What is real development? Buses, cars and tractors or cooperation and unity?
PANCHGANI, Maharashtra, India - In striving to illuminate what it means to integrate spiritual principles with economic development, the New Era Development Institute (NEDI) has hit upon a simple but revealing exercise that can be used almost anywhere in the world.
Most of the Institute's students come from India's villages, and they attend expecting to return one day to help develop their home communities.
During the first week at NEDI, all are asked to draw a picture of what their villages are like. The drawings are often done with childish simplicity, showing stick figures and little regard for perspective, and the subjects are usually quite similar: they mostly depict a series of huts along a dirt road, surrounded by garbage and undernourished children.
Then the students are asked to draw what they would like their villages to become. This time, most of the students draw a nice straight road, electric poles on one side, with a series of big buildings: a school, a hospital, a government office. There are nice houses, usually with television sets inside. And there are buses and cars, and tractors in the fields.
A developed village, city-style, with big buildings
Usually, however, the pictures of the "developed
village" lack people. And the NEDI instructors have learned
at this point to ask about that, and to question whether all of
those buildings, and amenities like electricity and television,
will make the people happy.
The students begin to think and discuss and soon realize that they have merely replicated what they have seen in Bombay or on a television show about New York. Then they are asked: are the people happy in Bombay or New York - and would they themselves be happy in the "developed village" that was just drawn?
After some discussion and thought, the answer is usually "No, the people are not happy." There is fighting and crime and people are afraid to go out at night, the students say. Others mention pollution and corruption. The students quickly realize, say NEDI instructors, that while the physical environment has changed, the people and the community have not.
Then the instructors launch a discussion about what might make people happy - and how that could be achieved. And the students inevitably start talking about honesty and cooperation and cleanliness. According to NEDI instructors, they soon conclude that people would be happier if there were no corruption and if people were more helpful to each other.
A developed village where people are the focus
More discussion is held and then, at the end of the
exercise, the students are asked to draw another picture of what
a "spiritually developed" village would be like. Then
they draw a new sort of village, one with lots of people in it,
and they are all working together or cooperating. The place is
cleaner and more orderly, to be sure. But it also shows happy
people.
"So the first step of development intervention is to help people understand who they are as people and to help them see how they can change their behavior," said NEDI's director, Sherif Rushdy.
He and others at NEDI are convinced that such change ultimately comes only through religious faith.
"Development is changing people and you cannot change people unless people are exposed to some Divine Writings or guidance - whether it's the Writings of Buddha or Krishna or Muhammad or Jesus or Bahá'u'lláh - doesn't matter," said Mr. Rushdy. "The source of the Divine Writings comes from God and going back to that source of guidance is what empowers people.
"Now, there are other movements which have taken the religious teachings and have empowered people," said Mr. Rushdy. "The Bahá'í approach is no different from that, except that the teachings are based on the message of Bahá'u'lláh and what He has to offer for today."
