r\nand (c) the emergence of a favourable social and cultural environ- \r\nment. \r\n\r\nFor Rostow, condition (a) is the critical one \u2014 the doubling of \r\nproductive investment as proportion of national income. Rostowian \r\ndoctrine now stands largely discredited; but for a while \u201cdeveloping \r\ncountries\u201d thought they would all take-off after a decade or two of \r\nstrenuous effort to increase savings and investment. \u201cTake-off-ism\u201d \r\nas the Rostowian Metaphysics is now caricatured, is associated with <\/span>\r\n\u201ccatch-up-ism\u201d, which stems from the idea that the task of the develop- <\/span>\r\ning countries is to be like the developed countries by \u201ccatching-up\u201d \r\nwith them. \r\n\r\nPeople are still looking for the secret formula, the magic potion, \r\nthat would make poor countries rich. Some people think the formula \r\nis the '\u2018Protestant ethics\u201d \u2014 of denouncing luxury and laziness, accu- \r\nmulation of wealth through hard work and frugal living, and a theo- \r\nlogy which justifies freedom of competition, profit and private property. \r\nOthers think it is a matter of accumulation of capital, technology, \r\nresources, and management. Yet others think that population control \r\nis the key. This last idea originates mainly in the U. S. A. which \r\nincreased its population by about 4000% between 1800 and 1970 \r\n(40 times), and was able to develop without too much outside inter- \r\nference or participation in war during that period of expansion of the \r\ndomestic market, and with seemingly unlimited supply of resources \r\nfrom home and abroad. \r\n\r\nThese are the development ideas which have led to disillusion- \r\nment and frustration to the poor and the oppressed. Some people \r\nthink that these development ideas themselves are a tool of oppression \r\nand exploitation. \r\n\r\nn. DECADES OF DEVELOPMENT OR DISILLUSIONMENT \r\n\r\nIt was President Kennedy of the U. S. A. who proposed to the \r\nU. N. General Assembly that they declare the 60\u2019s as a Decade of \r\nDevelopment. The idea was that by pumping 1 % of the national \r\nincome of the rich countries to the poor countries, one could raise \r\nthe annual growth rate in the poor countries to a minimum of 5% by \r\nthe end of the sixties. 99% of the rich countries failed in supplying \r\nthe 1%. 95% of the developing nations failed in achieving the 5% \r\ngrowth rate target. But during the period the rich countries took \r\naway from the poor countries many times the wealth that they trans- \r\nferred to them as aid \u2014 by the simple trick of unfair trade terms \r\nalone. \r\n\r\nToday Development Aid from John Kennedy\u2019s nation has \r\ndwindled to about 1\/4% of their GNP. Of the total amount of \r\nforeign aid of $ 7.7 billion voted in March-April 1980 for fiscal year \r\n1981, $ 3.963 billion goes to U. S. Aid, of which half is for \u201csecurity \r\nsupporting assistance\u201d or military aid and aid for supporting the \r\nC. I. A. in many countries. Egypt and Israel get the largest chunks. \r\nU. S. A. is very far below in the scale of countries giving aid. Despite \r\nthe disillusionment that set in by the end of the sixties, the U. N. \r\nwent on to declare the Second Development Decade in the 70\u2019s and \r\nthe Third in the Eighties. We are witnesses of a^tremendous amount \r\nof empty development talk.<\/span><\/pre>\n
We are today in the Third Decade of Disillusionment, and \r\nthinking people all over the world are beginning to seek fresh thinking \r\non development. We give below the general trend in World Council \r\nof Churches\u2019 circles. \r\n\r\n\r\nIII. J P S S \r\n\r\nThe World Council of Churches\u2019 all-embracing concept is that \r\nof a \u201cjust, participatory and sustainable society\u201d (JPSS). The \r\ncommitment is thus to a concept of development in which the key \r\nideas are social and economic justice, participation by the people in \r\nthe decision-making structures, and ecological sustainability of the \r\nenvironment. This concept recognizes that simply increasing pro- \r\nduction is not sufficient, that increase in Gross National Product is \r\nnot an adequate measure of development; that distributive justice \r\ncannot be taken care of after higher production is assured; that \r\ndevelopment cannot be imposed from above by governments, but \r\nshould start with the people in their everyday relations of production, \r\nthat it should provide maximum employment, conserve resources, \r\nguard against air, earth and water pollution, protect the delicate \r\nbio-balance of the environment, and promote self-reliance; and that \r\ndevelopment should be based in favour of the poor and the under- \r\nprivileged. \r\n\r\n\r\nThe weakness of the concept is that it has no over-all scientific \r\ntheory of how such development can be undertaken and how the \r\nstructures of society can be altered to achieve these objectives. It \r\nsays nothing about global economic relations which form a key \r\nfactor in the present situation in development. It says little about \r\nconsumerism, human dignity, the transcendent or the meaning and \r\npurpose of life. \r\n\r\n\r\nIV. ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT \r\n\r\n\u201cAnother Development\u201d is a concept especially tailor-made for \r\nthe Third Decade of Development which has just begun. It comes \r\nfrom the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden (they \r\npublish a highly interesting quarterly, Development Dialogue). In \r\nthe 1975 Dag Hammarskjoeld Report entitled What Now, they give \r\na preliminary outline of what they call \u201cAnother Development.\u201d \r\nThe concept has been further refined in subsequent issues of Develop- \r\nment Dialogue. One could note the following special emphases in \r\nthe concept:<\/span><\/pre>\n
