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Revisiting the MDG’s: Exploring a Multidimensional Framework for Human Development Neglect of the space of personal circumstances and strong neoclassical predilections have left two critical and interrelated imprints on the MDG’s framework. First, the crucial role of informal institutions like family, ethnicity, tribal and clan relationships and voluntary social groupings, is not accounted for. These informal institutions are pervasive in all societies, but their interplay is more pronounced in the social set ups of the developing world where they effectively proxy the weak or non-existent state institutions. The significance of informal institutions in these societies could be gauged from Douglass North’s hypothesis about the evolution of institutions. North argues that institutions evolved due to a human yearning to control their environment and reduce uncertainty, and considers them to be the structures that humans impose on that landscape in order to produce the desired outcome (North 2005). Informal institutions like family, kinship, race, caste and ethnicity are the kind of devices that humans devised to achieve that end. Functional space to these informal institutions is extended by a ‘culture’, considered by Roy Baumeister as the ‘biological strategy’ of the human species to live and work in organized fashion and satisfy their biological and social needs (Baumeister 2008). People’s choices, preferences and priorities, therefore, cannot remain unaffected by the interplay of informal institutions. MDG’s inability to accord proper space to the role played by informal institutions, therefore, remains a critical deficiency. The second repercussion is a concomitant of the first. Lack of responsiveness to the dynamics of informal institutions has also undermined the chances of participatory ownership. This has led to the commoditization of human development, leaving it perennially susceptible to the fortunes of markets in the developed world and international stock exchanges. Those receiving aid and those delivering aid are codified into a permanent relationship of recipients and dispensers. Absence of concern for people’s prevailing conditions has precluded people to transform from beneficiaries to benefactors. Recipients remain dependent not only on developed world’s will to give aid, but also on their capacity to deliver aid. It was for these reasons that it was suggested in the beginning of this article that the MDG’s framework 160
Nasir Khan, University of Auckland, New Zealand smacks more of a temporary relief operation than a permanent agenda for human development. A Capabilities Approach Framework for Human Development A universally applicable global agenda like the MDG’s cannot rule out some degree of inescapable generalization. Operational precision, however, demands greater context specificity. Global policy frameworks, therefore, need ample dexterity to concur with different situations. Undoubtedly, this is easier said than done. If we were dealing with a mathematical progression, inference about the universe could have been drawn from the constituent units by studying various trajectories and averaging out the effect. This would have been possible because all the constituents would be operating in essentially the same frame of reference. Unfortunately, such functional uniformity is not always available when we are dealing with human development. And this is where the inadequacy of the rates, ratios, proportions and percentages becomes obvious. In these circumstances the main issue in formulating an alternative framework to the MDG’s is how to give it context specificity and make it compatible with the assortment of people’s diverse circumstances. Accordingly, the framework laid down in the following lines targets this end as its foremost focus. However, to give proper shape to this framework, a set of ‘universally applicable capabilities’ is first outlined on a parallel to the various goals of the MDG’s. The operational framework of how to give context specificity to these universally applicable capabilities is then explained and in the end it is shown that how this framework carry advantage over the MDG’s regime. The spheres of human development targeted by the MDG’s could be reclassified into food (the goals addressing acute poverty and malnutrition), health (the goals related to HIV/AIDS, maternal health and infant mortality) and 161
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Revisiting the MDG’s: Exploring a Multidimensional Framework for Human<br />
Development<br />
Neglect of the space of personal circumstances and strong<br />
neoclassical predilections have left two critical and<br />
interrelated imprints on the MDG’s framework. First, the<br />
crucial role of informal institutions like family, ethnicity,<br />
tribal and clan relationships and voluntary social groupings,<br />
is not accounted for. These informal institutions are<br />
pervasive in all societies, but their interplay is more<br />
pronounced in the social set ups of the developing world<br />
where they effectively proxy the weak or non-existent state<br />
institutions. The significance of informal institutions in these<br />
societies could be gauged from Douglass North’s hypothesis<br />
about the evolution of institutions. North argues that<br />
institutions evolved due to a human yearning to control their<br />
environment and reduce uncertainty, and considers them to<br />
be the structures that humans impose on that landscape in<br />
order to produce the desired outcome (North 2005). Informal<br />
institutions like family, kinship, race, caste and ethnicity are<br />
the kind of devices that humans devised to achieve that end.<br />
Functional space to these informal institutions is extended<br />
by a ‘culture’, considered by Roy Baumeister as the<br />
‘biological strategy’ of the human species to live and work in<br />
organized fashion and satisfy their biological and social<br />
needs (Baumeister 2008). People’s choices, preferences and<br />
priorities, therefore, cannot remain unaffected by the<br />
interplay of informal institutions. MDG’s inability to accord<br />
proper space to the role played by informal institutions,<br />
therefore, remains a critical deficiency.<br />
The second repercussion is a concomitant of the first. Lack<br />
of responsiveness to the dynamics of informal institutions<br />
has also undermined the chances of participatory ownership.<br />
This has led to the commoditization of human development,<br />
leaving it perennially susceptible to the fortunes of markets<br />
in the developed world and international stock exchanges.<br />
Those receiving aid and those delivering aid are codified into<br />
a permanent relationship of recipients and dispensers.<br />
Absence of concern for people’s prevailing conditions has<br />
precluded people to transform from beneficiaries to<br />
benefactors. Recipients remain dependent not only on<br />
developed world’s will to give aid, but also on their capacity<br />
to deliver aid. It was for these reasons that it was suggested<br />
in the beginning of this article that the MDG’s framework<br />
160