Development as freedom - Poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social

deprivation
Focusing on human freedoms contrast with narrower views of
development - Neglect of public facilities as well intolerance or
overactivity of repressive states.
- Identifying development with the growth of gross national
product or ✘ Unfreedom links closely to the lack of public facilities and
social care such as absence of epidemiological programs, or
- with the rise in personal incomes or of organized arrangements for health care or educational
- With industrialization or facilities or of effective institutions for the maintenance of
local peace and order.
- With technological advance or
✘ Unfreedom links closely to the lack of public facilities and
- With social modernization social care such as absence of epidemiological programs, or
of organized arrangements for health care or educational
- Growth of GNP or of individual incomes are important as means
facilities or of effective institutions for the maintenance of
to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society.
local peace and order.
But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social
and economic arrangements as well as political and civil rights. ✘ Violation of freedom results directly from a denial of
political and civil liberties and from imposed restrictions on
the freedom to participate in the social, political and
- Industrialization or technological progress or social
economic life of the community.
modernization can substantially contribute to expanding human
freedom, but freedom depends on other influences as well Effectiveness and interconnections

Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms Freedom is central to the process of development for (2) distinct
directs attention to the ends that make development important reasons.
rather than merely to some of the means that, play a prominent
part in the process ✘ The evaluative reason: assessment of progress has to be
done primarily in terms of whether the freedoms that
Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: people have are enhanced;

- Poverty as well as tyranny

✘ The effectiveness reason: achievement of development is ✘ A second example is the contradiction between per-capita
thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people. income and the freedom to live long and well. Gabon, South
Africa, Namibia, or Brazil may have a greater per capita GNP
✘ Free and sustainable agency emerges as a major engine of than Sri Lanka, China, or Kerala, India, yet they have lower
development. life expectancies.
✘ Not only is free agency itself a “constitutive” part of ✘ African Americans in the U.S. are poor compared to whites
development, it also contributes to the strengthening of
free agencies of other kinds. ✘ African Americans have a lower likelihood of reaching
adulthood than persons in many third-world cultures, such
✘ What people can positively achieve is influenced by as China or Sri Lanka
economic opportunities, political liberties, social powers,
and the enabling conditions of good health, basic education, ✘ If development analysis is applicable even for richer nations
and the encouragement and cultivation of initiatives. (as stated in this article), intergroup disparities in richer
countries might be considered as significant to
✘ The institutional arrangements are also influenced by the understanding development and underdevelopment.
exercise of people’s freedoms, through the liberty to
participate in social choice and in the making of public Transactions, markets and economic unfreedom
decisions that impel the progress of these opportunities.
Modern development literature acknowledges, and rightly so,
Some illustrations: Political freedom and quality of life that the market mechanism can contribute to high economic
growth and overall economic progress.
✘ First, it is sometimes asked if certain political or social
freedoms, such as the right to participate in politics or ✘ As Adam Smith noted, freedom of exchange and transaction
dissent, are "conducive to development." I is itself part and parcel of the basic liberties that people
have reason to value.
✘ this issue misses the critical understanding that these
substantive freedoms (such as political participation or ✘ The freedom to exchange words, or goods, or gifts does not
access to basic education or health care) are components of need defensive justification in terms of their favorable but
progress. distant effects

✘ Their relevance for development isn't established by their ✘ The contribution of the market mechanism to economic
indirect contribution to GNP growth or industrialization. growth is, of course, important, but this comes only after
 the direct significance of the freedom to interchange words, may have of lifestyles and values associated with the culture
goods, gifts-has been acknowledged. of markets.

