Development as Freedom

In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme launched its first Human Development Report. This marked a radical paradigm shift in development thinking. Gone are the days in which development was seen as a process of change from an ‘underdeveloped’ to a ‘developed’ stage, as a process of industrialization and economic growth through which ‘underdeveloped’ countries would replicate the evolution undergone by industrialized countries. Development is from now on ‘human development’. It is a matter of widening people’s choices in all areas of their life, economic, social and cultural, and increasing their level of achieved well-being. Development no longer sacrifices people’s lives for the sake of increasing the numerical value of some economic outputs such as Gross National Product or Income. People, and the nature of the life that they are living, is the sole end that matters.