Understanding the Concept of Development : Dr. Siby Kollappallil Joseph

 

Understanding the Concept of Development

Dr. Siby Kollappallil Joseph

                   Director, International  Online Fellowship Program on Nonviolence and Peace (IFPNP)

                              Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, Wardha, Maharashtra, India

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Part I: The Historical Evolution of Mainstream Development

1. Introduction

One of the modules of the International Fellowship Program on Nonviolence and Peace (IFPNP) is "Global Sustainability Challenges and Responses: An Analysis." Understanding the concept of development is imperative for analysing global sustainability challenges and their responses. The term development is widely used across governments, academia, NGOs, UN agencies, and grassroots movements. It carries multidisciplinary connotations and holds different meanings in fields ranging from management to health sciences. Due to my background in economics and the fact that my doctoral studies focused on the broad gamut of development studies, my attempt will be to explore the concept of development from mainstream economic perspectives.

Classical Foundations (18th Century – Mid-20th Century)

Although the specific term "development economics" originated and became popular in the mid-20th century, the core subject of economic development was a primary concern for economists starting with Adam Smith, who is widely considered the Father of Modern Economics. Adam Smith was an 18th-century Scottish economist and philosopher who popularized the economic policy of a laissez-faire economy. His most famous 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations), discusses—according to Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen—the basic issues of development economics. As Amartya Sen wrote:

“‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ was, in fact, also an inquiry into the basic issues of development economics. … Interest in development problems has, traditionally, provided one of the deepest motivations for the pursuit of economics in general, and this broad basis of development economics has to be borne in mind when investigating the details of the concept of development. … It is not hard to see why the concept of development is so essential to economics in general. … The enhancement of living conditions must clearly be an essential—if not the essential—object of the entire economic exercise, and that enhancement is an integral part of the concept of development.”
— Amartya Sen, "The Concept of Development," Chapter 1 in Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 1, edited by Hollis Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan (Netherlands: Elsevier, 1988).

Even though the concept entered mainstream discourse in the mid-20th century, we are still grappling in the dark over what the term exactly means. While preparing for this session, I had a brief discussion with someone who has been working in the development sector for a long time. I asked him what keywords come to mind when we talk about the concept of development, and he shared the following:

1. Development
2. Progress
3. Growth
4. Sustainability
5. Evolution
6. Balancing

While analysing the concept of development, these keywords may provide valuable insights, as they depict the shifting priorities of development over time and in accordance with the realities of each particular period. Although I am familiar with all of these terms, the significance of the word evolution was not entirely clear to me at first. He explained: "Every process has a natural ability to adjust itself and transform into a new form. Every living system has an inner adaptive capacity so that it can absorb shocks, learn from experience, and adjust itself."

This insight sparked new thoughts on how to look at development. That is the reason I am viewing the concept of development as an evolutionary process—one that responds to the challenges of the time and the realization of the inadequacies of existing notions. Just like a living system, development thinking evolves in response to crises and shortcomings, giving rise to various frameworks. We will trace this thread of evolution and orientation through different stages in chronological order.

2. Origins of Modern Development Economics

Post-WWII Context and the Birth of the Discipline

Looking at the historical context of its origin, modern development economics emerged primarily out of the large-scale devastation of World War II. Industrial facilities across Europe were heavily destroyed by aerial bombardment, and severe damage to transportation infrastructure—such as railways, bridges, and docks—disrupted trade flows and caused widespread economic isolation. In contrast, the infrastructure of two major nations, the United States and Canada, remained unaffected, resulting in a rapid economic boom in North America.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was an urgent need for theories and policies to rebuild war-torn Europe and Japan. Key international financial institutions were established—most notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference)—to promote global economic stability and reconstruction. Against this backdrop, the post-war period witnessed the emergence of development economics as an independent academic discipline, with the United States serving as the prime mover in the post-war economic revival.

3.Orientations in Different Stages

1940s–1960s: Development as Growth

Let us look at the orientations in the process of evolution of the concept of development.

In mainstream economic thought, economic growth is a narrower, strictly quantitative concept, whereas economic development is a broader, multidimensional concept encompassing qualitative improvements in a society's overall well-being:

• Economic Growth: Quantifies the increase in a nation's production of goods and services, typically measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or per capita income.
• Economic Development: Refers to the structural transformation of an economy from a low-income, agrarian system to a modern, industrialized, and service-oriented one, accompanied by improvements in living standards, education, healthcare, and human well-being.
• Progress: While often used synonymously with development, progress generally implies forward movement toward a more advanced state, historically linked to technological innovation, increased productivity, and improved living standards.

What is significant about the 1940s–1960s is that economic development and economic growth became virtually synonymous. The primary policy concern was the rapid expansion of wealth in terms of GDP and per capita income, and the pursuit of growth became the ruling ideology dominating the global economy. Although mainstream economists long viewed continuous growth as the primary engine for poverty reduction, heavy reliance on capital-intensive and automated industries has increasingly resulted in "jobless growth"—a phenomenon that has reached new heights over the course of time.

European Recovery Programme (ERP)

One of the major initiatives to rebuild European economies after the Second World War was the European Recovery Programme (ERP), popularly known as the Marshall Plan (1948–1951). This was named after United States Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who gave an outline of the plan in a speech delivered at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. This American initiative, enacted in 1948, aimed to provide foreign aid to Western Europe.

