Need Based Development and Its Implications for Sustainability

Development implying change or progress has now been recognized as a multi‐dimensional concept. But development measured simplistically in terms of certain quantifiable variables such as gross or percapita real GNP was once considered as the be all and end all of the challenges facing the human beings in terms of hunger, poverty, malnutrition and squalid conditions (Aiken & Follette, 1977; Allen & Thomas, 1990). This preoccupation by development theorists, social thinkers, statesmen and philosophers of the past led to the discovery of a magical word, i.e. creation of wealth as a solution to all those human challenges (Ball, 1992). The goal of wealth‐creation as a measure of unidimensional concept of development, in turn, is said to have been achieved by production for profit alone. Again, the production for profit could be pursued only by those producers who would be guided by self‐interested motives of maximizing output and minimizing costs.