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Foucault's view that knowledge begets power is amply demonstrated by the

origins and evolution of the development discourse. The preoccupation of the West with

the rampant poverty among the Third World nations must be viewed, not naively as an

unselfish act of humanity, but in context of the conditions prevailing in the developed

world when this interest in the welfare of the underprivileged took root.

The early post World War II era saw the emergence and domination of the US in

the capitalist world order. With Europe embroiled in the process of reconstruction after

the devastation of the war, the US looked to the Third World as a potential market for its

products and for its investments. It also found, in the Third World, a cheap and abundant

supply of raw materials for its industries. Furthermore, it was feared that the growing

population of the Third World would induce frugality in a world of scarce resources;

Malthusian- type fears flourished among the rich developed nations of the imminent fall

in per-capita consumption from the unchecked multiplication of the Third World

populace. The West also foresaw growing poverty and inequality as a stimulus for Third

World nations to embark upon the path of communism.

As a result, the development discourse came into being as a construct pertaining

to the Third World, couched in terms of categories and relations set by developmentexperts of the First World. It proceeded to identify negative features of the Third World,

such as poverty and illiteracy, against the standard of a "complete" Western society; it

created theoretical problems, so as to authenticate its intrusion into the minds and lives of

the Third World as the only agent of the solution to these problems.

Development experts deemed that the solution to the problem of

underdevelopment lay in the achievement of economic growth through modernization,

industrialization and urbanization. Development economics dealt with the creation of

models that would ensure sustainable growth for the Third World countries based

primarily on the experience of the First World. Among the pioneering theories of

economic development was "Rostow's stages of growth" theory, which proposed that all

societies proceed through the same stages of development, starting from the primitive,

agriculture-based society and proceeding onto the industrialised society of high

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consumption levels. Third world countries were seen as being in the initial stages of

development, and as needing the boost of financial and physical capital from the

developed nations in order to propel them into the developed state. Hence begins the aid-

dependency relation of the Third World to the First World; developing nations contracted

debt in order to industrialize only to learn that the predictions of economic models are a

far cry from the reality of an industrialization process undertaken without regard to the

social, cultural and institutional factors that make the Third World and its experience

distinct from the First World.

Contraction of debt cemented the role of the Third World as the dependant and

the First World as the caregiver. The onset of the debt crises, with the inability of the

developing countries to repay their loans, allowed Western-created and dominated IFOs (

International Financing Organizations) such as the World Bank and the IMF to intervene

in the state policies of the debt-ridden countries, as an inefficient government was

considered the root of the loan default. Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were

proposed in order to promote growth through trade liberalization and reduction of state

intervention, combined with moves such as reduction in public sector spending, and wage

freezes. Implementation of these SAPs was a necessary prerequisite to acquiring further

aid; yet again, the dependency of the Third World was exploited by its so-called

'beneficiaries'. The SAPs showed blatant disregard of social development and furthered

the misery of the poor. The SAPs were replaced by the Poverty Reduction Strategy

Papers (PRSPs); however the inherent defect remains in the form of these papers calling

for ill-fitted Western solutions to the problem of the developing East.

One can see in the history of the developing nations, subservience to the dictates

of the developed world. This is a result of the developed placing such bounds upon the

development discourse so as to relegate local knowledge to a level of inferiority. As Ivan

Illich rightly argues, Western solutions are not the answers to the woes of the developing

world. For instance, hospitals are not the requirement in places where sanitation is

lacking; why promote cures when we can preach prevention. What is needed, according

to Escobar, is that the role of the development experts and intellectuals be deemphasized

in favor of local solutions that take into due regard the institutional and cultural

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hindrances to the development process, rather than the current trend of imposing uniform

solutions on a diverse set of people.

Sahlins demolishes the foundations of the development discourse by arguing that

poverty is a social construct. Poverty is not an absolute lack of means but a relative

measure of inequality; he states that while we consider the hunter-gatherers of primitive

society as poor, they lacked neither nutrition, nor leisure. They are only considered poor

relative to the consumption range and levels of today; hence, arguably, Third World

nations are poor only relative to the industrial giants in the West. Sen furthers this

argument by stating that starvation in particular, and scarcity in general, is not a product

of a mere lack of supply, but also a result of lack of entitlements that can be exchanged to

acquire a desired commodity. As a result, the difference between the rich and poor

nations is not that developed nations have no poor, but that the poor are given

entitlements in the form of social security and the like, in order to maintain their

entitlements above a socially desirable level. Hence the answer is not only economic

growth, and hence a greater diversity in the range of possible consumptions, but means of

redistributing the benefits of this growth downwards, to the poor in the community, in the

form of social security benefits.

Mass-media preaching the benefits of modernization and liberalization, exalting

the invisible hand of the market, development workers proposing mechanized solutions to

agricultural problems, promoting market-oriented to subsistence farming; all this

bombardment of information promising a better lifestyle has resulted in the

underdeveloped internalizing the 'backwardness' of their ways of production and

consumption and sacrificing these outmoded techniques in favor of the supposed benefit

of capitalism, which have accrued to only a selective elite. West-sponsored capitalism, it

appears, is not the solution for the underdeveloped.