Harry Truman's Address and  Four-Point Foreign Policy Goals:

Harry Truman—re-elected to the office of President of the United States for a second term—outlined a strategy for global recovery and peace in his inaugural address delivered on January 20, 1949. He argued that the resources of the world should be pooled to achieve "peace, plenty, and freedom".

Four-Point Foreign Policy Goals

• Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. Furthermore, the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.
• Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.
• Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action—not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies: hunger, misery, and despair.
• On the basis of these four major courses of action, we hope to help create the conditions that will lead eventually to personal freedom and happiness for all mankind.

The Golden Age of Capitalism

A major chunk of the European Recovery Programme (ERP) aid was used by European nations to buy manufactured goods and raw materials from the United States and Canada. As a result, the United States economy witnessed a phenomenal surge in economic growth. This post-war economic boom, widely described as the Golden Age of Capitalism, spanned from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the early 1970s.

It was a period of unprecedented economic prosperity characterized by high, sustained levels of productivity and industrial growth, particularly in many countries that had been badly devastated by the war. However, while this era brought high employment rates and rising consumerism, it also accelerated the polarization of society, deepening the divide between the rich and the poor, and between capitalists and labourers.

W.W. Rostow: The Five Stages of Economic Growth

In 1960, the American economist and government official Walt Whitman Rostow enunciated his influential model, the Stages of Economic Growth. He presented five distinct steps through which all countries must pass to achieve fully developed status:

1. The Traditional Society: An agrarian, labour-intensive economy with low levels of trading and limited technology.
2. Preconditions for Take-off: The development of manufacturing, industrial growth, and the initiation of an international trade outlook.
3. The Take-off: A period of intensive industrialization where economic growth becomes self-sustaining.
4. The Drive to Maturity: A stage marked by a rising standard of living, technological advancement, economic diversification, and reduced dependence on imports.
5. The Age of High Mass Consumption: A capitalist system characterized by high production levels, widespread consumerism, and substantial discretionary income.

This "Non-Communist Manifesto" of Rostow became the ruling paradigm of development across both developed and developing nations, including India. It aimed to transform traditional agrarian societies into advanced consumer economies through the exponential growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita income.

Ultimately, this structural pattern resulted in a stark North-South divide, wherein the developed nations of the Global North exploited a lion's share of the world’s resources and pocketed the major chunk of development benefits. Even within developing countries like India, this model led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, unbridled exploitation of renewable and non-renewable resources, widespread social disparity, environmental degradation, and the escalation of violent movements rooted in poverty and unemployment.

The United States under the Marshall Plan, deployed over $13 billion between 1948 and 1952 to revive Western Europe. The immediate success of the Marshall Plan prompted economists in the 1950s and 1960s to shift their attention toward the struggling economies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, researchers quickly realized that the deep structural challenges faced by historically impoverished countries were fundamentally different from those of post-war Europe, thereby requiring unique, tailored policies rather than a copy-paste approach.

4.1970s: Development as Basic Needs

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, it became glaringly evident that the "trickle-down" theory—the assumption that aggregate economic growth would naturally filter down to the poorest sectors—had failed. In response to this crisis, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General David Morse launched the World Employment Programme at the 1969 International Labour Conference.

Later, the Programme of Action adopted at the 1976 ILO World Employment Conference highlighted employment as the primary vehicle for generating output and income, establishing the foundational "basic-needs" strategy. During this same decade, the World Bank, under the leadership of President Robert McNamara, shifted its institutional focus to emphasize that development must prioritize meeting core human needs: food, shelter, healthcare, education, and employment.

Despite its progressive goals, the fatal flaw of the basic-needs era was that it treated impoverished populations merely as passive beneficiaries rather than active partners in their own advancement. This top-down paternalism ultimately reinforced the structural dependency between the Global North and the Global South.

5.1980s–90s: Development as Freedom

During this period, we see a profound shift in emphasis due to the contributions of economists like Amartya Sen. Development began to be viewed through the dimension of human freedom, linking it directly to the expansion of people's capabilities—what they can be and what they can do. This framework expands the definition of development beyond material wealth to include human freedoms, healthcare, education, and overall well-being.

Amartya Sen viewed development as a process of expanding human freedom, which necessitates removing the sources of "unfreedom." He argued that freedom is both the primary means and the ultimate end of development. True development involves removing constraints such as poverty and lack of opportunity—specifically the lack of economic facilities, social opportunities, political freedom, transparency, and protective security. As a result, the focus of development shifted from being economy-centric to human-centric.

The UNDP Human Development Report adopted this approach and introduced the Human Development Index (HDI), measuring life expectancy, education, and income. For the first time, a country could be recognized as rich in GDP yet poor in human development.

The HDI was developed by Mahbub ul Haq, an economist at the World Bank in the 1970s who later served as Pakistan's Minister of Finance, and was further fine-tuned with inputs from Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. As the founder of the Human Development Report, Haq explained the core purpose of development in the following words:

“The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time. People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation in community activities. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives.”

This index is considered a major advancement over the narrow, growth-centred notion of development. In 1990, Haq published the first Human Development Report, which was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Human Development Index is a summary measure of average achievement in three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a decent standard of living.

