Development Decoded

President Truman’s speech in 1949 inaugurated the era of development in the way Robert McNamara’s speech in1973 reflected the shift within its discursive field. The Nairobi speech was essentially an address to the board of governors of the World Bank by McNamara, the then President of the Bank. He contested the effectiveness of the accumulation-centric approach in eliminating poverty and discrimination and emphasized on the need for an alternative approach. There emerged a strong case for redefining the objective of development by bringing in the alleviation of absolute poverty as the goal of developmental interventions.

 In the previous decades, the Bank’s lending policy focused on infrastructure building- e.g. Power plants, transport and communications mainly for modern industries in urban areas. Since these investments enhanced productivity in the modern sector, their economic returns were tangible and measurable providing an economic justification of the projects. The Bank moved away from the Social sector and was hesitant to fund health or educational programs because according to the Bank, they were only remotely linked to productivity and growth.

Power to Ideas

The progress of a society is reflected among other things, in the way it embraces its diversity- of its people, their cultures and opinions. We, as self-actualized individuals of a modern society, must try to acknowledge and respect myriad ideas and their expression in all distinct forms.