Dr Asangba Tzudir
While a sea of meanings is attached to the word development, the term continues to be complex, contested, ambiguous and elusive. However, in simple terms, it can be understood as one that brings about a social change which allows people to fully express their potentials.
Development is also a political term, and has a range of meanings that depends on the context in which the term is used while also reflecting different agendas of different people and organizations and the government at large. Thereby, also reflecting who has the power to define development and for whom.
In the context of Naga Society, in theory and praxis, the term lies redundant and continues to be applied largely within the understanding of infrastructure development. And therefore, such form of development is expected to bring about an end to the multitudes of problems confronting Naga society today. Within such understanding lives are also becoming redundant.
Sadly, infrastructure development defined by those in power continues to define things in their own terms or one that treads the politics of development within the hand in glove, or for ‘whatever politics’. Yet, it is not without reason that the term development continues to stay redundant because infrastructural development has been the main course being central to life and living since it is still in the process. However, at the end it is not about the question of development but who gains out of development.
Looking at development, be it economic, political, social, cultural, religious etc. within the social and political change model lies at the base the need for human resource development, and without which the very idea of development will continue to be not only temporal but more so ‘form’-less.
The presence of structures does not necessarily give rise to a form. Without a form, it is just another temporal formless structure, and within which structures are built upon to suit the so called development as well as the politics of development. Development thus, has been a subject of temporality.
It is time to build the ‘form’ of development for the state to grow holistically, and the basis of which is the intellectual, mental, physical, emotional and social abilities. In seeking the desirable ‘form’ development first needs to be understood and learnt as a process rather than as an outcome. Outcomes cannot simply be expected when the process itself is not there. The process of creating the form of development lies in reversing the model of power by locating power within the rightful source of power in order that development is not defined in the ‘whatever politics’ or ‘whatever development’ but one that creates a process in building the form of development. Outcomes, then, will necessarily follow.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
