Development as Freedom (4 page)

A CONCLUDING REMARK

Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means. In addition to acknowledging, foundationally, the evaluative importance of freedom, we also have to
understand the remarkable empirical connection that links freedoms of different kinds with one another. Political freedoms (in the form of free speech and elections) help to promote economic security. Social opportunities (in the form of education and health facilities) facilitate economic participation. Economic facilities (in the form of opportunities for participation in trade and production) can help to generate personal abundance as well as public resources for social facilities. Freedoms of different kinds can strengthen one another.

These empirical connections reinforce the valuational priorities. In terms of the medieval distinction between “the patient” and “the agent,” this freedom-centered understanding of economics and of the process of development is very much an agent-oriented view. With adequate social opportunities, individuals can effectively shape their own destiny and help each other. They need not be seen primarily as passive recipients of the benefits of cunning development programs. There is indeed a strong rationale for recognizing the positive role of free and sustainable agency—and even of constructive impatience.

It is not unusual for couples to discuss the possibility of earning more money, but a conversation on this subject from around the eighth century
B.C
. is of some special interest. As that conversation is recounted in the Sanskrit text
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
, a woman named Maitreyee and her husband, Yajnavalkya, proceed rapidly to a bigger issue than the ways and means of becoming more wealthy:
How far would wealth go to help them get what they want?
¹
Maitreyee wonders whether it could be the case that if “the whole earth, full of wealth” were to belong just to her, she could achieve immortality through it. “No,” responds Yajnavalkya, “like the life of rich people will be your life. But there is no hope of immortality by wealth.” Maitreyee remarks, “What should I do with that by which I do not become immortal?”

Maitreyee’s rhetorical question has been cited again and again in Indian religious philosophy to illustrate both the nature of the human predicament and the limitations of the material world. I have too much skepticism of otherworldly matters to be led there by Maitreyee’s worldly frustration, but there is another aspect of this exchange that is of rather immediate interest to economics and to understanding the nature of development. This concerns the relation between incomes and achievements, between commodities and capabilities, between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like. While there is a connection between opulence and achievements, the linkage may or may not be very strong and may well be extremely contingent on other circumstances. The issue is not the ability to live forever on which Maitreyee—bless her soul—
happened to concentrate, but the capability to live really long (without being cut off in one’s prime) and to have a good life while alive (rather than a life of misery and unfreedom)—things that would be strongly valued and desired by nearly all of us. The gap between the two perspectives (that is, between an exclusive concentration on economic wealth and a broader focus on the lives we can lead) is a major issue in conceptualizing development. As Aristotle noted at the very beginning of the
Nicomachean Ethics
(resonating well with the conversation between Maitreyee and Yajnavalkya three thousand miles away), “wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”
²

If we have reasons to want more wealth, we have to ask: What precisely are these reasons, how do they work, on what are they contingent and what are the things we can “do” with more wealth? In fact, we generally have excellent reasons for wanting more income or wealth. This is not because income and wealth are desirable for their own sake, but because, typically, they are admirable general-purpose means for having more freedom to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value.

The usefulness of wealth lies in the things that it allows us to do—the substantive freedoms it helps us to achieve. But this relation is neither exclusive (since there are significant influences on our lives other than wealth) nor uniform (since the impact of wealth on our lives varies with other influences). It is as important to recognize the crucial role of wealth in determining living conditions and the quality of life as it is to understand the qualified and contingent nature of this relationship. An adequate conception of development must go much beyond the accumulation of wealth and the growth of gross national product and other income-related variables. Without ignoring the importance of economic growth, we must look well beyond it.

The ends and means of development require examination and scrutiny for a fuller understanding of the development process; it is simply not adequate to take as our basic objective just the maximization of income or wealth, which is, as Aristotle noted, “merely useful and for the sake of something else.” For the same reason, economic growth cannot sensibly be treated as an end in itself. Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms that we have reason to
value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with—and influencing—the world in which we live. In
chapter 3
this general approach is more fully proposed and scrutinized, and is evaluatively compared with other approaches that compete for attention.
³

Very many people across the world suffer from varieties of unfreedom. Famines continue to occur in particular regions, denying to millions the basic freedom to survive. Even in those countries which are no longer sporadically devastated by famines, undernutrition may affect very large numbers of vulnerable human beings. Also, a great many people have little access to health care, to sanitary arrangements or to clean water, and spend their lives fighting unnecessary morbidity, often succumbing to premature mortality. The richer countries too often have deeply disadvantaged people, who lack basic opportunities of health care, or functional education, or gainful employment, or economic and social security. Even within very rich countries, sometimes the longevity of substantial groups is no higher than that in much poorer economies of the so-called third world. Further, inequality between women and men afflicts—and sometime prematurely ends—the lives of millions of women, and, in different ways, severely restricts the substantive freedoms that women enjoy.

