What is sustainable development? What is the role of a development planner?
Anu Maheshwari
Each one of us strives to make our lives better. Most of us run from pillar to post each day to raise the standard of our living. We try to maintain the lifestyle we are used to and make it better. Collectively we wish to have better roads, better transport facilities, 24/7 power and water supply, etc to improve the quality of our lives. Individually we have the power and resources to make a difference in our own lives but for improving the things for the collective lot take more than just concerted effort. It needs careful assessment of things as they are and a vision how of things should be and can be. Development planners work to make these things a reality for us. Their job is to first gather all the pieces of a puzzle and then put them together. They collect data pertaining to all spheres of life in an area and then design the best possible way to make things better for the people of the area.
Every plan has to be tailor-made to suit the needs of the area in question. Every area has its own set of lacks, potentials, and constraints and a planner takes all this into consideration before making the best set of choices for developing an area. For example, a terrain with steep slopes and bad soil quality need not have facilities for cultivating paddy. The development of the area should be done in such a manner as to enhance the utility of all the available resources within the area and to assure future generations the same or better benefits. Resources here include human resources also.
“Earth, atmosphere, sky, sun, moon, stars, waters, plants, trees, moving creatures, swimming creatures, creeping creatures all are hailed and offered oblations”(Taittiriya Samhita i-8-13). Today as we march into the future, we are reminded of the cataclysmic upheavals that we might invite upon ourselves by ignoring that voice of wisdom left to us by our forefathers. In our search for security from each other, we have inadvertently left ourselves at the mercy of the ground beneath us and the sky above us. There is no point making a development plan which cannot be supported by the resources available or by the inhabitants of the region. Excessive reliance on coal for power without appropriately harnessing the overflowing rivers in an area could be one example of a skewed development plan and planning for industries on the banks of river without having any provisions for treating industrial waste being flushed out into the same rivers could be another. Development which can be sustained for further growth and progress can be termed ‘sustainable development’.
The preparation of a sustainable development plan is also an exercise in democracy as the plan has to be for the people, of the people, and by the people. The planners have to be in touch with the ground realities for which they have to interact with the people of the region on a consistent basis while designing and implementing the plan in order to know the feasibility and effectiveness of the plans. They also need to be aware of the culture of the region along with the knowledge on the socio-economic-political equation of the region.
Florence Nightingale once said, “To understand God’s thoughts, we must study statistics, for these are measure of his purpose”. Development planners need not just statistics but they need to feel the pulse of the people to be able to design good plans.