✘ In many third world countries today, the fight against forced ✘ It is hard to think that any process of substantial
labor is important for some of the same reasons that the development can do without very extensive use of markets,
American Civil War was important. but that does not preclude the role of social support, public
regulation, or statecraft when they can enrich-rather than
✘ In fact, the praise of capitalism by Karl Marx and his impoverish-human lives.
characterization (in Das Kapital) of the American Civil War
as "the one great event of contemporary history" related "I end with a childhood reminiscence. I was playing in my
directly to the importance of the freedom of labor contract family's garden in Dhaka, Bangladesh, when a man was stabbed
as opposed to slavery and the enforced exclusion from the in the back. Hindus and Muslims clashed in communal riots
labor market. before India's independence. In our largely Hindu
neighborhood, sectarian thugs stabbed Muslim day laborer
✘ The crucial challenges of development in many developing Kader Mia. As I gave him water and called for help from adults
countries today include the need for the freeing of labor in the house, and as my father rushed him to the hospital, Kader
from explicit or implicit bondage that denies access to the Mia told us his wife urged him not to enter a hostile
open labor market. neighborhood in such horrible circumstances. Kader Mia needs
✘ The freedom to participate in economic interchange has a to support his family. Unfreedom caused his hospital death. I
basic role in social living. felt hopeless. It made me ponder about rigorously defined
identities, especially community and group identities.”
✘ not to deny the importance of judging the market
mechanism comprehensively in terms of all its roles and organization and values
effects, including those in generating economic growth and, ✘ this kind permits simultaneous appreciation of the vital
under many circumstances, even economic equity. roles, in the process of development, of many different
✘ We must examine, the persistence of deprivation among institutions, including markets and market-related
segments of the community that happen to remain organizations, governments and local authorities, political
excluded from the benefits of the market-oriented society, parties and other civic institutions, educational
and the general judgments, including criticisms, that people arrangements and opportunities of open dialogue and
debate
✘ Such an approach also allows us to acknowledge the role of 2. ECONOMIC FACILITIES
social values and prevailing mores
3. SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES
✘ Shared norms can influence social features such as gender
equity, the nature of child care, family size and fertility 4. TRANSPARENCY GUARANTEES
patterns, the treatment of the environment and many other 5. PROTECTIVE SECURITY
arrangements and outcomes.
A CONCLUDING REMARK
✘ The fact that the freedom of economic transactions tends to
be typically a great engine of economic growth has been ✘ Progress depends on freedoms.
widely acknowledged, even though forceful detractors
✘ Elections and free speech boost economic security.
remain.
✘ Education and healthcare boost economic participation.
✘ It is important not only to give the markets their due, but
also to appreciate the role of other economic, social, and ✘ Economic opportunities (trade and production) can fund
political freedoms in enhancing and enriching the lives that social facilities.
people are able to lead.
✘ Freedoms reinforce one another.
✘ The role of freedom in moderating excessively high fertility
rates is a subject on which contrary views have been held THE PERSPECTIVE OF FREEDOM
for a long time.
“Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely
✘ important to recognize that this particular controversy is useful and for the sake of something else”
just one example of the debate between pro freedom and
The usefulness of wealth lies in the things that allow us to do the
anti freedom approaches to development that has gone on
substantive freedoms it helps us to achieve.
for many centuries.
The ends and means of development require examination and
institutions and instrumental freedoms
scrutiny for a fuller understanding of the development process;
(5) Distinct types of freedom it is simply not adequate to take as our basic objective just the
maximization of income or wealth.
1. POLITICAL FREEDOM
FORMS OF UNFREEDOM
MANY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD SUFFER FROM VARIETIES PROCESSES AND OPPORTUNITIES
OF UNFREEDOM
✘ Freedom involves both the processes that allow liberation
✘ undernutrition may affect very large numbers of vulnerable of actions and decisions, and the actual opportunities that
human beings, people have, given their personal and social circumstances.

✘ people have limited access to healthcare or to sanitary ✘ It is important to see freedom in a sufficiently broad way.
arrangement or to clean water.
✘ Freedom is the expansion of the capabilities of a person to
✘ inequality between women and men are observable, thus, lead the kind of lives that value and have the reason to
limiting the freedom and lives of millions of women and value.
restricting freedom that women enjoy.
✘ The normative approach - a substantive individual freedom -
✘ How people are systematically deprived and declined is taken to be critical.
political liberty and basic civil rights.
✘ Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help
Even within rich countries sometimes the longevity of themselves and also to influence the world and it is central
substantial groups is no higher than that in much poorer to the process of development.
economies of the so called third world countries.
✘ Agent - is used in a sense as someone who acts and brings
Authoritarian rulers, who are themselves rarely affected by about change, and whose achievements can be judged in
famines or any other economic calamities, tend to lack the terms of her own values and objectives.
incentive to take timely preventive measures.

