A man sitting under the shade of a big old tree was fishing in a typical village in rural Bangladesh (but it could be in any other poor country!), enjoying the cool breeze in his handloom lungi and vest.  A western development expert is on a field trip in this typical Bangladeshi village and stops to talk to the “local.”  He introduces himself as a development expert and says that he and other experts like him were working to transform the countryside so that poor Bangladeshis like him could become rich.  He asked him to imagine a future where instead of sitting around idle and fishing, he would be contributing to economic growth by producing, consuming and spending more and where everyone would have more of everything.  The poor villager would become rich and would have more time to rest and play.  The Bangladeshi villager looked at the western development expert and asked, “What am I doing now?”

 
This little story simplifies reality of course and is not meant to perpetuate myths about poor but idyllic village life. Its purpose is to illustrate that by equating growth with development and progress, we often forget what our ultimate goals for development are.  My response to the question “Is Growth Bad,” then is, it depends!  Growth that contributes to individual and collective well-being by eradicating poverty and enables inclusion and democratic participation by promoting transparent and accountable systems and institutions and adds value to or does not destroy natural (e.g., our rivers and oceans) and social capital (breakdown of trust because of vast inequities or exclusion from opportunities), is, in my opinion, desirable.

 
So rather than asking, “Is Growth Bad?” the more relevant question is “Growth for What and What Kind of Growth?”  But before I delve into that, I think it’s useful to remember how economic thinking about growth and development has evolved since we embarked on the project of modern development and industrialization. 

 
The dominant thinking in development economics in the 1950’s and 1960’s (and to a large extent even now) was that the development trajectory for countries was fairly linear - from agriculture to industry to services - and GNP (Gross National Product) was an adequate measure of development.  The success of the NICs or the newly industrialized countries in the 1970’s and 1980’s reaffirmed those lines of thinking in academic and policy circles even as the distributional (equity) and environmental (sustainability) challenges of growth became increasingly apparent.

Recognizing the limits of using GNP and consequently economic growth as the main indicator of how “developed” a country was, two South Asian economists, Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen (Haq passed away in 1998 and Sen got the Nobel Prize for economics the same year), developed the Human Development Index (HDI) for the United Nations Development Program in 1990.  HDI goes beyond GNP and takes account of the different influences on human well-being and opportunity and has become the most widely accepted measure of comparative international welfare, notwithstanding its limitations.

So going back to “Growth for What and What Kind of Growth?”  Having articulated my criteria or principles for good or desirable growth, that is, the kind of growth that contributes to individual and collective well-being by eradicating poverty and creating opportunities for everyone, particularly those who are marginalized, through inclusion democratic participation and the promotion of transparent and accountable systems and institutions and adds value to or does not destroy natural (e.g., our rivers and oceans) and social capital (breakdown of trust because of vast inequities or exclusion from opportunities), I am also hopeful about our ability to get there for two reasons. 

The first is technology, especially the potentials for emerging green/sustainable technologies (e.g., renewable energy, green design and buildings, new production systems in industry and agriculture) and information technology, and the second is the rise of civil society, particularly its role in demanding government responsibility and accountability as well as its relation to the private sector.  Together, these can lead to fundamental structural changes that can alter power relations at the local, regional and global level through greater community control and ownership, a greater ability to network, share information, engage and organize, and ultimately shape our linked fates and common future.

Mafruza Khan is deputy director of the Center for Social Inclusion.