6. Late 1980s–2015: Development as Sustainability

The publication of the UN’s Brundtland Report (Our Common Future) in 1987 brought the concept of sustainable development into mainstream discourses. The UN followed it through landmark summits including Rio 1992, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, and Rio+20 in 2012. This culminated on September 25, 2015, when all 193 UN Member States adopted "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," committing to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over a span of 15 years. We will be devoting a separate session to sustainable development. Here it is described only to give the orientation of the concept of development during this period.

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Part II

Evolution of Alternative Concepts of Development

Alternative development thinking evolved from time to time within and outside mainstream economics in response to crises and shortcomings, giving way to new ideas. I think these ideas are significant from the point of view of two key words which I brought into notice: sustainability and balancing. Let us examine some of the key alternatives in the field of development to gain knowledge of these frameworks and their significance.

7.Gross National Happiness

As early as 1972, the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, stated that Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product. It later became part and parcel of Bhutan’s policy of development. It comprises an index which is used to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population. Gross National Happiness is instituted as the goal of the government of Bhutan in the Constitution enacted on 18 July 2008.  Article 9 ‘Principles of State Policy’ reads as follows. “The State shall strive to promote those conditions that will enable the pursuit of Gross National Happiness.” The concept of GNH has four pillars: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation. Later the four pillars have been further classified into nine domains to depict GNH values. The nine domains are: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. Thirty-three indicators categorized under nine domains of GNH Index. In 2011, The United Nations General Assembly passed a Resolution "Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development" urging member nations to follow the example of Bhutan and measure happiness and well-being and calling happiness a "fundamental human goal”. Many countries of the world accepted it as a policy of their respective governments.

8. Institutional Economics (1980s–1990s)

The role of the state is a crucial determinant of the entire development process. During the Thatcherite era of the 1980s, the role of the state in development was downgraded and sidelined. Later, in the 1990s, international agencies such as the World Bank gave renewed recognition to the vital role of the state and its institutions. This shift was partly driven by the rise of New Institutional Economics, pioneered and propounded by Nobel laureate Douglass North. In his seminal 1993 essay, "The New Institutional Economics and Development," North skillfully summarized the essential characteristics of institutional economics, how it differs from neoclassical theory, and how it applies to the challenges of development. As he wrote:

“It is polities that shape economic performance because they define and enforce the economic rules of the game. Therefore, the heart of development policy must be the creation of polities that will create and enforce efficient property rights.”

 

9. Measuring Well-Being Beyond GDP: The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission (2008–2009)

By the turn of the century, the conventional approach to development was increasingly questioned by leaders and economists across many countries, leading to the emergence of new ways of development thinking and practice. These alternative approaches have been gaining ground globally, enriching the very idea of development. This shift in thinking is clearly evident in the findings of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission.

In February 2008, the then-President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, dissatisfied with existing statistical measures of the economy and society, approached Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University, Chair of the Commission), Amartya Sen (Harvard University, Chair Adviser), and Jean-Paul Fitoussi (French economist, Coordinator) to establish a commission to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress. This body became formally known as the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP), or the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission.

In its landmark 2009 report, the Commission observed:

“The time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being. And measures of well-being should be put in a context of sustainability... Emphasizing well-being is important because there appears to be an increasing gap between the information contained in aggregate GDP data and what counts for common people’s well-being.”
— J. Stiglitz, A. Sen, and J.-P. Fitoussi, Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2009).

 

10. Inclusive Growth & The Inclusive Development Index (2015–2017)

In the context of growing disparity and division between the countries of the Global North and Global South, the idea of inclusive growth became a prominent concept in development discourse during the 2000s and 2010s. The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is an economic index introduced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2017 (following a preliminary policy framework released in 2015) as an alternative to GDP for measuring a country's economic growth and development. Through this index, a country's economic performance is evaluated on the basis of twelve indicators of economic progress alongside GDP, structured around three core pillars: growth and development; inclusion; and intergenerational equity and sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources. It aims to inform and enable sustained, inclusive economic progress through deepened public-private cooperation—driven by thought leadership, analysis, strategic dialogue, and concrete collaboration, including accelerating social impact through corporate action.

11. Doughnut Economics (2012–2017)

The concept of Doughnut Economics was developed by British economist Kate Raworth in a 2012 Oxfam paper and later expanded in her 2017 book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. According to Raworth, mainstream economics measures progress almost exclusively through endless GDP growth, ignoring the finite nature of Earth’s resources and the ecological consequences of human activity. To address this, she sought to create an economic model fit for the 21st century, built on the core premise that "Humanity’s 21st-century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet."

The seven chapters in her book outline seven transformative ways to think like a 21st-century economist:

1. Change the goal — from GDP to the Doughnut.
2. See the big picture — from a self-contained market to an embedded economy.
3. Nurture human nature — from rational economic man to social, adaptable humans.
4. Get savvy with systems — from mechanical equilibrium to dynamic complexity.
5. Design to distribute — from "growth will even it up again" to distributive by design.
6. Create to regenerate — from "growth will clean it up again" to regenerative by design.
7. Be agnostic about growth — from growth-addicted to growth-agnostic.

