Primary Objective Of Development Research Articles

The Quest for Decolonization: Reimagining Politics, Nation State and Identity in India

Was the liberation movement really for liberation? Did the nationalist movements betray the multitudes, the common of the society? Was the liberation of South Asia only a shift of minorities (from native to national minority) and unequal dynamics of power (‘Strongmen’ ruling the weak)? Almost every nation state shares the same attributes. The Empire's colonists and native are the nation state’s national majority and national minority, Mamdani (2020) argued. The study uses Mamdani's theoretical framework of nation state to understand the plight of India’s national minorities. Minorities of the nation state are struggling to belong and find a space of identity in the land of their ancestors. Mamdani, through the example of Apartheid South Africa, proposes that nation state’s violence can be curbed through decolonizing the governing apparatus of state narratives that shapes the identity of the people for its own benefits. The people should not buy into the state narratives based on differences that spread violence for its own strategic and political purposes. But they should reassemble and redefine their subjective truths to reshape their identity, to regain the power of inclusion not exclusion, and to contribute to the land of their ancestors. As Amartya Sen argued, freedom is also the primary objective of development. The struggle to freedom must be fought on all fronts.

Self-derivation through memory integration under low surface similarity conditions: The case of multiple languages

A primary objective of development is to build a knowledge base. To accumulate knowledge over time and experiences, learners must engage in productive processes, going beyond what is explicitly given to generate new knowledge. Although these processes are important to accumulating knowledge, they are also easily disrupted. Individuals often depend on surface-level similarities, such as visual features, to recognize the relation between learning episodes. When the surface-level similarity is low, performance on tasks that depend on productive processes, such as self-derivation through integration of new knowledge, suffers. The major purpose of the current research was to examine whether presentation of related information in different languages poses a challenge to memory integration and self-derivation due to low levels of surface similarity between episodes of learning through different languages. In Study 1, 62 children (Grade 2; mean age = 8 years 1 month) listened to story passages containing novel facts that could be integrated to self-derive new knowledge. Related passages were presented either through the same language or through two different languages (cross-language condition; Spanish and English). There were no significant differences between presentation conditions. In Study 2, 100 children (Grades 3 and 4; mean age = 9.7 years) heard novel facts in single sentences, again presented in either a same-language or cross-language condition. Whereas third-grade cross-language performance suffered compared with same-language English controls, fourth-grade performance did not. Results suggest that in addition to language proficiency, rich contextual support and experience in a bilingual environment facilitate cross-language integration.

Software Patterns for Traceability of Requirements to Finite State Machine Behavior

There is a growing class of engineering applications for which long-term managed evolution and/or managed sustainability is the primary development objective. The underlying tenet of our work is that neither of these trends will become fully mature without: (1) An understanding for how and why system entities are connected together, and (2) Formal procedures for assessing the correctness of system operations, estimating system performance, and understanding trade spaces involving competing design criteria. To address these concerns, during the past few years we have developed methodologies and tools for ontology-enabled traceability; that is, traceability mechanisms where requirements are connected to models of engineering entities by threading the traceability connection through one or more ontologies. In our proof-of-concept work the engineering entities were restricted to elements of system structure. But, of course, real engineering systems also have behaviors. This paper will report on research to understand the role that software patterns (e.g., model-view-controller) and mixtures of graph and tree visualization can play in the implementation of traceability mechanisms from requirements to elements of finite-state machine behavior (e.g., actions, states, transitions and guard conditions). We will present a simple lamp example.

Reviving Egalitarianism in the Global Transformation: Building Occupational Security

The world is in the midst of a Global Transformation, reflecting the painful creation of a global market society. Globalization was the disembedded phase, in which inequalities and insecurities multiplied as national systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution were dismantled or broke down. This reflected the collapse of labourism and systems of industrial citizenship, and an end to the building of national welfare states as the development objective. The outcomes were unsustainable. But what should be the counter-movement by which the global economic system will be re-embedded in society? This article suggests that a new approach to social and economic security is required, one that places work and occupation at the centre of life rather than labour, and one in which universal basic economic security is the primary development objective. In order to move in that direction, this article advocates the use of five policy decision principles by which all policies and institutional changes should be evaluated. It concludes by sketching a progressive strategy oriented to occupational citizenship, giving equal respect to liberty, equality and fraternity, or social solidarity. The world is in the midst of a Global Transformation, reflecting the painful creation of a global market society. Globalization was the disembedded phase, in which inequalities and insecurities multiplied as national systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution were dismantled or broke down. This reflected the collapse of labourism and systems of industrial citizenship, and an end to the building of national welfare states as the development objective. The outcomes were unsustainable. But what should be the counter-movement by which the global economic system will be re-embedded in society? This article suggests that a new approach to social and economic security is required, one that places work and occupation at the centre of life rather than labour, and one in which universal basic economic security is the primary development objective. In order to move in that direction, this article advocates the use of five policy decision principles by which all policies and institutional changes should be evaluated. It concludes by sketching a progressive strategy oriented to occupational citizenship, giving equal respect to liberty, equality and fraternity, or social solidarity.

Basic minimum needs, quality of life and selected correlates : Explorations in villages in northern India

For those involved in international development, one of the major goals is an improvement in the quality of life of the poor. Bhargava and Chakrabati (1992: 133) see the “primary objective of development at any given time is to improve the quality of life”. Indeed, the mission statement for an international development organization explicitly commits itself to the improvement of the quality of life for the “poorest of the poor” (DID, 1994). Social indicators, as “transeconomic” measures of quality of life, have “become an integral part of 'development indicators”' (Kao and Liu, 1984: 400; see, also Kahn, 1991). The connection between quality of life and development extends beyond the Third World. For example, in the U.S. Myers (1987) found quality of life influenced inmigration to Austin, Texas, thus affecting its economic development. Undoubtedly the majority of the connections between social indicators and development has been examined at the macro, or national levels using economic, health, education and other objective, comparative indices. Recognizing that such measures as GNP are oftentimes inadequate, assorted indices have been derived to gauge the changes in social development over time, e.g., the well-known Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) constructed by the Overseas Development Council (Morris, 1976). Many of these tend to focus on objective, material indicators (commodity possessions) as opposed to the more subjective ones (Anand and Ravallion, 1993). It is not the purpose of this paper to examine the various critics' arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of extant macro versus micro indices, but rather to lend support for the general need to assess development and social change through social indicators, whether macro or micro, objective or subjective. Ultimately, the purpose of the assessment should guide which social indicators are selected. The purpose of this paper is to examine several issues arising from the linkages between development efforts and quality of life (QOL). Using empirical data which were gathered to evaluate a community development project in the Garhwal region of Northern India, several issues, germane to both social indicators and development, will be investigated. These include: (1) the relationship between “Basic Minimum Needs” (BMNs) and QOL, (2) some methodological innovations for measuring both BMNs and QOL, and (3) selected correlates of BMNs and social indicators of QOL for Garhwali villagers. Before describing the project and its findings, we will first place it in the overall development context.