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Paper short abstract:

The discourse of development has repercussions beyond a narrowly constructed field relating to entrepreneurial life and behaviour. Drawing on the facts from the lives of two older women, this paper explores its effects on the dignity of middle-class women in post-globalization India.

Paper long abstract:

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, neoliberal philosophical mores have had little challenge in the field of development, including, in international development. With the power and dissemination-reach of the Washington- and Post Washington Consensus (PWC) behind them, they impact norms and discourses beyond a narrowly constructed field of economic enterprise and innovation-related matters.

The inclusion of a humane rhetoric in the PWC discourse often serves to confuse the normative environment around questions of human rights and dignity, rather than add to their promotion. This confusion is especially onerous for the most vulnerable, like older women in the global South, who live with little or no welfare provisions.

This paper defines human dignity, in agreement with Tom G. Palmer and Matt Warner, as the right of the individual to make decisions about the course of one’s life, and relates it to broader notions of work and development. Using facts and data from the lives of two women known to the author personally until their recent demise, the paper argues that neoliberal ideas of development contain notions about the worth of individuals that debilitate rather than empower those with meagre economic resources. Its sublation of the social in the economic further deepens this effect.

Drawing on ideas from economics, psychology and philosophy, I argue for a more holistic paradigm of development, needed to offset the destruction of the dignity of the most vulnerable, which is endemic in the current development climate negatively impacting the substantive nature of development.