 

12. Specific Diseconomy & Institutional Critique (1970s)

There is also a stream of scholars who envision a form of development that relies neither on the government nor on the market; instead, they argue it should be centred on the people and their own wisdom. Among them was Ivan Illich, a Croatian-Austrian philosopher, who severely criticized the institutions of contemporary Western civilization, as well as modern policies and practices in education, health, work, and the very idea of economic development. In his influential 1970s works—such as Deschooling Society (1971), Tools for Conviviality (1973), and Medical Nemesis (1975)—he coined the term “specific disutility” (or “specific diseconomy”) to measure the degree of institutional counterproductivity and inefficiency across various sectors. Illich cited examples such as the medical industry inducing illness (iatrogenesis), educational institutions contributing to the ignorance of pupils, and the judicial system perpetuating injustice. When specific diseconomy increases, it signifies that an institution or industry is progressively becoming counterproductive—defeating the very goals for which it was established. His analysis became a guiding light for later critics of colonialism and post-colonialism, as well as post-development theorists such as Arturo Escobar and Gustavo Esteva.

13. Post-Development Theory (Late 1980s–1990s)

Emerging prominently in the late 1980s and 1990s, post-development theory is essentially an anti-development critique based on the premise that the entire concept and practice of conventional "development" is a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world. Post-development theorists like Arturo Escobar (notably in his 1995 book Encountering Development) and Gustavo Esteva have challenged the very goal and purpose of development, arguing that it has always been unjust, never worked, and was an utter failure. Wolfgang Sachs, a leading figure of the post-development school, wrote in his introduction to the 1992 edited volume The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power:

“The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crimes, have been the steady companions of development and they tell a common story: it did not work.”

He further declared: “It is time to dismantle this mental structure.”

 14. The Earth-Centric Approach to Development (1970s–Present)

The earth-centric approach to development gained momentum from the 1970s onward in response to the severe environmental damage caused by industrial development, introducing several new concepts into development discourse. One prominent example is the Gaia hypothesis, formulated by chemist James Lovelock and co-developed with microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, which places Mother Earth and ecological sustainability at the centre of development concerns. Etymologically, the word Gaia is derived from the Greek Gaîa—the primordial Earth goddess in Greek mythology—and literally means "Earth." The hypothesis proposes that the biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) components of Earth function as a single, self-regulating organism that maintains conditions conducive to life. Alongside the Gaia concept, ideas such as deep ecology (coined by Arne Næss in 1973) and ecofeminism (introduced by Françoise d'Eaubonne in 1974) have also gained prominence in development debates. Notably, many of these contemporary alternative frameworks carry a deep imprint of Gandhian ideas and ideals.

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Note: This module text is based on a presentation delivered by Dr. Siby K. Joseph, Director of the Online International Fellowship Program on Nonviolence and Peace (IFPNP), Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, Wardha, Maharashtra, India.

 

 

Methods of Mediation Prof. Dorcas Ettang

Session outline of IFPNPV for the month of November 2026

 

 SESSIONS OUTLINE

 November 2026

DATE and #: TOPIC or TITLE: Presenter(s) or Facilitator:

11/5/2026 #15 Conflict Resolution Prof. Dorcas Ettang

11/6/2026 #16 Methods of Mediation Prof. Dorcas Ettang

11/7/2026 #17 Concepts of “Development” Dr. Siby K. Joseph

11/12/2026 #18 “Sustainable Development” Dr. Siby K. Joseph

11/13/2026 #19 Fossil Fuels &COP (Committee of the Parties) Dr. Michael Sonnleitner

11/14/2026 #20 I.D. #3: COP 31 Happening now in Türkiye) Sagar Dhara  

(Note the change in regular time.  ID will be at 8. 30 pm IST on 11/14/2026)

11/19/2026 #21 Environmental Conflict & Reconciliation Dr. Seema Sajjan

11/20/2026 #22 Religious Conflict & Reconciliation Prof. John Chelladurai

11/21/2026 #23 Racial Conflict & Reconciliation Prof. Dorcas Ettang

11/26/2026 #25 A Conflict Analysis: Israel-Palestine Dr. Michael Sonnleitner

11/27/2026 #24 Resolving West Bank & Gaza Realities Today Mazin Qumsiyeh

11/28/2026 #26 I.D. #4: Prospects for Middle East Peace Dr. Ogarit Younan

Assignment #2 TOPIC:

Drawing upon what you have learned from the IFPNP sessions, discuss conflict resolution in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict and COP31.

• To what extent can "sustainable development" be achieved in COP gatherings? (Explain why and/or why not.)
• To what extent can "reconciliation" be achieved in the Israel-Palestine conflict? (Explain why and/or why not.)

 

Conflict Resolution Prof. Dorcas Ettang

 

Broadening the Idea of Conflict Sensitivity Prof. John S. Moolakattu

Broadening the Idea of Conflict sensitivity

 Prof.M. S. John

Greetings to all of you. When I was at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, I taught a course on Conflict Sensitivity as part of the programme on development studies. We also had a programme on Gandhian studies and development studies, so we examined different forms of sensitivity, such as environmental sensitivity, gender sensitivity, and so on.

When I first tried to teach conflict sensitivity, I found a considerable lack of teaching material, as the field was still in its formative stage. For teaching material, I relied primarily on early contributions from people like Mary Anderson. She wrote a book in 1994, titled "Do No Harm." That became a kind of slogan for people who engaged in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding.

You know, the main issue is preventing conflict and being sensitive to possible conflicts that could emerge because of your intervention, especially as an outsider, whether you are providing a service or supporting certain UN programs. In various ways, each action needs to consider the context in which it takes place. This means understanding how an action and its settings affect each other, and then adjusting so people end up more connected. They don't get divided as a result of your intervention.

