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It Is however, clear from the traditional perspectives that development was until recently nearly seen as an economic phenomenon In which paid gains in overall and per capita gross national income (IN) growth would either trickle down to the masses in the form of jobs and other economic opportunities or create the necessary conditions for the better and wider distribution of economic and social benefits of growth (Clark, 2006). The emphasis about achieving economic growth through increased output measured by gross domestic product (GAP) is said to have brought about development problems Instead especially In most developing countries.
The problems of poverty, unemployment and unequal Income distribution ere often seen to be of secondary importance when viewed in the strict idea of per capita growth economic perspective. However, over time, development economists have become convinced that the concern with per capital growth had led some economists to forget that human beings were both the ends as well as the means to development (Clark, 2006: 246). This made a number of influential development economists to come together and became the central tenet of the human development approach.
It Is also noted that the concept of human development Is not a new invention and is therefore considered a tribute to the early political economists and philosophers (Pete & Warwick, 2009). Aristotle for instance who lived around 384 – 322 B. C. Is said to have contributed to the human development thought. This Is documented by pronouncements attributed to him such as the idea that social arrangements must be Judged by the extent to which they promote the ‘human good’.
He Is also said to have argued that “wealth Is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else”. For Aristotle, a good political arrangement could be distinguished from a bad one by its success and allure in enabling people to lead “flourishing lives” (www. Wisped. Org). Apart from Aristotle, the tradition of treating human beings as the real end of all activities is also said to have continued with Emmanuel Kant (1724 – 1804).
According to Clark (2006) quoting Kant (1 987:57), Kant Is said to have observed and suggested that we so act as as an end withal, never as means only. ‘ And when Adam Smith (1723 – 90), who is documented as the apostle of free enterprise and private initiative showed his concern that economic development should enable a person to mix freely with others thou being “ashamed of appearing in public. ” He was said to have expressed a concept of poverty that went beyond Just counting calories – a concept that integrate the poor into the mainstream of the community (ibid).
Many other founders of modern economic thought such as Robert Malthusian, Karl Marx and John Stuart mill are said to have reflected the concept of the human development thought (Clark, 2006) Coming to the recent or indeed what may be referred to as the re-discovery of the Human development concept; the idea can be traced within the development economic circles around the asses when a number of interrelated debates on the topic emerged.
According to Cheney (1974), the key concern among the proponents was that economic growth then and in its current form did not translate into benefits to the poorer sections of society and the immediate reaction to this concern was to pursue what was termed ‘re-distribution with growth. ‘ The International Labor Organization (ILL) together with Paul Street and others that included Frances Steward and Maybug LU Has came in with a different response which argued for a focus on the basic needs (Clark, 2006:246).
Many of the central ideas of the human development approach are said to have been forcefully expressed by Street and his co-authors in their book entitled; First Things First: Meeting the Basic Human Needs in the Developing Countries (1981) which articulated the basic needs approach to development (ibid). For Street and the other proponents, the basic needs concept was a reminder that the objective of development was to provide all human beings with the opportunity of full life (Street et al,. 981 :21) Mammary Seen’ early formulations on the capabilities approach suggested that commodities are not f value in themselves, but only valuable to the extent that they give people the ability and opportunity to live valuable or flourishing lives. His approach allowed the concerns of the basic needs school to be expressed in a broader intellectual framework with a strong philosophical pedigree established through repeated references to Karl Mar’s 1840 writings and Aristotle Noncompliance ethics (Clark, 2006).
Martha Nassau then developed her own variation of the capabilities approach in the asses and based on the interpretation of Aristotle work (Nassau, 1988). Many of the above ideas about human development were later distilled and rough to a large policy oriented audience by Maybug LU Has. Hash’s first exposition of the notion of human development appeared in a speech entitled ‘people in development’ which was presented at the United Nations in 1988.
In his speech, Has was concerned about the dominance of national income and its components in development plans. A people centered view of development would, in his view, replace this focus on national income accounts with human balance sheets. His view was forcefully developed over time in a series of human development reports published annually by the UNDO since 1990 (Cellular). THE TRICKLE DOWN THEORY The importance of the trickle-down’ effect of economic growth has become a key issue in policy debate for both developing and developed countries.
This is so relevance of objectives of policy other than minimization of the economic growth rate (Maunders et al, 2000). Indeed, until recently, most economists took the view that in a rapidly growing economy, the benefits of faster growth would in the long run trickle- down throughout all sections of society, for instance, the poor would benefit in terms of Jobs and other economic opportunities or create the necessary conditions for the eider distribution of the economic and social benefits (Toward & Smith, 2012).
While it has been documented as having contributed to socioeconomic wellbeing of people in some countries such as those in the western world, there are a lot of disparities that have been recorded in terms of its efficacy in most developing countries (win. Dawn. Com). According to Clark (2006), for most developing countries, the failure of socialist-economic polices meant that they adopt capitalist policies such as the neo-liberal economic policies that preached a better and improved socioeconomic status of their people.
The neo liberal economic polices meant that most governments in developing countries take on structural reforms in their economies as advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (MIFF). While the prevarication of state owned companies meant doing away with inefficiencies in the economy, proponents of the inalienable economics argued that the private property ownership would lead to capital accumulation (investments) and growth thus would eventually bring about employment creation as well as providing a revenue base from which governments would collect taxes to help with redistribution of wealth in the country (ibid).
However, according to Toward & Smith (2012), lessons had become clear in as early as the sass’s and sass’s that something was wrong when most developing countries did reach their economic growth targets and yet the levels of living of the masses of people remained for the most part unchanged. Brazil is one examples of developing nations whose economy grew impressively during the twenty – one years of military rule and whose economy become the world’s eighth largest economy in the western world. However, its rapid economic growth left many sections gaining little or no benefit from this very credible achievement (Maunders et al, 2000; 522).
The promise of better things to come through the trickle-down effect where tried in our own country Zambia when the new government of Mr.. Frederick, T. J. Chula of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MD) took over from the socialist government of Dry. Kenneth Uganda in 1991. The new MD government took on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Samba’s economy has since experienced strong growth over the years, with its current real GAP growth in 2005-12 more than 6% per year.
Prevarication of government-owned copper mines in the asses relieved the government from covering mammoth losses generated by the industry and greatly increased copper mining output and profitability to spur economic growth. However, while the country was able to achieve the macroeconomic growth targets, the trickle-down effect did not simply take off as the poverty levels in the county were still considered high at around 68 percent (Realer, 2001). Pakistan was said to have equally experienced unprecedented Gross Domestic Product GAP growth and the period 1958 to 1969 declared a ‘decade of development’.
However, the masses were reportedly still wallowing in poverty with indicators showing a rise from 17 percent to controversy as the chief economist for the government of Pakistan then Dry. Maybug LU Has made a startling confession that the banks credits in Pakistan during that period was only tied to 20 business prosperous families meaning that the trickle down had not materialized and the poor had not benefited proportion to the GAP growth in that country. In admitting that the policies on the trickle-down effect adopted by their government had not materialized, Dry. Has become a visionary (ibid).