Introduction
The term 'development' in my view, one of the legacies of empire undermined if not destroyed the road to progress for the former colonies. 'Underdevelopment' (most ex-colonies were called 'under-developed countries) really meant that their resources, including land, minerals, water and forests, were not being used fully. It was argued by leading economists that developing these resources, mainly natural resources, and putting them to use would generate opportunities for citizens through growth in employment and gross domestic product (GDP). This exploitation of unused resources, however, did not lead to a transformation in the lives of the majority of the population. In fact, it could be argued with hindsight that it led to the destruction of many natural resources. When I look back at the lectures and papers that I prepared during the 1980s and 1990s, I can see that I was taking an anti-development stance. I had taken the position that the idea and substance of 'develop-ment' were not necessarily enabling of economic and social progress. However, whatever evaluations were emerging from the ground, 'development', like a robot, like an exterminator, was marching over the people. Knowledge that was being generated from the ground level was not being translated into development design. My argument was that the situation confronting what can be called the 'last woman' those at the ground level, the excluded was due to the logic of economics, or the economic policies that were being designed, and the measures used to indicate progress, such as GDP, not only at the national but even the international level. Development was being seen basically as an economic issue, but was being designed usually far away from the beneficiaries. And, when India implemented the 74th Amendment to its Constitution and set up elected councils at the village level and other tiers of government, I argued that it was only such political councils, and women's participation in them, that could ensure that the design and substance of development at the local level bore their footprint. In my opinion, globally accepted ideas on how to generate eco-nomic prosperity, namely GDP growth, have been responsible for the persistence of poverty and inequality. The logic of 'progress', and the idea that progress can only be capital- and profit-led, were deeply affecting the masses. We were constantly reminding ourselves, be it at or at the level of the gatherings of grassroots women's organisations United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the univer-sities, that it was these theories of economic growth, ideas on how to build the GDP, that were responsible for poverty and inequality. While I referred to Thomas Piketty's analysis of the extraordinary phe-nomenon of self-perpetuating inequality, my argument was directed towards the women's movement to emphasise that what was required was to attack mainstream macro-economic reasoning and rebuild this reasoning from the facts, from the ground as studied and understood by the women's movement. In 1985, India hosted the first Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) World Conference on Women. An idea developed by the former colonies, NAM was a way of getting out of the East-West locking of horns. It was founded by some of the greatest freedom fighters of the former colonies-Jawaharlal Nehru from India, Gamal Abdel Nasser from Egypt, Josip Broz Tito from Yugoslavia, Sukarno from Indonesia and Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana. It offered a space for the former colonies to develop their own political economy agenda, and also to have an opinion on various international manoeuvres. By and large, women were not engaged in the political processes, but a remarkable Yugoslavian woman politician, Vida Tomsic, opened window to mobilising the women of NAM countries to develop their own view and to present it during world conferences and debates. Chrough participating in the NAM Conference on Women, women's movements learned to understand and to have a sense of belonging the political umbrella under which they worked.
About The Book
Close Encounters of Another Kind: Women and Development Economics brings together Devaki Jain's essays which engage with public policy, development economics and women. In the 1970s and 1980s, as a fallout of the First World Conference of Women, held in Mexico in 1975, then the Women's Decade (1975-85), followed by the Second World Conference in 1985 in Nairobi, governments energized their bureaucracies to address women's inclusion in development programmes. Thereby began the work of gendering development, and as a result of challenging the existing ideas, projects related to the design of development policies and programmes. However, most of these efforts were couched in the knowledge and experience of the global North since the efforts were largely led by the Northern intellectual community. In this volume therefore, Professor Jain highlights the ways in which the design of public policy has ignored the lived experience of what was being offered in India as development.
About The Author
Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, who has worked mainly in the field of feminist economics.
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