This idea has since moved beyond war zones to other areas. Although it initially focused on post-conflict reconstruction, especially after the 90s, it now applies to preventing division in climate projects, various computer applications like WhatsApp and Facebook, markets, and the everyday policymaking governments do—like local, state, and central governments. How do the actions of these governments, agencies, and companies have an impact? Do they divide people, bring people together, or are they blind—neither dividing nor bringing them together? Sometimes,  we use the word "gender-blind" in a similar way.

I'll start with some projects conceived, for example, in India. We have a national climate goal that meets a local livelihood. We have a goal to meet a certain level of energy demand, and we are trying to set up enterprises to produce that much energy. But at the same time, we are oblivious to what is happening in the locale where we intend to install this project. This is a case where we are trying to set up clean power by 2030—500 gigawatts. We aim to achieve this by installing large solar and wind parks in high, open regions.

Now, at Pang, in eastern Ladakh, a park of this kind—with solar as well as wind materials—is being installed. It is about 30 gigawatts on roughly 48,000 acres of the vast grassland. The local herders traditionally used this grassland. They were actually rearing a particular kind of goat known as the Pashmina goat, as well as sheep and yaks. Yaks are quite common in those highlands, including in Tibet. Moreover, these yaks—their fur is used for luxury wool.

Now, the problem isn't that they are against the project; it's that they're afraid because they haven't been consulted. There is no written grazing rights agreement. There's no talk about any compensation framework. The officials say grazing will be protected, and they have begun a grazing-friendly project. In other words, this is a sensitive region—a sensitive border—where many people feel decisions are made elsewhere, far away in Delhi.

Okay, let us not be unfair to anyone. Let's say that there are no villains. The useful question is not who is right, but what happens to trust? Do we trust the authorities who say so? What implications do they have for our livelihoods and our relationships when the project arrives?

So this is something which we need to take into account. This is one scenario. It's like a two-way street—a project and its setting keep acting on each other. We need to understand who the parties are in a conflict situation. We need to know who the parties involved in the conflict are. Who are the key stakeholders? What are the issues? How did this issue actually come into being? We need to know the evolution of this problem's history.

We need to understand how fast this conflict is building, what moderates its escalation, and what could serve as an immediate trigger that accelerates it. To do this, you must review your own resources and engage with them directly. Think about the resources you are going to intervene with: Who are you hiring to serve as project managers and project personnel and where will this project be located? Remember, each stakeholder group will read your message, and the local setting will shape your project in return.

Based on this understanding, you may need to change the design. Sometimes you might make certain adjustments: you may shift the location, reduce the level of investment you intend to make, reduce the quantum of power you intend to generate, or even change the timing. If you intend to start a project immediately, you may instead hold wider consultations and start at a later date.
It is also vital to communicate in a way that weakens what divides people. Communicate upfront, and tell the local community straightforwardly what you intend to do. This brings the community together rather than creating fissures within it. When you hire someone from one particular group, the other group becomes highly suspicious of your intentions. Therefore, clear communication must take place at all stages of the project cycle—from planning and implementation through to evaluation.
Now, mind you, conflict is not the same as violence. Disagreement, of course, is very normal in human affairs. The problem arises when a particular project creates fear in people's minds. They begin to feel that they could be excluded, that their voices may not be heard, and that coercion might be exercised over them with the help of the law enforcement machinery.

 

Of course, the absolute minimum standard is to do no harm. If you cannot do good, at least do no harm. The better standard, however, is to leave people more connected. The better standard is to ensure that, as a result of implementing a particular project or making a certain decision, the people are better off and come together as a group rather than getting divided. It should not lead to what is known as polarisation—and I mean polarisation of the wicked kind. In politics, of course, we expect a reasonable degree of polarisation, which is  a positive force.

Here, I refer to Mary Anderson’s work. She was particularly concerned with aid, though her framework later extended to humanitarian interventions. She found that an intervention affects conflict in two ways: first, through what it brings, in the sense of who gets the benefits of the aid; and second, through the messages it sends regarding who decides about those benefits and who matters in the whole scheme of things.

As you know, communities are very rarely homogeneous. They are divided along ethnic lines, caste groups, class (the rich versus the poor), and between indigenous people and settlers. This brings us to the concept of dividers and connectors. Every action we take actually feeds one or the other.

Dividers push people apart. They lead to unequal access to resources or services, secret or unexplained decisions, a lack of transparency, rumours, and hate speech. For example, during elections in India—a subject I have written a piece on—I actually adapted this framework, changing "do no harm" to "do no polarisation" in the context of Indian election campaigns over the last decade and a half. These dividers, including hate speech, lead to fear among sections of society. They are worsened by a history of prolonged, unaddressed grievances or by separate institutions for separate groups. In other words, dividers push people apart. When people are already divided, a poorly planned project intervention can worsen that division.

In contrast, connectors are those things that bind people together. These include shared markets, festivals, organisations, and spaces. They include respected councils and elders who command respect from all groups, or trusted mediators. Sometimes they need not be so-called neutral mediators. They can belong to a community, but one in which the other group also has faith. People come together on matters like bread-and-butter issues or common needs such as water, roads, and safety. These institutions serve everyone, and people can come together around these issues when projects are designed that way.

