Development without development

For some strange reason, I always felt rather uncomfortable with the more recent development discourse: Microfinance, schooling, deworming, cash transfers - while all these surgical (Streichelzoo) interventions received much attention both in the theoretical and practical development community, they seemed to neglect a main feature of development per se: Industrial production. 

A recent talk (last week) by my personal hero Ha-Joon Chang highlighted this phenomenon, which he dubbed "Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark": In 88 minutes, Chang argues that recent discourse has neglected the traditional definition of development (focusing on transforming and upgrading aggregate production capacities). Instead, too much focus has been given on individuals (raising education, income and improving service delivery), thereby neglecting the need to enhance and coordinate collective production to achieve sustained growth: This is illustrated best by looking at the MDGs, which almost exclusively focus on targeted, individual approaches: I wonder why no MDG sets a target for improving industrial capacity, shifting sectoral composition or upgrading low-return production capacities?

Listen to podcast here:


Addendum: Following academic bash between Justin Yifu-Lin and Ha-Joon Chang is quite worthwhile reading! Gotta love the format!