Meaning of underdevelopment

At present, there is an agonizing, inextricably designed bipolar world. On the one hand, we can see severe deprivation and social exclusion and on the other hand affluence and opulence. While three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 48 least developed countries, there are 880 million who are malnourished and millions go without schooling. These deprived people are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live due to underdevelopment which causes lack of options, entitlement to resources and lack of social-capital.

The process by which a traditional society employing primitive techniques and capable of sustaining only a low level of income is transformed into a modern, high technology, high-income economy may be defined as economic development. Generally, lack of development may be defined as underdevelopment. The development goals set by the World Bank are reduction of poverty, low mortality rates, universal primary education, access to reproductive health services, national strategies for sustainable development and gender equality.

Scholars have observed that many underdeveloped countries are not in a position to attain these high objectives due to grinding poverty, low income and lack of resources. However, we must not generalize about the under developed world because although they resemble in many negative term but they vary in cultural, economic and political conditions. It is true that they share high and rising burden of unemployment and underemployment, wide spread and chronic absolute poverty, growing disparities in income distribution, low and stagnant agricultural productivity, sizeable gap between urban and rural levels of living, lack of adequate education, health and housing facilities, and more or less stagnant occupational structure, dependence on foreign and often inappropriate technologies. However, we can observe significant differences among the underdeveloped countries in the size of the country, population and economy, their historical evolution, their natural and human resource endowments, the nature of their industrial structure and polity and other institutional structures. Low income compared to the developed world economies is considered to be a major characteristic of underdeveloped regions. But, per capita income is only a measure of average income based on market valuations since it is not a complete indicator of incidence of poverty. Therefore, to make a proper assessment of a country’s economy, some extra dimensions such as life expectancy, health facilities, conditions of employment and distribution of income. 

Subcribe on Youtube - IGNOU SERVICE

For PDF copy of Solved Assignment

WhatsApp Us - 9113311883(Paid)