Let me bring to your attention  an interesting case. Imagine a village with a tense history between two neighbourhoods that share only one working public tap. Because the tap is in the first neighbourhood, a development group decides to install ten new taps there, simply because a road leads directly into that neighbourhood. Now, the taps themselves are good, but the message it sends to the second neighbourhood is: "You don’t matter. The other side matters more." Consequently, those who are aggrieved will grumble, and this could later escalate into open conflict.

If you are sufficiently sensitive as a planner, you would place those ten taps right at the boundary between the two neighbourhoods, so the other neighbourhood does not feel it is too far away. When you place it at the boundary, they feel it is very close to their place as well. That location creates an opportunity to connect with others, and if a committee from both neighbourhoods runs the system jointly, that setup serves as a vital connector.

Now, looking at the Ladakh case, the problem is that the dividers are rooted in secrecy; things are simply not transparent. People are unsure whether their land rights will be protected. Decisions are not made in consultation with local people; instead, they are made in Delhi or other distant places. On the other hand, strong connectors also exist, such as a shared need for clean energy. The Ladakhi people are particularly well-known for their commitment to environmentally friendly energy. They are far more conscious of environmental issues than the rest of the country because their lives are so intimately linked with nature. Furthermore, they have established local bodies, like the elected Hill Councils. All these existing institutional channels are not being considered. Projects do not merely deliver things; they send messages about who matters. Therefore, conflict sensitivity should not be confined to active war zones alone. Today, it has to travel much further. Whether you are issuing a mining license, updating an online application, or changing a tax policy, you risk opening up structural fault lines and stirring dividers in societies that otherwise look peaceful—even if your intention was simply to profit from the enterprise. This disruption can affect even stable, mature democracies like India, or the United Kingdom, for that matter. Risk builds up most aggressively during periods of rapid change. This happens when a new port comes online, a new platform launches, a sudden price shock hits the market, or a new rule on identity or land rights is introduced. Waiting for physical violence to erupt before you react means you are waiting far too long—violence can surface very quickly.

 

Moreover, any project is embedded in a complex web of laws, markets, platforms and global demand. Decisions made at village, state and national levels constantly interact. In the modern world private companies and digital platforms also shape conflicts. Governments and individual actors do not produce these problems alone. We have to look at the larger system. When structural systems continuously disadvantage the same groups over land, jobs, legal documentation, or political voice, grievances build up silently without requiring a single open act of violence. This is precisely what is known as structural violence: injustice embedded in social and institutional structures. Such violence may not immediately appear in physical form. The aim must therefore move from merely doing no harm towards building positive peace.

Positive peace is fundamentally different from negative peace. Negative peace is simply the absence of physical violence, but positive peace means the actual presence of social justice. Because of this, we need to focus on peace-centred development—development that ultimately leads to sustainable peace. In this framework, peace becomes our superordinate goal.
Let us look at Ladakh, for example. What happened there? A large energy infrastructure project was planned on pastoral commons and announced entirely from the top down. What was missed? There were no written grazing rights, no open access to information, and no real consultation before they selected the sites.

Consider the Vizhinjam port project in Kerala and the protests around it in 2022. Fishing families, supported by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Thiruvananthapuram, protested for more than 100 days over the approximately ₹7,500-crore project. They were deeply concerned about coastal erosion and rehabilitation. They wanted a dispassionate, independent study of the project's pros and cons, rather than government-engineered studies. The state government disputed these claims, and though an expert panel was named in October, the tensions later turned violent.
The core issue was that no evidence anyone could trust was ever gathered. In projects like these, you must seek community consent before sites are fixed. You need to commission rigorous baseline studies to understand the area's current state and project the net results if an intervention takes place. You also have to look at how previous, similar projects have performed. Furthermore, if a project yields benefits, those benefits must be shared with the community

We see similar patterns globally. Take the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, around Goma. The area is rich in cobalt, and cobalt is in high demand worldwide for batteries as the global market shifts to battery-powered cars and green energy. So, while demand for green energy rises globally, resources are being drained from the Congo, largely because of corruption and weak governance in its eastern parts. The lesson here is clear: we must decide with people, not about them. We must write rights down, and we must agree on the evidence together.
We also see how false messages can trigger severe crises when circulated through apps like WhatsApp and Facebook.

 In July 2018, false warnings about child kidnappers spread in India. Media reports referred to approximately twenty deaths over two months, including the lynching of five men in Dhule, Maharashtra.

Cheap mobile data had reached communities with pre-existing fears and limited trust in official information. Even when the police denied a rumour, past experiences influenced whether people believed them. The forwarding of false information contributed to deadly violence. WhatsApp later restricted forwarding to five chats in India, and extended the restriction internationally in 2019. But these measures came after the deaths.

In Myanmar, a United Nations fact-finding mission and an assessment commissioned by Facebook concluded that the platform had been used to spread hatred against the Rohingya and that the company had not done enough to prevent incitement. This raises the question: what can help in such situations?

Possible measures include forwarding limits, warning labels, fact-checking and moderation in local languages; direct communication with district authorities and community leaders; and digital literacy. Governments must also act carefully. Long internet shutdowns, such as those imposed in Manipur in 2023, can have serious consequences.

An internet shutdown may prevent hate speech or rumours from circulating, but it can also deprive people of vital information needed for safety and survival. Design choices affect how quickly fear travels. Now consider ordinary policy decisions in India.