EVALUATIVE SYSTEM: INCOMES AND CAPABILITIES

✘ Democratic governments, in contrast, have to win elections
and face public criticism, and have strong incentives to THERE IS NO DENYING THAT DEPRIVATION OF AN INDIVIDUAL’S
undertake measures to avert famine and other such CAPABILITIES CAN HAVE CLOSE LINKS WITH THE LOWNESS OF
catastrophes. INCOME, WHICH CONNECTS WITH BOTH DIRECTIONS

✘ Political and civil freedoms are constitutive elements of

human freedom, thus the denial is a handicap itself.
 ✘ A. Low income can be a major reason for illiteracy and ill access to public health care, school education, socioeconomic state,
health as well as hunger and undernourishment. On the law and order, etc
other hand,

✘ B. Better education and health help in the earning of higher

incomes. FREEDOM, CAPABILITY AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE

✘ If we focus our attention from exclusive concentration on ✘ The focusing on the quality of life and on substantive
income poverty to the more inclusive idea of capability freedoms, rather than just on income or wealth, is a
deprivation, we can better understand the poverty of
human lives and freedom.

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

✘ Deprivation of elementary capabilities can be reflected in

premature mortality, significant undernourishment,
persistent morbidity, widespread illiteracy and other
failures.

✘ For example, the presence of massive unemployment in departure from the established traditions of economics and
Europe entails that there are also people deprived in such the income centered analysis that can be found in the
countries. contemporary economy. But also the analysis on
necessities, condition of living and the capacity of people in
every socioeconomic level.

INCOME AND MORTALITY

The influences to such a state are the living standards judged by

MARKETS AND FREEDOMS
income per head, the ability to survive to higher ages, the social
arrangements of the individual, community relations, the individual
The relation of the market mechanism to freedom and VALUES AND THE PROCESS OF VALUATION
economic development raises questions of at least two quite
distinct types. ✘ Valuations are involved in all approaches including
utilitarianism, libertarianism and other approaches.
A denial of opportunities of transaction, through arbitrary
controls, can be a source of unfreedom in itself. ✘ Individual freedom is quintessentially a social product, and
there is a two-way relation between social arrangements to
The market typically works to expand income, wealth and expand individual freedoms and the use of individual
economic opportunities that people have. freedoms not only to improve the respective lives but also
to make the social arrangements more appropriate and
✘ There are two different kinds of outcome: effective.
✘ A. Culmination outcomes - only the final output without TRADITION, CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY
taking any note of the process of getting there, including the
exercise of freedom. ✘ There is an inescapable valuation problem involved in
deciding what to choose if and when it turns out that some
✘ B. Comprehensive outcomes - taking note of the process parts of tradition cannot be maintained along with
through which the culmination outcomes come about. economic or social change.
People prefer the scenario of free choice over the submission to ✘ If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape
order grinding poverty minuscule longevity then it is the people
✘ A free based perspective - development picks up issues in a directly involved who must have the opportunity to
way that does not restrain the evaluative system that participate in deciding what should be chosen.
mainly focuses on culmination outcomes. ✘ The real conflict is between:
✘ The importance of freedom of employment and that in ✘ A. The basic value that the people must be allowed to
working practice is crucial to understanding the valuations decide freely what traditions they wish or not wish to
involved. follow
✘ Karl Marx favored remarks on capitalism's contribution to ✘ B. The insistence that established traditions be followed (no
the unfreedom and/or its influence that causes restrictions matter what), or alternatively, people must obey the
on the working class capabilities at work.
 decisions by religion, or secular authorities who enforce
traditions

✘ Thus, questions must be wide open for people in the society

to address and join in deciding. There should be a need for
people affected to participate in deciding what they want
and what they have reasons to accept.

✘ The approach of development as freedom has far-reaching

implications not only for the ultimate objectives of
development, but also for processes and procedures that
have to be respected.

✘ There should be a need to remove or lessen the existence of

unfreedoms from which members of society suffer.

✘ The motivation underlying the approach of “development as

freedoms” is not so much to order all states or all
alternative scenarios – into one complete ordering, but to
draw attention to important aspects of the process of
development, each of which deserves attention.

✘ An adequately broad view of development is sought in

order to focus the evaluative scrutiny on things that really
matter and in particular to avoid the neglect of crucially
important subjects.