Development as Basic Needs

The entitlement or rights-based approach as well as the focus on basic needs are both responses to the failures of development strategies that predominated earlier decades. These tactics frequently prioritized policies that would promote economic growth at the expense of people's welfare. The premise behind both approaches to basic needs and development as entitlement is that both aim to improve the lot of people, especially the most vulnerable. However, as we shall see, the methods employed in each of these approaches are distinct.

As an alternative model to the economic growth strategies that had previously dominated development circles, the emphasis on the approach focused on meeting basic needs gained strength in the 1970s. The World Employment Conference of the International Labour Organization is where the basic needs model received its official beginnings in 1976. The World Employment Conference emphasized that all national and global development initiatives should focus on addressing and satisfying the most basic human needs of the most vulnerable people. Initial studies of poverty in developing nations employed the basic needs approach. In order to ensure people's physical wellbeing, it sought to define the fundamental minimum resources needed. The poverty line was established as the minimum income necessary to meet those needs that were considered basic or essential to human wellbeing based on this definition.

The basic needs approach has been seen as being consumption-oriented, while the development as entitlements approach is capabilities-oriented. This means that it seeks to achieve economic growth that is both sufficient to generate resources that can be used to improve the living conditions of the poor, preventing them from starving, on the one hand, and sufficient to provide them with the income necessary to access basic public goods and services, such as healthcare and education, on the other. Thus, the consumption-oriented approach is seen as being able to eradicate poverty in the basic needs model. Although the three categories of food (and water), shelter, and clothing were initially considered to be basic needs, discussions among academics and experts revealed that there is no set list of these requirements.

Later, adequate sanitization, education, and healthcare were added to the list of fundamental requirements. However, experts have pointed out that a more comprehensive list of basic needs must include both physical and psychological needs. This means that needs must not be viewed as absolute but rather as relative to what other members of society enjoy. This list of needs must also continually grow because it is human nature to aspire to the satisfaction of additional needs when one set of needs is met. In such a definition of basic needs, one cannot just include food, clothing, and shelter but also amenities like better education, clean water, decision-making authority, respect for human rights and democracy, etc. As a result of these scholarly debates, policymakers have also, over time, expanded the list of fundamental needs from bare minimum physical needs to human needs, which includes some of the needs listed above.

According to the World Employment Conference's Programme of Action, meeting one's basic needs should be viewed as a strategy for national development. A country's basic needs cannot be classified as such if it lacks the resources to meet them. The basic needs approach consists of two parts: minimum needs, which include physical requirements like enough food, clothing, and shelter, and basic services like potable water, sanitation, transportation options, healthcare, education, and what it refers to as "cultural facilities.". Identification of the needs that are most important to people is participatory in that it involves them in decision-making. The basic needs approach views employment as a means to a higher standard of living and as producing a dignified, self-respecting individual.

The basic needs approach must be viewed as a component of a nation's larger socioeconomic development strategy and not isolated from it. The basic needs approach is a target-based strategy in which certain needs are prioritized by determining what the most basic needs of the poor are. It is time-oriented in that it must meet the goals within a set time frame and in terms of delivering a set quantity of goods and services. The attempts to reach the goal by the deadline are made in one of two ways. One strategy is to give the target group enough chances to increase their income. There are two ways to accomplish this: either by achieving the type of economic growth that allows some of the benefits to reach even the most disadvantaged members of society, or by implementing a redistribution mechanism that redistributes income so that the poor can benefit. The second method examines how the target populations' income is used. The second approach can be carried out in one of two ways: either the target groups spend the money as they see fit in the free market, in which case the government sets the minimum wages or incomes that must be provided to each person. Giving someone in poverty less money than the minimum wage set by the government is equivalent to depriving them of a minimal standard of subsistence. The alternative is for the government to get involved and set prices, regulate the market, subsidize goods, tax specific market commodities, and so on.

In order to have the necessary resources to meet people's basic needs, the basic needs approach recognizes the significance of economic growth. This strategy is poor-oriented in two ways: it aims to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations while also looking to provide them with opportunities for employment and self-employment. In this regard, it can be seen that this strategy has some parallels with the entitlement strategy in that it also aims to increase people's economic independence and participation in decision-making. In the basic needs approach, services like health and education are given priority, as well as some public goods like access to clean water and proper sanitation. With this strategy, the challenge is to find and put in place programs that can assist in addressing a community's basic needs in a responsible, cost- and time-effective way. The basic needs approach necessitates that the rest of the population pay higher taxes because of its income redistribution policy and commitment to providing necessary goods and services to those who are in need. Because of this outcome, this strategy is unpopular with a nation's wealthier citizens.

