ECONOMIC GROWTH – Is it the only measure of human development?

ECONOMIC GROWTH – Is it the only measure of human development?

 By Parichita Basak

Until two decades ago, the only measure of human development was economic growth. So, countries economically well developed and relatively richer people were called advanced nation and where poverty was widespread were called developing countries. However, developed world has begun to realize that their lives were being seriously affected by environmental consequences of development based on economic growth alone. And this obviously did not add to the quality of the life as environmental conditions has begun to deteriorate. 

So, economic growth is not sufficient for better life survival unless environmental conditions were improved. Serious environmental problems due to air and water pollution, deforestation and variety of other ill-effects seriously affects people’s well being and health. Disparity in lifestyles between rich and poor was made worse by the unsustainable development strategies. 

Many decades ago, Mahatma Gandhi envisioned a reformed village community based on sound environmental management. He stressed on the need for sanitation based on recycling human and animal manure and well-ventilated cottages built of recyclable material. He envisioned roads as being clean and free of dust. His main objective was to use village made goods instead of industrial products. All these principals are now considered part of sound long-term development. Gandhiji had designed a sustainable lifestyle for himself when these concepts were not a part of general thinking, which is now accepted by experts on development across the world. 

Quality of human life has worsened as economies grew. Short-term economic growth suffers the consequence of environmental degradation at the cost of loss of ‘quality of human life’. Society must thus change its unsustainable development strategy to a new form where development will not destroy the environment. It was also realized that these were not simple issues. Developing countries were suffering consequences of rapidly increasing human population with all its effects on over utilization of natural resources. So, now the world began to see the need for a more equitable use of earth resources. It has become obvious that development must begin to change from aiming at short term economic gains to long term sustainable growth that would not only support the well being and quality of life of all people living in world today but that of future generations as well.