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In that context, the term “development” (as a response to
poverty) was perceived as and equated with a growing Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), namely the total dollar value of goods
produced and services provided each year. When GDP is divided
by the population, you get “GDP per person” which is easy to
compare. If it is higher than last year, the country is developing; if it
is lower or higher than that of another country, then our country is
more or less developed than the other.
Over 20 years ago, to this narrowly economic notion of
“development” (as solution of poverty), the important adjective
“human” was added. And so, the 2010 Human Development
Report (of the UNDP) bears the title: “The real wealth of the
nations: pathways to human development”. Marking the 20 th
anniversary of its first such report, the 2010 UNDP Report reaffirms
the centrality of the human person in every process of development.
Although it admits that much still needs to be done, the 2010 Report
presents a generally positive picture and affirms that ‘‘progress in
health and education can lead to successes in its human
development programme’’ 6
Relying on the works of the economists Mahbub Ul Haq of
Pakistan and Amartya Sen of India, the Report discusses the
indicators of human development according to which development
cannot be understood merely in terms of increase of GDP, but
must take into consideration other factors, including the quality
of life of the people and their access to health care and education.
This is a very familiar terrain for the Church in India!
• Instead of sickness and early death, having a long and healthy life
• Instead of grinding poverty, enjoying a decent standard of living
• Instead of ignorance, being literate and educated
sabv 2012
Thus, the Human Development Index (HD1) is the result of
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sabv 2012
three components: standard of living, health and education; and the
HDI is considered by many to be a more useful tool than GDP-perperson
for measuring development, since both economic and social
indicators, including the environment, are evaluated, and suggested
as ways of overcoming poverty, material poverty. But material
poverty is not the only obstacle to human development. Spiritual
poverty stymies human development even more badly.
The human person, the protagonist of development, has a
vocation, not only to development, but also to transcendence, in
correspondence to his creation as body and soul, called to
communion with God. Accordingly, to ignore the spiritual dimension
- to overlook the transcendent aspects of the human person in efforts
at overcoming poverty - actually diminishes human development.
Regrettably, this narrowing has been an increasing trend since World
War II, especially in the so-called “First” world: a trend that seems
to be accelerating with the phenomenon of globalization. But “there
cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless
people’s spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered
in their totality as body and soul,” 7 and created in the image of God.
To leave religion (the spiritual) out of the social picture -
claiming that it belongs exclusively to the private sphere, or opposing
its inclusion in public life as “divisive” or “irrational” - is to deny full
religious liberty, which is not only a basic human right but in some
sense the fundamental one, on which all other basic rights depend....
The right to seek God and the truth of God!
Talking about people’s spiritual and moral welfare, I recall
how Benedict XVI, in his homily at the opening Mass of the II Synod
for Africa in October 2009, exhorted Africa to be wary of the
pathology of practical materialism, combined with relativist and
nihilistic thought. This pathology manifested itself in ideologies
which diminish man’s vision of the truth (of God) and the truth about
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