Development as Change in a Neo-Liberal World: An Overview

The current dominant model of development based on market liberalization and commercial globalization has been faulty. More often than not, it has conspicuously failed to deliver. In an age of neoliberalism, development cannot only be growth-oriented. The humane aspect of development has to come in the forefront. However, most of the times, it is in the backburner. This has happened because the concept of development has been so poorly conceived and narrowly defined prior to the 1990s. The development that we want to harp on has to emphasize on advancing the richness of human life instead of the richness of the economy. It implies the enhancement of peoples’ choices as a dynamic, evolutionary and continuous process. Choices connote freedom to take decisions that affect one’s life as well as freedom from certain removable constraints on the functioning of human beings such as fear, hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, exclusion, discrimination and persecution. Participatory and peoplecentered development has redefined the goals of development.