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This article provides information about the different barriers to development !
There are certain barriers to development. Observation of social progress reveals three recurring types of obstacles to development – limited perception, outdated attitudes and anachronistic behaviours. There are discussed in brief as follows:
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One of the most striking characteristics of development discernible in all periods, countries and fields of activity has been the inability of society to envision or foresee its own future destiny. This attribute is usually accompanied by the contrary tendency to perceive opportunities as insurmountable obstacles.
Innumerable times in history, humanity has come face to face with what it believed was a dead end to progress, only to discover sooner or later a way around or through the dead end to open up a wider field of opportunities. Today, powerful perceptual barriers exist with regard to employment, technology, trade, environment, corruption, inflation and population that represent very real barriers to development the world over. Malthus, the great demographer was not the only one to foresee imminent doom where in fact there was enormous opportunity.
In 1950 Holland’s population exceeded 5 million, reaching a density that many believed approached the ultimate limits that this tiny landmass could support. Today the Netherlands has 15 million people, almost three times the population density, yet it ranks among the most prosperous nations in the world and is a major food exporter. In the mid 1960s, India suffered from two successive years of drought and was on the verge of severe famine.
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An expert team sent to India by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations estimated that the country’s food grain production would rise only by a maximum of 10% before 1970. Many of our Indian scientists shared this pessimistic view. Actually grain production rose 50 per cent during this period and doubled within a decade to make our country self-sufficient in food-grains. Had our leaders shared the view of the experts, the Green Revolution may never have been attempted!
The most persistent obstacles to human development are not physical barriers, but outdated attitudes. Fifteenth century China possessed a navy unparalleled in size, skills and technology, but their expeditions led only to dead ends. The purpose of these expeditions was to display the splendor and prowess of the Chinese emperors. They obstinately resisted foreign ways of life and discouraged trade.
The Chinese developed a traditional immunity to world experience. A Great Wall of the mind separated China from the rest of the planet for centuries. Fully equipped with technology, intelligence and national resources to become great discoverers, their attitude doomed them to become the discovered.
But with the end of cold war and opening up of economies and rapid globalisation in the past two decades forced Chinese society to have more interaction with world community and also for outsiders to have more accessibility to Chinese society. Another example would be the fact that the science of medicine developed very slowly in Europe due to the reluctance of physicians to share their successful remedies, until the establishment of the Royal Society of Physicians in the 18th century led to more open exchange of information, support for research and medical education.
One of the deepest and most widespread of human prejudices has been faith in the unaided, unmediated human senses. When the telescope was invented for seeing at a distance, prudent people were reluctant to allow the firsthand evidence of their sight to be overruled by some dubious novel device. The eminent geographer Crimsoning refused to waste his time looking through Galileo’s contraption just to see what “no one but Galileo had seen…. and besides, looking through those spectacles gives me a headache”.
Distrust of the new was, for long, an obstacle to the development of science. Today outmoded attitudes bar social advancement in every field. The expansion of world trade after 1950 has been a tremendous force for stimulating job creation and raising living standards around the world. Yet, fear and resistance to expansion of trade persists among Americans and Canadians to the North American Free Trade Association, among Europeans to closer economic and monetary union, and among people in every country to freer international trade under the World Trade Organisation.
Gold was originally a popular form for saving personal wealth and a hedge against inflation in many countries prior to the establishment of reliable banking systems. The safety of banks and the higher returns available from other forms of investment have gradually diminished the importance of gold as a form of savings. But till today in many Asian countries, India being in the forefront, the traditional habit of saving and paying dowry in the form of gold jewellery has continued unabated, even after more secure and financially attractive forms of savings became widely available.
In our country, we possess nearly 30,000 metric tons of gold valued at $300 billion, an amount roughly twice the value of the public deposits held by the Indian banks. Because the gold has to be imported, this form of savings removes liquidity from the national economy and prevents the reinvestment of personal savings in productive activities within the country. At a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are desperately needed for investment in roads, power plants and telecommunications infrastructure, an anachronistic habit forces the country to depend on foreign investors while we continue to sit on a huge hoard of untapped wealth.