Why development is more than a technical exercise

NEW DELHI, India — What is lost when development is measured mainly by what can be counted?

For decades, progress has been assessed through rates of growth, levels of income, the reach of infrastructure, and the scale of production. These measures can reveal important dimensions of social and economic life. Yet they are less able to account for the dignity of human beings, the quality of social bonds, the wisdom held in diverse cultures, the responsibilities owed to future generations, or humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

For many thinkers and practitioners, the limitations of a narrowly material conception of progress have become increasingly apparent. What is needed, they suggest, is not a refinement of existing models alone, but a reconsideration of the assumptions on which those models rest.

This concern animated a recent gathering at the India International Centre in New Delhi, where the Bahá’í Office of Public Affairs of India and the Bahá’í Chair for Studies in Development at Devi Ahilya University launched a new book titled Dialogues on Development: Rethinking Development for a Just and Sustainable Future.

The event brought together some 60 scholars, development practitioners, and members of civil society organizations, who gathered to reflect on the book’s central themes and their relevance to the contemporary development discourse.

The volume, edited by Arash Fazli, assistant professor and Head of the Bahá’í Chair, and Amitabh Kundu, professor emeritus at LJ University, brings together 14 essays emerging from a lecture series organized by the Chair over the past two years. The contributors examine dominant models of development while exploring alternatives rooted in the oneness of humanity, justice, solidarity, environmental stewardship, and the meaningful participation of people and communities in shaping their future.

“This volume brings together perspectives that encourage us to reflect deeply on the meaning and purpose of development in our time,” said Nilakshi Rajkhowa, of the Bahá’í Office of Public Affairs, in opening the evening. “At a moment when the world is facing complex social, economic, and environmental challenges, such conversations are both timely and essential.”

In introducing the book, Dr. Fazli said the volume arose from a recognition that humanity is facing a series of accelerating crises—environmental degradation, widening inequality, social fragmentation, and polarization—while many of the development models relied on to address them remain too narrowly focused on material growth to provide effective and sustainable long-term solutions.

Development, he stated, had originally been animated by the aim of bringing justice to humanity. The book, he said, is a modest attempt “to ask some of the fundamental questions again” about what development was meant to serve. “Development is not a technical project,” he said. “It is fundamentally a moral endeavor.”

For that reason, Dr. Fazli explained, ethical principles cannot be treated as ideals to be affirmed only in general terms while remaining secondary to the structures, policies, and assumptions that guide action. They must be understood as part of the reality within which society develops, with consequences that are visible when they are upheld or neglected.

“Ethics cannot come into development at any level other than at the foundation,” he said. Moral and spiritual principles are not merely “good ideas” to be drawn on when convenient but reflect essential features of social existence.

The panel discussion that followed explored how such a perspective might reshape development practice.

Aditi Kapoor, co-founder and trustee of Alternative Futures, drew on field experience to suggest that development planning, when organized too rigidly around results-oriented templates, can miss a basic reality: “People’s lives really develop in more organic and holistic ways.”

Steven Schonberger, an economist and former director of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice, extended this reflection by questioning the vocabulary of the field itself. The language of “developed” and “less developed” countries, he highlighted, can breed complacency in some societies while devaluing much of what others have to offer.

He proposed setting aside the word “development” altogether in favor of a renewed emphasis on human progress. “Progress does not have an end,” he said. “Everyone is progressing.”

Contributions to that progress, Mr. Schonberger urged, should be sought from “every corner of civilization.”

For the Chair, the launch pointed beyond the publication of a book to a wider conversation about the future. If development is to be reimagined, as the evening’s discussions suggested, it will be through a long and patient process of learning, one in which communities themselves, and the young people within them, take part not as recipients of plans designed elsewhere but as protagonists of their own progress.