Learning to Develop

In the previous article I made a plea for a common sense-based, resources-specific approach to the development and its study. The problem of development goes beyond economics, involving as it does the study of institutions, culture, caste (in India, race elsewhere), technology, to name just the most influential. And, even since any economy opened its commerce and industry to the rest of the world, the dynamics between the two is in itself a factor of fundamental significance. I have not seen this reflected in the curriculum of development studies.

There is another serious lacuna in mainstream economics including development studies is the concept of learning, of aspirations, which help a country rise above its ‘endowments’. What I meant by resources-specific approach is that due attention must be paid to their depletion and the consequences (positive and negative) of their use and misuse, not in the sense that countries are bound by their natural endowments. It is the ability of a country to learn, including from others, that enables it to rise beyond its natural resources. Unfortunately, this exclusion of learning and its impact, leads to incorrect conclusions such as seeing paradoxes, and even policy advocacy.

Consider the famous Leontiev paradox, which described a situation where less developed countries were exporting goods which were capital-intensive while some exports were advanced economies were labour-intensive goods. Paradoxes appear so only because they suffer from a static view of the world. Just consider China, India, Israel, Singapore, South Korea which have risen above what nature has endowed them with. In 1992, the Harvard Business Review wrote an article on the marketing of a nation, Singapore, about how, without any natural resources for producing many goods, it managed to create a successful economy. Israel is a particularly interesting example. Despite being endowed with arid land, they became a gold standard for agriculture and irrigation. Learning, arguably, becomes the single most dynamic factor. And it figures prominently in the evaluation of Innovation Scorecard of cities and countries in the sense of factors enabling learning. This is a serious point. In the absence of learning, the world will simply reproduce itself, without any change.

The emergence and growth of information and communication technologies has given a great fillip to this desire to learn. The greater and greater use of wireless technology together different qualities of spectrum has made it possible to communicate just about anything to anyone. Some countries like Mexico and Brazil rediscovered the potential of radio together with the infrastructure of community learning centres. The mobile phone has become a multi-purpose device today one of which is as a vehicle of learning. Whether it is farmers learning about prices, markets, cropping pattern or small businesses learning from other countries, healthcare professionals learning from, these are all vehicles of change. Some leap, some proceed gradually but all induce change. In sum, learning should rank at the top among drivers of development.

The other key dimension missing is aspiration. It is of course linked to learning. China dropped out of competing in Olympic games in 1952 and returned in 1984, with a third position in the medal tally. And this became possible because the government invested in creating the infrastructure making it possible for ordinary people to compete. Yes, there is a dark side to this just as in East Germany but I am just making the point that aspirations drive nations forward. And a predominantly agricultural country has today become the world’s manufacturing base. When Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister of India, he said, in the first year of his tenure, that India had to accomplish in 10 years what other nations had 100 years to do.

This leads us to ask what the best way is to incorporate the dimension of learning in development studies. The new Historical Fiscal Sociology holds a clue. To this, we now turn.

Takeaways

Countries learn to grow and grow out of their current state

Aspirations lend weight to learning

Curriculum betrays a lack of understanding what drives development

Historical Fiscal Sociology holds a clue