Most people read about the Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory but they rarely think that economic development emanates from these very inadequacies. Most people will basically disregard this thought saying it is not in their scope of interests let alone delving into the relevance of this hypothetical statement.
Countries like Nepal lag behind most developing countries in GDP and other economic indicators because the outcries of the hungry, the unclothed and the unsheltered majority groups are smothered underneath the moan of desperation of the middle class to step beyond the pretentious dreams of macroeconomic prosperity.
Governments come up with different policies and plans to outfox these physiological shortcomings from Maslow’s Theory into retracting its ill-effects and bestow economic prosperity in the country. In the process the more important issues like physiological needs elude their over optimistic and over ambitious plan of actions.
Instead of focusing on satisfying the physiological needs, the government focuses on developing the supplementary courses of actions like greater access to education for the impoverished, industrial and commercial development, greater access to information and technology. This draws an imaginative mind metaphorically to a question about whether it is a correct measure for a doctor to prescribe vitamin supplements to a starving person.
One would be compelled to think about the irrelevance of such approach taken by governments of developing and under-developed nations across the world where issues with such extraneous approaches to poverty alleviation are preposterously rising with quite a lot of intensity. They invest heavily on all these supplementary plans without thinking what could be the really right solution.
They think the path to development is carved by virtue of enhanced working and living condition for the middle class, where they could work harder with the hard earned degree they value the most and earn better to live better later. Yet they foresee the world as being a battle ground of middle class people fighting to attain the state of high class people and in the process oversee that the real world is still struggling to emerge out clean from the dearth of poverty where starvation prevails over needs for education let alone better education.
People at the upper levels still fail to realize that the need of the hour is to satisfy people’s need for food, clothes and shelter where education is a far fetched solution that will take some years in taking its full effect. They have to realize that the problem is rooted deep in the foundation and that policies have to be focused on eliminating those basic problems.
It is about time they thought what Maslow so rightly stated with a little more inference from educational perspective, here. How would someone who is hungry, doesn’t have clothes, and is homeless going to focus on education? So promoting education to fight off poverty in a pro development movement is not what is needed and never was. It is only a catalyst that could trigger an avalanche effect of economic prosperity in a country.
So what could be the possible answers to these questions raised about what should then be actually done to attain economic development? For me it should be one that talks about full fledged packages that is focused mainly with securing a meal for the impoverished, a shelter s/he can take shade in and clothes to wear and incorporates education promotion with a provision for total employment, which could assure that all these requirements are met every time.
It could be the other way round too; in that it could be in the form of education promotion package securing employment right away for at least one member of the household en route to fulfillment of those physiological needs.
If development is to be achieved, it is not the middle class that should be targeted but it should look upon creating national provisions, acts and regulations in favor of packages that incorporate all necessities: basic to supplementary; the doctor should either give food to the famished along with vitamin supplements to ensure better health or prescribe the starved individual vitamin supplements that intrinsically buys him/her the food, s/he longs for so much.
A closely knit metaphorical example draws upon the following conclusion. Life is impossible without food, the most basic of physiological needs, and physical growth is unachievable without nutritional supplements. Growth is hence unimaginable without satisfying the hunger just like development is impossible unless the ravenous souls’ hunger is satiated.
This analogy of physical growth to development and nutritional supplements to education and other supplementary development programs elicits another relationship between failed attempt towards innovation and the disgruntled physiological needs in under-developed countries.
So it is quite evident, “Where unsatisfied needs arise, innovations emanate but these creative ideas vanish when the needs are left unsatisfied for too long because if you don’t eat for too long you become hungry and hunger kills, not just individuals and their creative ideas and also the society’s will and desire to innovate.” This partly explains why poor countries are getting poorer with zero or failed attempts from their societies to create solutions to these issues.
Interesting analogy.......
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