1. emphasis on satisfaction of basic human needs \u2014 food, shelter, \r\nclothing, education, health, transportation, communication, \r\nrecreation, culture etc. \u2014 over against consumerism and supply- \r\ning all that people are greedy to have \u2014 need-oriented develop- \r\nment; \r\n\r\n2. emphasis on rural development as against the growth of large \r\ncities ; \r\n\r\n3. emphasis on self-reliance and regional cooperation among \r\ndeveloping countries, over against integration into the inter- \r\nnational economic system which promotes dependence re- \r\nlations, oppression and exploitation; \r\n\r\n4. emphasis on autonomous over against imported technology \u2014 \r\nagain to prevent technological dependence which can be debi- \r\nlitating; \r\n\r\n5. emphasis on changing social structures in the nations and \r\nbuilding a new international economic order to promote social \r\njustice and self-reliance; \r\n\r\n6. emphasis on wise use of resources and conservation of the \r\nenvironment. \r\n\r\n7. emphasis on a New Information Order, in which peoples in \r\ndeveloping countries are not brainwashed by ideas and select \r\ninformation spread by the Trans-National-Corporation controlled \r\ninternational Mass Media (the alternative is not a government \r\ncontrolled bureaucratic information system like our Samachar \r\nwas). \r\n\r\n8. emphasis on increasing the availability of and access to food \r\nstuffs; \r\n\r\n9. change world banking and fiscal system and international \r\nresource transfers to make easier credit availability for develop- \r\ning countries; \r\n\r\n10; establish a world authority to manage humanity's common \r\nheritage \u2014 the high seas, space, the poles, etc., \r\n\r\nNo one can take exception to any of these ten points and so that \r\nconcept finds great support among liberal thinkers in affluent nations \r\nas well as among the progressive middle class elite of developing \r\ncountries. It is regarded as a viable alternative between the excesses \r\nof uncontrolled capitalist development and overly controlled socialist \r\ndevelopment.<\/span><\/pre>\n
V. THE LIBERATION MODEL \r\n\r\nLatin American thinkers are highly skeptical of all development \r\nconcepts, including that of Another Development. They feel that \r\nthe very idea of development should be abandoned. They criticize \r\nthe concept of development for obscuring the real problem \u2014 the \r\nstructures of enslavement, oppression and exploitation. The real \r\nissue, they say, is the re-organization of national and international \r\npower structures. \r\n\r\nThe central issue there is not under-development. Under- \r\ndevelopment is only the other side of the concept of development; \r\nit is because the majority are poor that the minority can be rich; more \r\ndevelopment will mean simply that the rich will become richer and \r\nthe poor poorer. The Development idea is a hoax. It makes poor \r\npeople obsessed with the idea of catching up with the rich by imitating \r\nthem, and in the process leads to their being drafted as the latter\u2019s \r\nsource of supply of raw materials, energy resources and skilled, \r\nsemi-skilled or unskilled cheap labour. The concept of development \r\nis therefore the enemy to be fought, for it is a way to keep the poor \r\ndeveloping just enough for their survival, so that they can continue \r\nto be exploited. \r\n\r\nThe central issue is liberation from the structures which enslave \r\nand exploit. The key to understanding reality today is to study the \r\nneo-colonialist system built up by the colonialist nations since World \r\nWar Two. There is now a division of labour where 25% of the \r\nworld\u2019s people benefit at the expense of 50 % (not counting the socialist \r\ncountries). It is an oppressive, exploitative system in which small \r\nbut growing elites in the developing nations also stand to gain. This \r\npost-war neo-colonialist market economy system is buttressed, \r\nboosted and glorified by an economic order of unfair trade terms, \r\na military network that oppresses the poor and promotes the arms \r\nrace, and an information order which brainwashes the people. \r\n\r\nIf this is the central problem, the Latin American liberation \r\nthinkers (including Liberation theologians) say that the push in which \r\nthe Churches should join is a three-fold one: \r\n\r\n(a) struggle for local, national and regional autonomy in \r\nproduction-distribution, in defence and in culture; fight against \r\neconomic, military, political and cultural hegemonies; \r\n\r\n(b) struggle to identify and protect the genuine interests of the \r\npeople in national societies \u2014 both short-term and long-range; and to \r\ndevelop the capacity of the people to create and maintain autoch- \r\nthonous (that which is original, specific and spontaneous in each \r\nculture), participatory, decision-making structures; to liberate people \r\nfrom enslavement to oppressive thought structures like the develop- \r\nment ideology, and from dependence on alienating, elitist, and \r\ninadequate concepts of development and democracy. \r\n\r\n(c) to struggle against a world capitalism in crisis and against \r\nits economic, political and military might, while at the same time \r\nbuilding up the basic elements of a people-based infra-structure for \r\ncreating autonomous socialist societies, economies and cultures. \r\n\r\nThis approach is not incompatible with the approach of \u201cAnother \r\nDevelopment,\u201d though Liberationists would say that \u201cAnother \r\nDevelopment\u201d by itself would be mis-leading, ineffective, and in the \r\nlong run counter-productive. \r\n\r\nThe need for us in Kerala is for our people to become acquainted \r\nwith these ways of thinking, but not to adopt one of them as the only \r\nalternative. We will have to develop our own autochthonous thinking.<\/span>\r\n\r\n* A Paper read at the Ecumenical Bishops\u2019 Consultation on Development, Sophia. Centre, Kottayam, 1980 <\/span><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ecumenical Development Thought Today \/ Dr. Paulos Gregorios Ecumenical Development Thought Today Dr. PAULOS MAR GREGORIOS The Concept of Development came into wide-ranging ecumenical discussion following the declaration of the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,221],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-4084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecumenical","category-the-star-of-the-east","tag-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4084"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4857,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions\/4857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulosmargregorios.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}