It was believed that the concept of "need" in the context of basic needs referred to what is the bare minimum necessary in a society to live a life worthy of a human being. This implies that the poorest members of society cannot live lives of dignity in a society that cannot provide for their basic needs. Basic needs are viewed as "universal" by those who support this strategy. There are many different needs that are universal, and this list cannot be exclusive, complete, or limitless. Academics and professionals in the field of international development have emphasized the significance of relative needs, i.e. e. needs that manifest in an individual when he or she contrasts their way of life with another's. But in practice, the basic needs approach has prioritized human and absolute needs over relative needs. Furthermore, it has concentrated on absolute poverty rather than relative poverty. This indicates that the basic needs approach has emphasized language of sustenance rather than equity. As a result, in this strategy, the focus is on a person's current circumstances and the fundamental requirements for the person to escape complete poverty.

The basic needs approach has a tendency to view the satisfaction of basic needs for sustenance as a means in and of itself, or as the aim of programs to eradicate poverty. Some proponents of this strategy, though, view basic needs as a way to enhance a person's physical and mental wellbeing rather than just providing for sustenance needs or preventing starvation. As a result, needs are seen as a hierarchy that can be divided into different levels, such as basic survival, productive living, non-material needs, etc. Participation in society, political rights, access to cultural resources, and other such needs are non-material. These advocates therefore call for a focus on improving people's quality of life, not just by increasing their incomes but also by taking into account the physical surroundings in which they reside.

Considering all of this, by the 1970s, the term "absolute poverty" came to mean a situation in which any of the needs for food, water, education, sanitation, or health was not being met. The amount of income necessary to meet those needs was also included in the definition of the poverty line. The International Labour Organization further divided basic needs into four categories: personal consumption (food, clothing, and shelter); access to essential public services (potable water, healthcare, education, transport, and sanitation); access to employment; and, finally, qualitative needs (safe environment and participation in decision-making). The basic needs approach looks at effective ways to enhance service delivery of and access to basic public goods and services, which have been pre-defined as essential to meet the needs of the poorest. In terms of policy development under the basic needs approach, it has placed a focus on agriculture, the urban informal sector, and labor-intensive small scale production techniques in addition to providing these essential goods and services to the poorest.

Regarding policymaking and aid for developing countries, the basic needs approach predominated the international development sector in the 1970s up until the middle of the 1980s. The basic needs approach attempted to raise the living standards of the poorest by taking both quantitative and qualitative, material and non-material needs from a people's perspective, which, at least in theory, was a step up from previous statist, growth-oriented development strategies. To achieve this, it urged against taking a paternalistic stance in which the state made decisions for the people and in favor of involving the people in the decision-making process relating to defining these needs.

The basic needs approach represented a departure from earlier growth-oriented development strategies because it recognized the need for an adequate supply of basic services like high-quality education, health care, water, and sanitation in addition to its role as a strategy for reducing poverty. The basic needs approach's main goal in reducing poverty was to increase the incomes of the poorest people by giving them access to jobs and other self-employment opportunities, allowing them to buy essential goods and services for their own private consumption. On the other hand, the government must also plan for public services like health and education to ensure that people have adequate access to them. In order to achieve this, the basic needs approach recognized the significance of good institutions, especially public institutions, for effective planning and implementation and for effective service delivery of high-quality public services.

When it comes to advocating for accelerating poverty reduction by establishing goals and deadlines for achieving those goals, the basic needs approach is seen as pragmatic and practical by those who support it. Although the basic needs approach has primarily focused on material needs like food, clothing, and shelter in its implementation, its proponents are willing to expand this list to include a wide and varied range of needs, such as those covered in the preceding paragraphs. A lack of one would have an impact on the other needs as well, according to the basic needs approach, which sees all of these different needs as interconnected. However, this strategy required economic growth in order to generate sufficient funds for its implementation because it required raising people's incomes and providing basic public services for the underprivileged. Given that the basic needs approach depended on economic resources to increase the incomes of the poor and provide for universal access to basic public services, policymaking in this framework was growth-oriented. Though many have criticized this strategy for being statist, investing in agriculture (to meet the basic need for food), the informal urban sector, and labor-intensive techniques of production (to create incomes and employment for the poorest) took precedence over high economic growth.