IDPAD End Symposia in Hyderabad and The Hague

14 december 2006

After 25 years the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD) came to an end. During two concluding seminars the insights gained from IDPAD research were discussed. One seminar was held in Hyderabad (Nov. 1st -3rd 2006), the other in The Hague (Nov. 24th 2006), and both focused on India’s Development: Even or Uneven?

While India has long been seen as a developing country with extreme poverty and in need of foreign aid, it now has come to be seen as a fast growing success economy that is more and more competitive on a global scale and may even threaten Western hegemony in fields like information technology and IT enabled services. This change of view shared by many is so radical that a critical assessment is seen as most opportune, in the light of the growing contrasts between various regions, between urban and rural India, within the cosmopolitan cities, and, last but not least, between growing numbers of well-off Indians and the many poor.

When IDPAD was launched, the state was seen as the principal actor for promoting development and alleviation poverty. One of the aims of IDPAD was to examine alternatives to development and to policies in a wide range of fields. The perception of the state and the government as the key drivers of development has given way to the perspective of ‘governance’, perceived as a multi-actor process in a multi-stakeholder arena. The end-symposium therefore aimed to look at the options and the instruments of state policy, but to also take into account the role of civil society and the private sector to understand the effects and implications of India’s current economic growth - including for example implications for labour, the environment an the position of women. Another aim was to critically assess current-day approaches and policies of social development, and to ask ourselves what they mean for the excluded people in India’s urban and rural areas.

André Beteille (chair ICSSR) indicated that there is not one way of development: development has many roads, and it is the big virtue of IDPAD that it has helped to put this consistently on the map. Jan Breman acknowledged that the gap between the poor and the rich in India has widened, as he showed through a photo exhibition, but that nevertheless the poor have become less poor. There was also reflection on the changes that had taken place over time: issues like Globalisation and the role of civil society were hardly research issues 25 years ago, while other topics of that era lost some of their significance such as the central role of the state and agriculture studies (land reforms, agricultural labour). IDPAD was complimented on the frequent application of the comparative approach and an early focus on international aspects of development. Several speakers argued that this had been quite fruitful and should remain an important research approach in any follow up efforts.

Conclusions focused on how in an increasingly competitive economic, labour and market context, and a shift towards multi-actor governance, the poor, Dalits, tribal people and especially women are loosing out. To understand the changing realities new research approaches are needed to probe the changing realities of India, and this should not only include the poor but also a focus on middle classes and elites, as well as the impacts of globalisation and the failure of politics to address growing inequality. Such patterns of exclusion, informalisation and ‘uneven development’ are not limited to India; they are increasingly converging in East and West. One issue that provoked a debate did not reach one conclusion related to the nature and role of research. This was juxtaposed in various ways: research ‘to understand’ or ‘to do’, with independent or societal related issues, for short term or delayed results. Several both Indian and Dutch researchers emphasized the need for independent research to be able to flourish on a long-term basis and thus to step outside the development framework. Others saw a need to relate research to society and to include stakeholders, and that this is possible while maintaining long-term and critical research, as IDPAD has shown. This is likely to remain an ongoing debate.