The world has for so long been run by those who have usurped the power to run it, and in the manner that is to their best advantage, we frequently forget that they have no more right to do so than anyone else.
Worse, even those who are ruled often fall into the trap of assuming that the proper goals of society lie in perpetuating and even intensifying the present order of things. Thus comes about the common paradox that groups whose interests lie in direct opposition to each other actually wish and work for the same social goals.
It is not only history that is written by the conqueror or the dominant group. Science, too, has its elites who, as Thomas Kuhn and others have shown, can long delay the acceptance of new ideas, even though the body of empirical evidence is very much in favour of change. Recent history has shown that vested interests can shape the behavior of highly placed individuals even in the scientific professions. But the fallibility of the scientist does not necessarily reduce the validity of the science.
The theory and practice of Development suffers more from this syndrome than most disciplines. In his wonderful recent book Whose Reality Counts? Robert Chambers vividly shows how even researchers with little local commitment can project their mindsets and preconceived notions far more effectively into the design of development programmes than can the people with and for whom they ostensibly work.
Today, the reality is Climate Change. Not extreme poverty (one of the causes of climate change, though of course not nearly as destructive as extreme affluence), not galloping extinction of species, not rampant acidification of the oceans nor the collapse of fisheries, nor the threats to food and water security, particularly in poor nations. All attention must now be focused on climate change.
The divergence that exists between the perceptions, aspirations and even mindsets of various development constituencies is, of course, at the root of the systemic rot that besets many of our societies today. Corporations produce more and more goods and hard sell them to consumers who do not really need them. Paternalistic governments create policies, without consultation, to promote the welfare of the poor and end up benefiting the rich. Academics construct more and more abstruse theories and research methods, getting further and further from the realities of life of those they seek to analyse and support. The voluntary sector may well have a better handle on the reality of the people it works with but often cannot cope with the reality of its own inadequacy in transparency or accountability and in mobilising the resources it needs to make a major impact.
So, by default, those in power continue to stay in power and make decisions “for the good of all”.
But what kind of good, and for whom? Whose reality really counts? The ten percent or so people whose economic status enables them to get all the benefits of participating in a globalised economy, or the sixty percent who do not even know what it is? The one percent who own cars and want freeways or the eighty percent who cannot aspire to much more than a bicycle and need bicycle tracks? The handful of people who can afford bottled mineral water or the multitudes who need clean tap water? The employers or the workers? The foresters or the tribals?
The well-fed or the hungry? The hunters or the hunted?
So far, the winner has always been one who comes first: the employer, the forester, the well-fed, the hunter. And it is invariably the perspective of the winner that drives the decision processes of society. This is why we invest in large, centralised, high technology projects instead of building community institutions that can find their own small, local humane solutions to everyday problems. And why we have adopted methods of governance that have simply substituted one system of feudalism with another. And why the definition of the problem we have to address must exclude the other problems that also threaten the majority, in some cases just as urgently.
Even without getting into Marxist or other ideological polemics, it is not hard to see that where one stands in this debate largely depends on where one sits.
But, given the rapid disintegration of our society, the destruction of our environment and the disappearance of our value systems, the seat is beginning to heat up. The hunted are beginning to fight back. Soon they will become the hunters. The days are numbered for those of us who have to share with those who do not, either voluntarily or by force.
Ashok Khosla is chairman of Development Alternatives