Excuse my ignorance

There has been a recent explosion of interest in the academic pursuance of "development studies" in Bangladesh with some universities proffering master degrees in this much-desired, long-overdue discipline. Despite the fact that Bangladesh boasts think tanks like Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, development has not been institutionalised as an academic endeavour until recently when the first private university of Bangladesh blazed the trail, and many, having deciphered the demand in the market, eventually followed suit.

Phasing in of a new discipline into universities is an incontrovertible emblem of intellectualistic efflorescence. More important is the fact that as a low-income country nothing is more momentous than the study of development, which is the unquestioned desideratum of every country at the developmental plane at which we stand.

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Though I don't intend to view development in terms of stages (as the Euro-Americo-centric schools in general do), here my intention is to deconstruct the nuances of the problematic of development. I am looking at development as a set of decided goals the acquisition of which can catapult Bangladesh to the status of a developed county by a western benchmark. (The decided factors are known to all of you).

Unlike many other disciplines where the pursuit of knowledge is viewed as an end in itself, development studies cannot be relegated to the mere academic armchair efforts directed towards the generation of what economists call "knowledge." Here again I don't intend to dive into the epistemological crisis modern social science in general is characterised by. Unfortunately though, unlike most social sciences within which there is at least some talk on the epistemological crisis the new school of thoughts of postmodernism and post-structuralism have brought in, economists of Bangladesh have been blatantly insensitive to these new epistemic blows that have dismantled the very scaffolds of positivism upon which the so-called science of neo-classical economics is predicated. (To the best of my knowledge, no economist has even taken the pains to pay lip service to this crisis). This issue altogether merits a separate treatment.

However, unlike the time that any newly introduced discipline takes to become popular, development studies got off to a flier. Right from the inception it contrived to attract a good number of students. Seems the avant-gardists displayed an uncanny knack of a perfect market study. As an academic field, development studies concerns itself with the problems and processes of development from all possible slants, but as I already mentioned, this should not be a mere problematisation of developmental issues for the sake of production of knowledge. Rather, it should try to inculcate the values that a person needs to be armed with in order to operate in a concerned way. Unfortunately the reality is diametrically different as people undertaking this study embark on it with a potent hunch of developing themselves materially (though at times intellectually).

Well, I take no exception to people's interest in self-development as the society can aspire to develop collectively only if individuals grow. In other words development of others through self-development is probably the spirit of those who would repudiate my stance. But all these seem like a well-crafted joke to me.

In fact I don't understand why development studies is not a mockery of the perennially downtrodden who have to toil day in and day out just to make ends meet, whereas the intellectual alchemists of development swing from ground to sky, intellectualising squalor and depravation.

Then there are of course what they call the "development practitioners" operating as employees in the non-government altruistic organisations getting elevated from a low-level position to a higher level position by virtue of these degrees or dazzling display of topnotch departmental performance. So what it boils down to is that a coterie of people banking on the underdevelopment of Bangladesh is carving out self-interested positions, with the paupers remaining the same if not worse.

A degree in development unquestionably enhances a person's likelihood of being absorbed within the extant establishments of developmental organisations, as those coming out with a certificate are being schooled to serve the organisational interests uncritically with no regard to the possibilities that these establishments themselves can be a major developmental straightjacket.

Given that situation, I fail to decipher why development studies is not a satirisation of the poor. Is "development studies" an industry built upon the demagogic gobbledygook of some disciplinary excesses devoid of any real concern for the unfortunate? I hope my ignorance is not inexcusable.

Adnan Hossain is a student of development studies at North South University.