Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
where the industrialization process starts with advances demanding little in terms
of skills.
However, if we look at countries such as Taiwan, it becomes apparent that
human capital has been improved and upgraded continuously in recent decades,
because the country has moved from a farm goods exporter, to a manufacturer of
textiles and plastic goods, to electrical and electronic goods, in each case
demanding higher skills. What has happened is a process of in-house training
within firms. This is a model for upgrading that has typified development in the
East Asian model, starting with Japan and continued by all its followers.
In general, the case may be made that initial provision may be from the state,
but that the baton should be taken up early by the private sector, matching the
economic policies.
Conclusions: natural process or welfare policy?
An overall conclusion of the chapter is that social components certainly exist
within a development process, and that there is a two-way positive feedback
between them and economic aspects of development. In the developed countries,
however, there is the potential for a number of negative features to appear as a
result of social welfare incorporated and carried through over many years as a
formal policy. This includes the decline or destruction of civil society structures,
such as the family and voluntary associations of people outside the state
organizations, a result that is the very opposite of that sought by policy. In this
way, economic development may be accompanied by social decline, or
undertaken at social cost, in the same way that environmental costs exist for all
economic development.
In LDCS, however, the case is different, and state intervention to promote
welfare is probably justified, since the traditional structures of civil society are
not broken down by the basic forms of welfare which provide only for the needy.
The example of countries such as Taiwan is that, as with economic development,
social provision should move from state support to the privately sponsored at an
early stage.
It is clearly the case that the state, in some of the poorest countries, is actually
unable to make any provision, and in such cases a variety of agencies, often
foreign, may come in to help. These are the non-governmental organizations or
NGOS. A tremendous weight of emotional feeling attaches to the provision of
welfare to the poorest countries and regions. The work of OXFAM or CIIR
(Catholic Institute for International Relations) and other NGOS has long been to
alleviate all long-term suffering through poverty in these regions. A large
amount of this work is in fact in rural areas subject to major physical problems—
the climatic hazard of drought in the Sahel countries, flood liability in
Bangladesh, and drought plus a dense rural population in the Nordeste of Brazil.
These efforts are not above criticism. In such areas, the NGOS are beginning
to realize only now that helping the people simply to survive in such areas, by
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