There  is no one definition to development, it can be understood by many people in many different ways. Most though will use it to describe a process of positive and lasting change in something – for example from a state of being in poverty to a state of not being in poverty – and that’s just how we use it too. An important point here is the idea of development being a process; sometimes it is used to describe a state – one county or region might be described as ‘developed’ and another ‘under-developed’.

The problem with understanding development as a fixed state rather than a process is that, unless we describe the term further, we need to agree on what that state of ‘being a developed country’ (or not) is. In prevalent discourse it seems that developed means things such as having properly functioning cities, people owning cars and televisions, or people earning above a certain amount of money ( eg the ‘poverty-line‘ is based on financial status). These are all good things to consider, and we consider them too. Unfortunately what tends to be overlooked are other aspects of living that effect quality of life such as happiness, health, social structure, environment, they ways people are employed, distribution of responsibilities between genders, community resilience, the quality and ethics of government structures and many other things.

Clearly it becomes pretty difficult to try and consider all these concepts at once when we talk about development, even more so when we try and do so in a rational, objective sense. What we can suggest though is that the current default understanding of development is a little simplified and perhaps set in a fairly one-sided cultural perspective, and that it would make sense for that default to be, well, developed a little so we can be more sure that anyone engaged with ‘development’ is making positive changes, not (inadvertently or otherwise) negative ones.

We should also consider, when foreign organisations are doing aid in under-developed places, that perhaps there are many aspects of the community that they are trying to develop that are already very developed, if one is only able to see it. One must proceed with caution to make sure that any work done in that society is a contribution to what already exists, and doesn’t damage existing systems.

We see rural education, as it is currently done on a large scale, as one such attempt at development that is actually damaging communities, and hence we find a need for Hunar Ghar and places like it to develop ways that the positive aspects of education can be provided to a community, with less of the negative baggage that comes with it.