No longer can one hold material wealth as the sole outcome of development. Because meterial wealth has not solved all the problems in society. (Can you explain the high crime rates in America? can wealth created in the American fire arm industry make America a safe society? ) Thus wealth creating developemnt is no longer a wisdom of convention.

Since growth of wealth or GDP in numbers does not mean anything . ....then what perhaps should be coined as development? And how should it be interpreted? Development as Freedom?(A. Sen), development as Ethical growth? (J. Stiglitz) or developemnt as social justice(D.Seers) ?

Freedom of and from!

Freedom is everything to man. The freedom of speech, mind, religion, expression, the press, information are some of the common forms of freedom that man seeks to win. On the other hand Man strives to attain the deprived freedoms such as the freedom from slavery, hunger, addiction, poverty, abuse, fear, discrimination, despair, unhappiness, violence and bondage. Thus freedom from the undesired and the freedom of the desired is what amuses man. How much of the desired freedom can we achieve and how much of the undesired can we be free of is what determines a human society's fortitude. Yet the choices we make and the freedom to make them totally depend upon us and the environment that we create.

Freedom

The word freedom has a powerful emotive force. It is by no means a neutral term and has been consistently used to defend a verity of political and social conditions of life.

The word has two parts in its formation,” Free" and "doom". The word free originally meant beloved usually used in relation to a friend. With later developments to the language it came to evolve in to its present day meaning, incorporating the idea that one who is a beloved is a friend, free of bondage. The word "doom" originally meant of a considered judgment in contrast to its modern day interpretation of something unpleasant or harsh in judgment. Connecting the two words, freedom simply means a state where considered judgment can be made without bondage.

Freedom is a condition or a state that seems to be worthy and noble. Yet freedom like all good things is essentially something internal. It begins within us and transcends to the outer most spares of the universe through our deeds, words and thoughts. These self determined thoughts, words and deeds or lack of it has the power to decide our destiny.

(Picture: Water-Lily Pond, Claude Monet 1897)