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"There is an alternative out there"

Suresh Nambath and Mukund Padmanabhan

Martha Nussbaumon why the human capabilities approach to development is the best option.

— Photo: V. Ganesan

Martha Nussbaum: "We want people challenging us. There is nothing worse than the reverence to philosophers, nothing that kills philosophy quicker than that."

A professor of philosophy and law at the University of Chicago, Martha Nussbaum has made a significant contribution in promoting the capabilities approach to development, which regards central human capabilities (such as the ability to live a full life, engage in recreational activities and participate in politics) as the framework for development. Her approach, an extension of Professor Amartya Sen's theory on substantial freedoms, contrasts with the view that analyses development solely in terms of economic growth and accumulation of wealth. Professor Nussbaum is the president of the Human Development and Capability Association, which she describes as an "academic association" and an "advocacy group." Excerpts from an interview:

The approach of focussing on capabilities as an approach to human development — or as you say "on what people are actually able to do or be" — as opposed to one that stresses on growth and increase in wealth seems to be finding more and more acceptance.

I think so. Countries have started doing human development reports. The United States is one of the few countries that doesn't do a human development report. But even there, there is some influence. At the start, our real target was institutions like the World Bank. And there it really did begin to have a serious influence. You could see signs of interest in the approach. Whether that emphasis on capabilities will continue remains to be seen. But I hope it will.

In your view, distributive justice is not just about distributing wealth or even "primary goods" in the Rawlsian sense, but creating the conditions for the actualisation of a set of central human capabilities. Have governments internalised this idea? Has it changed their approach to developmental work?

The brilliant idea of [the late Pakistani economist] Mahboob-ul-Huq to have a single human development index and to rank countries in order of their human development performance — even though it involves simplifying the range of capabilities that we really want to focus on — did make people sit up and take notice. Governments do not like to be ranked low. And when they introduced the gender development index, they could show Japan, for example, was very high on the general index but much lower when you take gender into account. That produced some stir. I have heard governments say: `For that reason we decided to focus more on education or we must correct the gender imbalances.' What this theory does is to tell governments, `You don't have to follow this one theoretical paradigm. There is an alternative out there.'

Doesn't the capabilities theory create dilemmas, particularly in the Third World? Take child labour, for instance. On the one hand, its existence would detract from play, education and some of the other ten central human capabilities you have listed. On the other, it may be the only way to get around a situation of dire poverty.

It's a question I often get — how do you make trade-offs? When you have to make trade-offs, pushing anyone below the threshold on some major capability, the first thing you should say is this is a tragic situation, something that should not have happened. After all, the job of every government is to provide each and every person with the complete set of minimum conditions for a decent human life. They are all important, non-negotiable elements. We just have to figure how we can get them all. In the case of child labour, look at Kerala. How did a State that is poor somehow manage to get children educated? The answer is long but one part of it is the mid-day meal.

Tell us something about the Human Development and Capability Association. How it was founded, what its goals are and what work it is doing in India.

For a long time, we just did our work. We didn't have a way of bringing people together who were interested in the [capabilities] approach. Then, there were young researchers who came to Amartya Sen and me and said, `We want to hold some conferences to bring people together. We think ultimately there has to be an association to pursue this further.' Then in 2001, there was a conference held in England on Sen's approach. One was held next year about my work. In the third year, there was a much broader conference in Pavia, Italy, about capabilities and sustainable development. It was exciting and what really struck us was the number of young people who came from developing countries. And so we were encouraged to think that a formal association is a good thing. In 2004, we formally launched it with Sen as the first president. I am president now.

As for India, I would say we have had a tremendous outpouring of enthusiasm from people in India, not only from Sen, and Professor Prabhat Patnaik but also from younger people. Now, I am told there is a graduate student network all over India of HDCA members.

Would it be fair to describe HDCA as having two main functions — being a think tank and functioning as an advocacy group?

An academic association more than a think tank. Because think tank to me means people are there all the year round. It is a professional association but it is also an advocacy group. Now I think that is a delicate balance. What I worry about is that people would be missionaries rather than arguers. One of the things that deter some people from joining [an organisation] is that they have to believe in it in order to join. I always say: `Absolutely not!' We want people challenging us. There is nothing worse than the reverence to philosophers, nothing that kills philosophy quicker than that. Of course, we want a sympathetic challenge, one that pushes the work further.

How did you arrive at the 10 capabilities? Did you work backwards from what was achieved in the developed countries or did you have some philosophical conception of what constituted human essence?

This is one difference. Amartya Sen doesn't have any such list. I arrived at it starting from the idea of human dignity, and thinking about what in each area of human life are the essential pre-requisites of a life that's worthy of human dignity. My inspiration came from the young Marx, from his reading of Aristotle, where he said: `Look at the way the workers are living. They are human, but they are not being given a life that's worthy of their humanity. Because they are eating and drinking in a way that's not human, because they don't have leisure, no time to socialise.' His view was that all activities in order to be worthy of humanity had to be infused with practical reason and sociability.

I got a lot of help from past work that's on the same question. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was asking very similar questions. They started from the idea that the human being is not a means or a tool but rather an end. And came up with formulations that are really quite similar.

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