Re-thinking 'development'

On my way to the office a while ago, an MMDA truck screeched to a stop by the side of the train station staircase. I snapped to check what was happening. I was scared there might be a shoot out or something because the men were yelling as the jumped off the truck. I walked hastily and I overheard a lady relaying to her companion that those MMDA enforcers just apprehended a couple of roadside vendors. Interestingly, the incident upset her. I could only conlude that the enforcers were a bit too harsh against the "violators", perhaps in the same manner they are portrayed in Filipino flicks.

All in the name of the law...in the name of development.

I could not help but feel disappoointed over the fact that aesthetic development is privileged over human development, and of the inadequacy in general of the prevailing development proces in the country.

While clearing sidewalks and the whole thrust of MMDA to decongest city walks and main thoroughfares are valuable objectives in more ways than one, I cannot help but wonder whether in framing this thrust, they coordinated with other government institutions to take into account what they ought to do with respect to welfare development. I wonder if they are recognise the fact that these sidewalk vendors - in their discourse, the violators - are not merely what they have tagged them to be but are persons like us - like them - living real lives, burdened with hungry mouths to feed and left with little choice but to join the informal economy just to get by.

I wonder if behind the cold and detached language and practice of law enforcement, there is room, in the words of Amartya Sen, to improve their capabilities, their capabilities so they could be formally incorporated to society; I wonder if the intent goes beyond 'punishment'. Or does their legal mandate completely prevent them from thinking and reflecting upon these things?

I am not asking that they condone violators or halt this development initiative. The point I am trying to raise is the need for government to enter a perspectival mode of thinking; that in framing development plans, perhaps, they too must be able to see things from the eyes of the real object of their initiatives.

Sometimes, they get too caught up in the 'process'. They forget the reason why these things are done at all: to improve human lives. I do not want to keep criticising government or development institutions, or people embedded in them.

I cannot help but ask: Do I have to accept Andre Gunder-Frank's deterministic thesis that 'development' and 'underdevelopment' are two sides of the same coin? That on a micro-level, the development of the upper class (and middle class) means the further 'underdevelopment' of the lower class? That 'development' itself proceeds from some injustice against those which in reality it aims to benefit.