Assam has long struggled with migration. The 2019 Assam National Register of Citizens, or NRC, left out about 1.9 million of 33 million applicants—roughly 7 to 8 per cent. Under this system, the burden of proof is entirely on the individual to demonstrate their citizenship. If you are poor, that poverty directly undermines your ability to produce documentary evidence. Poverty is not merely the absence of income; it is also an absence of the skills, knowledge, and systemic competence required to navigate complex bureaucratic situations. As a result, the poor, women, displaced individuals, and those affected by natural disasters are terribly disadvantaged when trying to produce identity documents. Assam regularly faces severe floods, and these floods literally wash away homes. When that happens, whatever documents people have left disappear entirely

 

 In 2019, the National Register of Citizens left out around 1.9 million people from approximately 33 million applicants, about 6% of applicants. The exercise placed a burden on people to prove citizenship through documents.

Poverty can affect people's ability to produce documentary evidence. It does not simply mean a lack of income; it can also involve a lack of skills, knowledge or resources to navigate official procedures. Poor people, women, displaced persons and flood-affected families may be particularly disadvantaged. Assam experiences serious flooding, and homes and documents get washed away.

A similar situation was observed in Kerala. About twenty kilometres from where I live, a landslide and severe flooding washed away several houses, especially weakly built homes. Families lost not only property but also essential documents.

When a team of us went there, the first thing we did was advise the community to ask the government to depute an official. This official could directly help them process the documentation needed to secure ration cards and other essential identification cards so they could access vital supplies.

 Now consider Manipur in 2023. A protest march and ethnic violence followed a High Court direction concerning Scheduled Tribe status for the Meitei community.

This resulted in the tragic deaths of nearly 300 people in just a few days. The violence created such deep fractures that the Meitei and Kuki communities now live in strictly segregated, 'no-go' areas where members of one community cannot safely enter the territory of the other. This judicial decision violently stirred long-standing tensions lying just beneath the surface. Although the Supreme Court later intervened, calling it an erroneous decision and striking it down, the harm had already been done. Those making decisions must understand the context, the history and the people likely to be affected.

They must also anticipate possible protests or backlash. In Southport in the United Kingdom, three children were killed in a knife attack in 2024. False online claims about the attacker's identity were followed by riots in several towns, feeding on existing grievances. Decisions involving identity, quotas or land therefore require particularly careful communication.

If an outsider must make an announcement, it may be better to involve a trusted member of the local community in communicating it. Similar lessons emerge from Rwanda, Goma, Lebanon and Mozambique.   

 

In Rwanda, following the genocide, perpetrators gained control of many refugee camps in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Because no security forces were deployed to separate these perpetrators from ordinary refugees, humanitarian agencies faced an impossible dilemma: either provide aid to everyone—including the perpetrators—or withdraw entirely. Organizations like Doctors Without Borders chose to pull out. A joint evaluation in 1996 found that over 200 agencies were operating there in a policy vacuum, without any central coordination. Consequently, a substantial portion of the humanitarian aid was hijacked by the perpetrators, who used it to sustain themselves, purchase weapons, and continue terrorising the population.

 

In Lebanon, aid to Syrian refugees initially overlooked the needs of host communities, leaving many local residents feeling excluded.Tensions arose over jobs, services and the perception that host communities were being neglected.

Similarly, in Mozambique, TotalEnergies commissioned an independent review in December 2022 after staff were forced to evacuate the Afungi peninsula in 2021 due to escalating conflict around its massive gas projects. The common thread across all these failures is that conflict analysis came far too late, project targeting was far too narrow, and no one asked how the surrounding population would perceive the arriving aid or investment.
To prevent this, any intervention in a conflict-prone region must answer four critical questions rooted in the local power dynamic: Who wins? Who loses? Who decides? And who is being left without a seat at the table?

Who is most powerful, who wins, who loses, and who decides? Who is missing from the discussion? What divisions already exist? There may be past disputes over land, water, jobs and trust. Speak with people who have lived in the locality for a long time. Ask how our actions could widen or narrow these divisions, both immediately and in the longer term, at local, state and national levels. Finally, if we are wrong, how will we find out, and what will we change? We need feedback channels.

At every stage, we should reflect on what we have done, taking account of community feedback, grievances, scheduled reviews and the authority to change course. If the people most affected are absent from the decision-making table, we should correct that first. Conflict sensitivity must become more than a project-level tool.

This approach has to widen into a systemic habit in policy and law. When governments introduce bills, issue orders or approve projects, they should consider the potential for conflict. Even budget allocations, which may appear neutral, determine who gets it and who misses out.

Analysis, consultation and adaptation must be incorporated into budgeting and planning.

These are not optional extras. When delivering services, organisations should carefully select and sensitise staff. One major difficulty for international aid agencies is the shortage of personnel with practical conflict-sensitivity skills.

 

Targeting who needs to be focused on, project locations, procurement—from whom should we procure the resources needed to implement this project—and partners: all these decisions should take this into consideration. Will this divide us, or will it unite us? We also need to learn as we progress.

We need to track tension data and set review dates that can change the plan based on the reports we receive. For instance, if there are recent reports of resentment from beneficiaries or something like that, we need to intervene early so it gets corrected.

Accountability is also crucial. Give the affected people grievance channels and allow independent reviews instead of your own organization conducting them. You could create a mixed body of your staff and beneficiaries, or community members involved in the work. So, conflict sensitivity fails when it lives in only one unit, one report, or one project. It has to become a kind of system-wide entity; it has to broaden.

