International Development:
Is there a Role Model?
Mohammad O. Farooq
It is only since the industrial revolution in the West that we have begun to view the world in terms of the dichotomy of developed and underdeveloped. The industrialized West became the yardstick of development, an object for the rest of the world to imitate. While underdevelopment begs genuine and urgent solution, and many aspects of western development deserve to be emulated, dichotomizing the world in reference to the developed West poses some serious problems. Many western scholars during the second half of this century have offered fresh perspectives on such false dichotomization. According to these scholars, there is an interrelated counterpart to underdevelopment: overdevelopment.
In 1961, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, both professors of biological sciences at Stanford University, wrote a path breaking book Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology, in which they specifically identified the problem of overdevelopment. The Ehrlichs remarked: "By making the fundamental error of basing our standard of progress on expansion of the GNP, we have created a vast industrial complex and great mental, moral, and aesthetic poverty. Our cities are disaster areas, our air often unbreathable, our people increasingly regimented, and our spirit increasingly domitable. We require far too large a slice of the world's resources to maintain our way of life. We, in short, are not developed, we are overdeveloped. We now realize that our current patterns of consumption and exploitation cannot and should not be sustained."
In the similar vein, an international team of researchers at MIT published a book The Limits to Growth (1971), in which they argued for a global strategy to seek an alternative pattern of development that will reverse the environmentally-damaging acceleration of economic growth and help advance the underdeveloped economies. Their controversial model demonstrated that the current "process of economic growth ... is inexorably widening the absolute gap between the rich and the poor nations of the world" and thus the problems of underdevelopment and overdevelopment are undeniably interlinked.
Despite the convincing case about overdevelopment and its link with underdevelopment, there is little acceptance of such characterization in the West: the false dichotomy in terms of underdeveloped and developed persists. In absence of such recognition, the West continues to present itself, and others continue to accept the West, as a model, which is neither feasible nor desirable to achieve.
Why imitating the West as a model is not feasible? Consider the case of automobiles per household in the US for which it alone consumes one-third of world's annual supply of petroleum. If the rest of the world would achieve even one-fourth of the U.S. car per household ratio, there simply would not be enough petroleum to run all those cars. Thus the existing pattern of development in the US and other industrialized countries is not sustainable.
Why imitating the West as a model is not desirable? The answer to this question is more obvious, if one takes into consideration the enormous environmental hazard resulting from unsustainable pattern of consumption and material life-style of the overdeveloped countries. The possibility of green house effect and global warming has raised the specter of disasters of enormous proportions. Moreover, at the current rate of consumption and growth, even the west would not have much to offer or leave behind for its future generations. These facts do not take into account the social issues such as disintegration of family, child and family abuse, suicide, and crime that often accompany a consumption-oriented, self-centered life-style.
The problem of overdevelopment as a counterpart of underdevelopment needs recognition. Parallel to diseases in underdeveloped countries, the overdeveloped west has its share in terms of advanced and complex diseases. If life expectancy is low in underdeveloped world, many among the older generations languishing in nursing homes might be having second thoughts about their longevity. If poverty is leading people to cut down the rainforest, the affluence in this part of the world is pushing the humanity towards environmental disaster. If poor people, unable to feed their children, sometime sell their children elsewhere, some others here in the West are dumping their unwanted infants outright into trashcans.
The immediate global priority should be to reduce or eliminate poverty, which cannot be achieved by imitating the overdeveloped west. It requires modifying the pursuit of super-affluence through a more harmonious model that does not disintegrate our overall life. Indeed, the MIT team felt the unavoidable need for "new forms of thinking that will lead to a fundamental revision of human behavior and, by implication, of the entire fabric of present-day society."
Such soul-searching ideas and efforts are critical to our better future, but how to bring about such a revision is an entirely different challenge because it encompasses ideology, culture, religion, and much more. It is encouraging however that people are becoming more aware and concerned as well seeking appropriate solutions. Addressing the issues of overdevelopment would not automatically solve the problems of underdevelopment, but it is essential component of an overall effort to bring about a pattern of development that is balanced and beneficial to all. Correcting the perceived dichotomy from developed-underdeveloped to overdeveloped-underdeveloped brings the divided humanity to a common ground and removes the psychological complexity that goes with those who erroneously deem themselves as models and those who, again mistakenly, want to follow such models.
[The author is an associate professor of economics and finance at Upper Iowa University. This article was previously published in the Minaret, June 1995.]
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