Moving to other deprivations of freedom, a great many people in different countries of the world are systematically denied political liberty and basic civil rights. It is sometimes claimed that the denial of these rights helps to stimulate economic growth and is “good” for rapid economic development. Some have even championed harsher political systems—with denial of basic civil and political rights—for their alleged advantage in promoting economic development. This thesis (often called “the Lee thesis,” attributed in some form to the former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew) is sometimes backed by some fairly rudimentary empirical evidence. In fact, more comprehensive intercountry comparisons have not provided any confirmation of this thesis, and there is little evidence that authoritarian politics actually helps economic growth. Indeed, the empirical
evidence very strongly suggests that economic growth is more a matter of a friendlier economic climate than of a harsher political system. This issue will receive examination in
chapter 6
.

Furthermore, economic development has other dimensions, including economic security. Quite often economic insecurity can relate to the lack of democratic rights and liberties. Indeed, the working of democracy and of political rights can even help to prevent famines and other economic disasters. Authoritarian rulers, who are themselves rarely affected by famines (or other such economic calamities), tend to lack the incentive to take timely preventive measures. Democratic governments, in contrast, have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentives to undertake measures to avert famines and other such catastrophes. It is not surprising that no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy—be it economically rich (as in contemporary Western Europe or North America) or relatively poor (as in postindependence India, or Botswana, or Zimbabwe). Famines have tended to occur in colonial territories governed by rulers from elsewhere (as in British India or in an Ireland administered by alienated English rulers), or in one-party states (as in the Ukraine in the 1930s, or China during 1958–1961, or Cambodia in the 1970s), or in military dictatorships (as in Ethiopia, or Somalia, or some of the Sahel countries in the near past). Indeed, as this book goes to press, the two countries that seem to be leading the “famine league” in the world are North Korea and Sudan—both eminent examples of dictatorial rule. While the prevention of famine illustrates the incentive advantages with great clarity and force, the advantages of democratic pluralism do, in fact, have a much wider reach.

But—most fundamentally—political liberty and civil freedoms are directly important on their own, and do not have to be justified indirectly in terms of their effects on the economy. Even when people without political liberty or civil rights do not lack adequate economic security (and happen to enjoy favorable economic circumstances), they are deprived of important freedoms in leading their lives and denied the opportunity to take part in crucial decisions regarding public affairs. These deprivations restrict social and political lives, and must be seen as repressive even without their leading to other afflictions (such as economic disasters). Since political and civil freedoms
are constitutive elements of human freedom, their denial is a handicap in itself. In examining the role of human rights in development, we have to take note of the constitutive as well as the instrumental importance of civil rights and political freedoms. These issues are examined in
chapter 6
.

It should be clear from the preceding discussion that the view of freedom that is being taken here involves both the
processes
that allow freedom of actions and decisions, and the actual
opportunities
that people have, given their personal and social circumstances. Unfreedom can arise either through inadequate processes (such as the violation of voting privileges or other political or civil rights) or through inadequate opportunities that some people have for achieving what they minimally would like to achieve (including the absence of such elementary opportunities as the capability to escape premature mortality or preventable morbidity or involuntary starvation).

The distinction between the
process aspect
and the
opportunity aspect
of freedom involves quite a substantial contrast. It can be pursued at different levels. I have discussed elsewhere the respective roles and requirements of (as well as mutual connections between) the process aspect and the opportunity aspect of freedom.
⁴
While this may not be the occasion to go into the complex and subtle issues that relate to this distinction, it is very important to see freedom in a sufficiently broad way. It is necessary to avoid confining attention only to appropriate procedures (as so-called libertarians sometimes do, without worrying at all about whether some disadvantaged people suffer from systematic deprivation of substantive opportunities), or, alternatively, only to adequate opportunities (as so-called consequentialists sometimes do, without worrying about the nature of the processes that bring the opportunities about or the freedom of choice that people have). Both processes and opportunities have importance of their own, and each aspect relates to seeing development as freedom.

The analysis of development presented in this book treats the freedoms of individuals as the basic building blocks. Attention is thus paid particularly to the expansion of the “capabilities” of persons to lead the kind of lives they value—and have reason to value. These capabilities can be enhanced by public policy, but also, on the other side, the direction of public policy can be influenced by the effective use of participatory capabilities by the public. The
two-way relationship
is central to the analysis presented here.

There are two distinct reasons for the crucial importance of individual freedom in the concept of development, related respectively to
evaluation
and
effectiveness
.
⁵
First, in the normative approach used here, substantive individual freedoms are taken to be critical. The success of a society is to be evaluated, in this view, primarily by the substantive freedoms that the members of that society enjoy. This evaluative position differs from the informational focus of more traditional normative approaches, which focus on other variables, such as utility, or procedural liberty, or real income.