So, governments, policymakers, courts, and commissions—along with the protection of lawful, dissent-based protests—are part of how societies negotiate in a democratic society. Coordinate among levels and ministries. Joint early warning systems involving district officials, police, health and education staff, local bodies, and civil society can sometimes give you signals of one kind or the other. You could take your cue from those signals and intervene early so the project does not lead to divisions and polarisation.

Then, regarding sector policies, I will not get into those details. In each of these sectors, conflict can develop, and sectoral specialists are sometimes not socially sensitive. If I am an economist or a water specialist and so on, we need to spread this message of conflict sensitivity to all these sectoral specialists. These are all sector-related fields: health and education, digital media, migration, identity, citizenship, justice, police, and security. So okay, these are some of the things we already discussed earlier.

I have only a few more points, as I think I have already crossed the time allotted to me. Companies, investors, tech platforms, media, civil society, communities, universities, and think tanks should also play a key role. You should develop conflict-sensitive research ethics, then publish which interventions failed and which worked. That would contribute to knowledge on conflict sensitivity.

There are six conditions. One is the leadership mandate: a senior owner who can actually pause a decision. In other words, a person with sufficient authority who can intervene decisively and maybe correct the course of the project when any particular information is received.

Second are decision triggers: set screening points at the planning stage, budgeting stage, launch stage, and during evaluation. Third is money and time: a budget line. There has to be a budget line; it cannot be volunteer work. Every piece of work must  be monetised. Fourth is skills: practical training for non-specialists—those who are, you know, not sufficiently aware of conflict, conflict sensitivity, conflict analysis, and so on. They should be trained. Fifth is feedback and grievance channels. Finally, tension data must reach decision-makers, followed by review and learning. These things should become part of the system.

At the same time, we need to be aware of a few things. The aim is not to end these projects, stop the investment, or anything like that. We are not abandoning climate action or development, for that matter, but we want to design things much better. And again, not all conflict is bad. Protest is how people negotiate in democracies, so don't dismiss dissent as inconsequential. Instead, you should look at dissent with due seriousness.

And again, you need to be aware of the fact that when you look at a locality, that locality consists of different voices. The "local" is not just one voice speaking for the community. Include women, the marginalised, the youth, and poorer households in decision-making processes. Broadening, of course, can dilute conflict sensitivity. But always keep this in mind: not to divide people, but to unite and connect them. Achieving this connection—human connectivity—is the essence of conflict sensitivity.

Of course, this may sound like a dry subject, but we can practice it in our day-to-day lives. Sometimes people say that using early instruments means you're trying to prevent conflict, which amounts to a kind of conflict avoidance. I must say that there were times when we looked at conflict avoidance as a bad thing. But we know the nature of conflict has changed, and how people view peace varies by locality; there is no uniform way people view peace. So, whatever you can do to prevent violence—even if it results in a negative peace—we should do it. We must try to ensure it happens because lives are otherwise lost, and even if it is a small step, that small step is very crucial.

In our day-to-day lives, for example, if you are a teacher in a school, having a grievance redressal mechanism is a way to preempt conflict. You can see this kind of situation everywhere. So, it is up to you during the discussion to take up any one of these conflicts that I brought to your attention, or you could describe a conflict which you experienced and which could have been prevented if there had been sufficient conflict sensitivity. With this, I will end. Thank you.

Q&A

Question 1- How can we develop conflict sensitivity in classrooms? What methods can be used? Should pedagogy or curricula change?

The typical classroom we are accustomed to is not especially democratic. A few schools have experimented with new teaching methods, but in many classrooms, particularly in India, the teacher controls how knowledge is delivered. It is largely one-sided. Questions may be permitted, but students are expected to stay within certain boundaries rather than fundamentally challenge the teacher.

We need a more participatory environment. The curriculum, too, may sometimes create divisions rather than connections. Students should develop their critical faculties. Paulo Freire's educational ideas are useful here: students should not simply accept what the teacher or curriculum delivers.

They should be able to reflect on what they are taught through their own experience and decide what is reasonable. We must also help children understand the interconnectedness of human and animal life, particularly the unity of human beings. Gandhi emphasized the divine spark within each of us as a source of connectedness. Others may locate that common bond in human rationality.

The idea of oneness should become part of classroom practice. Teachers must be mindful of divisions based on economic circumstances, caste, ethnicity and other factors when choosing class monitors, selecting leaders or assigning tasks.

A conflict-sensitive teacher can cultivate values of connectedness in the classroom.

 

 

 

 

Question No.2: It’s regarding the Vizhinjam port. I believe there are aspects worth considering. Initially, some community members supported the port, but a large agitation arose later. How should we address conflicts when protests are driven by agendas? The port has created employment opportunities.

Similar questions arise with protests around the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. How should governments respond when they believe a large-scale agitation is creating economic, political or religious divisions?

 Answer: The problem was that their demand for an independent fact-finding body was not accepted. If such a body had been established, this conflict might not have arisen in the same way.

It’s commendable that the conflict did not continue for long. Perhaps some of the project's benefits were seen as a form of compensation. Nevertheless, other issues needed to be addressed, including the situation of people affected by earlier coastal erosion and displacement.

Some of those long-standing concerns date back to Cyclone Ockhi. They became entangled with the port dispute, which largely stems from affected people's lack of reliable information.

This information asymmetry can undermine social harmony. Fortunately, the dispute did not escalate further.