"A man walked into the Election Office and says to the receptionist, 'I'd like to put my name forward for the forthcoming elections to be an Independent candidate.'The receptionist replied, 'Certainly, sir. Please fill in this form.''He was filling the form until he came to the question, ''Are you fully vaccinated?'' So he asked the receptionist, 'Is this question necessary?'She replied, 'Sir, I'm sorry, but, if you are fully vaccinated person, you aren't eligible to run for election.'He asked, 'What possible difference would it make if I were unvaccinated?She replied with smiling, 'It's quite simple, sir. To become a politician, you sholud have a symptom!'" said the Moon when she came, after saying Basmalah and Salaam.She moved on, "Development can be seen, says Amartya Kumar Sen, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms, Amartya Sen explains, contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization. Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can, of course, be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society. But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements (for example, facilities for education and health care) as well as political and civil rights (for example, the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny). Similarly, industrialization or technological progress or social modernization can substantially contribute to expanding human freedom, but freedom depends on other influences as well. If freedom is what development advances, then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than on some particular means, or some specially chosen list of instruments. Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, play a prominent part in the process.Poverty is a huge tragedy, which ruins the lives of a great many people across the world. As George Bernard Shaw argued more than 100 years ago that, ‘The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty’. The immense tragedy of poverty is obvious enough: lives are battered, happiness stifled, creativity destroyed, freedoms eradicated by the misfortunes of poverty.The classic view that poverty is just a shortage of income may be well established in our minds, but ultimately we have to see poverty as unfreedoms of various sorts: the lack of freedom to achieve even minimally satisfactory living conditions. Low income can certainly contribute to that, but so can a number of other influences, such as the lack of schools, absence of health facilities, unavailability of medicines, the subjugation of women, hazardous environmental features, and lack of jobs (something that affects more than the earning of incomes). Poverty can be reduced through expanding these facilities, but in order to guarantee that, what is needed is an enhancement of the power of people, especially of the afflicted people, to make sure that the facilities are expanded and the deficiencies removed.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.Then we argue that we want more wealth. 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.Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states. Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers-perhaps even the majorityof people. Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger, or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses, or the opportunity to be adequately clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities. In other cases, the unfreedom links closely to the lack of public facilities and social care, such as the absence of epidemiological programs, or of organized arrangements for health care or educational facilities, or of effective institutions for the maintenance of local peace and order.In still other cases, the violation of freedom results directly from a denial of political and civil liberties by authoritarian regimes and from imposed restrictions on the freedom to participate in the social, political and economic life of the community.According to Sen, freedom is central to the process of development for two distinct reasons. First, the evaluative reason: assessment of progress has to be done primarily in terms of whether the freedoms that people have are enhanced; Second, the effectiveness reason: achievement of development is thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people.The relation between individual freedom and the achievement of social development goes well bey ond the constitutive connection important as it is. What people can positively achieve is influenced by economic opportunities, political liberties, social powers, and the enabling conditions of good health, basic education, and the encouragement and cultivation of initiatives. The institutional arrangements for these opportunities are also influenced by the exercise of people's freedoms, through the liberty to participate in social choice and in the making of public decisions that impel the progress of these opportunities.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 qur own volitions and interacting with-and influencing-the world in which we live. Indeed, we need development, as long as it is not being victimized and not just for 'Mr. So and so and his gang.' And Allah knows best,"It's time to leave, and the Moon sang,Nah, bangsaku kini telah di pintu kemajuan[Well, my people are now at the door of progress]Tinggal semua perlu kesadaran, jangan kita berpangku tangan[All that remains is awareness, let's not stand idly by]Teruskan hasil perjuangan dengan jalan apa saja[Continue the struggle in any way]Yang pasti kita temukan[We're sure to find]Asal jangan pembangunan dibuat kesempatan[As long as the development isn't beeing abused]Asal jangan pembangunan dijadikan korban[As long as the development isn't being victimized]Asal jangan pembangunan bikin resah kaum susah[As long as the development doesn't make troubled the restless people]Asal jangan pembangunan bikin mandul hutan gundul[As long as the development doesn't make the forest barren]Asal jangan pembangunan bikin gendut kulit perut[As long as the development doesn't make the stomach skin fat]Asal jangan pembangunan bikin subur kaum makmur[As long as the development doesn't make the prosperous people fertile]Asal jangan pembangunan bikin kotor meja kantor[As long as the development doesn't make the office desk dirty]Asal jangan pembangunan buat senang cacing-cacing *)[As long as the development doesn't make worms happy]
Citations & References:
- Amartya Sen, Development As Freedom, 1999, Alfred A. Knopf- Philip Michael, Development and Social Change, 2004, Pine Forge Press
- Duncan Green, From Poverty to Power, 2008, Oxfam
*) "Lancar" written by Iwan Fals
