Development as Conscientization: The Case of Nijera Kori in Bangladesh

This book Challenges the Conventional wisdom of narrowly-defined development which concentrates primarily and decisively on the ‘invisible hand’ of economic development per se — a market-based money-metric approach. This book also shows the limitations of the relatively broadly-defined views on human development due to its “non-class” considerations. To the contrary, this book proposes a framework for understanding true development— development as rights — both Constitutional and justifiable, as inclusion of the excluded (not adverse inclusion), and as a freedom and liberty mediated process. This book not only forwards the argument that sustained development is a conscientizationmediated process, but also attempts to empirically measure “development as conscientization’ Conscientization has been seen as a process by which the learner advances towards critical consciousness which is necessary for informed actions- the key goal of development education. The newness of both the arguments and measurements lies in the fact that the whole exercise has been conducted in a participatory way with the poor and marginalized people implying a deviation from the conventional researchers-defined approach. This book, based on the experience of an NGO-Nijera Kori’s conscientization work, documents an attempt to provide empirical evidences of impact of conscientization. The key conclusions reached are - Conscientization—as route to development- works; Conscientization promotes collective action of the poor and marginalized; Conscientization accelerates spill-over effects; Conscientization has potential multiplier effects; Conscientization efforts add more value to economic inputs in development; Well-being is conscientization mediated process, vice versa is not; and Conscientization— as a route to freedom of the poor and marginalized in a class society— works.

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