Development is Mobile!

When development is concerned with mobility, mobility sounds and means similar to the migration. In simple words, migration means the movement of people from one place to another for several reasons like food, income, shelter, health, water, etc. In earlier days, food and income used to be the prime reasons for the migration. The history of development also suggests that development used to be synonymous to the economic development, thus since the discovery of the money as a major store of value and major means of transaction of goods of services, income has been one of the major requirements of the human survival and development. Coming to the present day, it is money which is usually seen as an intermediary in almost every transaction of day to day livelihood. Thus, the relationship between mobility and development or migration and development seems very significantly, the statistical significance yet to be discovered though.

Today’s world is globalized; an individual evidences lots of mobility in life these days. There can be different perceptions for the mobility, some may believe that mobility is not worthy as that never lets an individual attain stability in life whereas some may also believe that mobility is good aspect in human life as it helps people attain different experiences in life and helps people en-cash the opportunities in life. The pace of the world today has increased so significantly that many times when people do not cope with it, one cannot even see the opportunities pass away. There is no option besides coping the current pace of the world. An immobile person is myth these days. The immobility of an individual is no less than being handicap with the brain thought and chances to grab the opportunities. But again, one thing that should not be forgotten is that mobility without any specific objective becomes a hurdle to the societal development.

Development has passed through several stages of definition by now. There are several theories that have tried to define development but I believe that development is one of such words which can never be clearly defined because of wide domain of the development. It was only in early days when development, overall was understood as the economic development but these days, the dimensions have grown wider. Development, in simple words, means the comparative improvement or the progression in anything in the world for me. It is usually seen that development is popularly defined as the positive changes in the sectors of a country. But where the problem lies is that the impact of the positive change should mandatorily be positive or else though the change is positive and the impact is negative, development is not said to exist.

In this article, mobility and development will analyzed through two major theories in economics- Lewis Theory and the Dependency theory. Though the models are old by now, the relevance has not gone down.

Lewis Model

Like we discussed above in the article about the movement of people from one place to another for income, food, etc. from the figure above, we will try to synthesize why and how people tend to move from Traditional (agricultural) to Modern (industrial) sector. Let us have a look at the right side of the figure which represents the traditional section of the economy. To start with the graph, Lewis assumes the function of the Total Products variable which depends upon the number of labors associated, people assumed in your system is not seen very efficient and happy. And, as per the graph, the productivity function remains constantly horizontal in the long run. Now, when the marginal and average productivities will be made to analyze the movement aspect in development, we will notice that even the society seems to operate in that 2^nd stage of operation with maximum possible efficiency. Similar kind of analysis done in the manufacturing sector remarks you with comparatively higher productivities which justifies that the mobility of people seems natural from the traditional (agricultural) to the modern (manufacturing) sector.

Also,

The above mentioned graph deals about the mobility, investment and re-investment. The above figure shows that there is a wage level W1 in subsistence sector which is much below than the wage level W of the industrial sector. When the production possibility frontier is analyzed, it is observed that there is high quantity of unutilized production of goods and services which affects the overall value generation. What it says about industrial sector is that the surplus amount that is above the industrial wage level can again be re-invested and earning can regularly be increased. This again justifies that the opportunities to multiply the amount of fund you have in the industrial sector are greater than the opportunities you have in the subsistence sector. This also acts as the contributor to the development generated by the mobility aspect.

Dependency Theory

Dependency theory is yet another phenomenon which can explain the relation between the mobility and development as the theory deals with such places again which acts as the developed end and the other as the undeveloped end. And, as poverty in the neighbouring region is a threat to the prosperity of the region, the developed part works a lot harder to incorporate people from undeveloped part to balance the societal factors. Dependency theory can be better understood from the figure below:

The developed part remains in the center which acts as the hub of both goods and resources. It might be difficult to synthesize but the reality remains so. Now, theoretically the dependency theory suggests that where the center country, core of the development, brings in resources to give out goods to balance the trade balance, thus balancing the economy. This becomes important because we assume that the country in the center is economically prioritized and the country in the periphery is not. Though the prioritization might not be the economically right word, one or the other way, the meaning remains the same. For dependency, in few cases, there are some transition economies which usually get benefitted from both the transactions- resources and goods.

To conclude, the issue of mobility and development being looked into on the grounds of Lewis theory and the dependency theory looks relevant and justifiable. In case of Nepal, where lots of roads are yet to be constructed which is very important for the mobility, that dual sector economy as discussed above looks to suffer the most. Agriculture, the subsistence sector is still compelled to have less access to the modern sector which will make situation complex and problematic. Similarly, agriculture is one such profession where the work is very marginally paid- even much less than the minimum declared wage by the government of Nepal Rs. 318 per day which will also make the mobility, along with the social unjust common in the different societies.

Note: The article was published in the publication of Society of Consulting Architectural and Engineering Firms