Developed vs Developing Countries
This is not just an economic balderdash. Nor is this just a dissatisfaction poured on the nature of politics and businesses. Let alone a critique of a certain type of epochal-morality.
This also contains a personal subjective observation on the prevalent distinction between two types of worlds: The world I am a part of — the poor, dirty, uncivilized, corrupt, erratic, scarce, devoid of opportunities and miserable— developing countries
and
and the world I have been able to closely observe and see thanks to the internet — the rich, clean, civilized, sensible, pragmatic, abundant, full-of-opportunity and wealthy — the developed countries.
If anything, this particular piece of writing aims to be philosophical in nature.
Defining development is a challenging task. Etymologically it has sprang from develop+ment. With develop borrowed from French term développer. Which in turn came from des+volopper.
But develop is the ‘growth or change into an advanced, larger and stronger form’ says Cambridge English Dictionary.
Initially, I thought develop in this context of nations would imply some kind of happiness. I had even prepared an anecdote for it:
How can one tell that a nomadic Aghori from Benaras is not happier than a billionaire from Silicon Valley?
But all kinds of modern definitions of development have proved to me that development is simply about growth, strenght or emergence.
But when we are dealing with national development, what kind of growth, strength and emergence are we talking about?
Turns out there is a thing called Human Development:
It is about expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on people and their opportunities and choices.
By the virtue of the definition itself, it is clear that the difference between Developing and Developed countries is about human life and not economy. Hence, it is about the growth, strength and emergence of humans of any particular nation.
Turns out, the indexing of Human Development has also been done.
Through Human Development Index:
The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone…
This allows us to define development in this context as the growth, strength and emergence of humans of any particular nation.
It’s not personal, it’s social.
The HDI considers a nation developed if its people are developed in:
- Health
- Education
- Income
What I want to do now is to see the difference between a person in a developed nation and a person in a developing nation as per the numbers and facts.
For this I want to compare a developing nation, my nation Nepal with a developed nation I am very close to internetically: Norway.
Let’s begin:
- Health: When we say health in HDI thinking, we are talking about life-expectancy. It takes under consideration Life Expectancy at birth based on:
…quality of healthcare in the countries listed as well as other factors including ongoing wars, obesity, and HIV infections.
Great!
This parameter shows the difference as follows:
Norway = 82.6 years
Nepal = 70.9 years.
~12 years is a lot of time!
Highlight: If I was somehow born 6.5 thousand kms NW, I would have had more chance to live 12 more years! 4380 days! 105120 hours ! 6307200 minutes. Six million more minutes. (Roughly, 286690.909091 episodes of South Park!) That’s a lot of time.
2. Education: For this they use the Education Index. It is based on Expected Years of schooling index (EYSI) and Mean years of Schooling index(MYSI).
EYSI is a calculation of the number of years a student is expected to attend school, or university.
MYSI is a calculation of the average number of years of education a student over the age of 25 has actually received
=
…the education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age.
Norway = 0.93
Nepal = 0.521
Highlight: If I was somehow born 6.5 thousand kms NW, I would have had 1.74664107486 more chance to educate myself.
A newly schooled child here in Nepal has almost half a chance of completing school in comparision to a child in Norway.
A child here who has to drop out of school for some reason would have gotten another chance to not dropout in Norway.
That’s a lot of chance!!!
In 2000 the difference was 2.707!
(If everytime I write on Medium, my chance of being read widely is 0.00001. 1.74 times the chance would mean I would have 0.0000174 chance of being widely read. Now, That’s a lot of chance.
3. Income: HDI uses GNI per capita (PPP) to vaguely determine the income level of each citizen of a nation. It:
…is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP), plus factor incomes earned by foreign residents, minus income earned in the domestic economy by nonresidents.
It uses PPP because:
PPP rates of exchange allow this conversion (data into common currency) to take account of price differences between countries.
Norway = $ 66,020
Nepal = $ 4,060
Since, GNI is:
Highlight: If I was somehow born 6.5 thousand kms NW, I would have been theoretically earning $ 61960 more per year. That’s a lot of money.
1 kg of chicken costs 9.81 USD in Norway. The same costs roughly 2.53 USD here in Nepal.
Things are clearly more expensive in Norway. Yet,
with $ 66020, I can have 6720 kgs of chicken while with $4,060, I can have only 1604 kgs.
Similarly, a kg of generic white rice costs US$ 1.13 in Nepal. You get white rice for US$ 2.28 in Norway. If I am to survive with only rice, then with my Norway income, I can have 28956.1403509 kgs of rice. With my Nepali income 3592.92035398 kgs. 8.05 kg times rice is a lot of rice!
Let’s see housing.
This website allows us to compare real state prices of two countries.
Rent of 1 Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre costs
9,735.85 N₨ (US$ 82.20) per month in Nepal
The same costs 107,844.55 N₨ (US$ 910.60) in Norway,
a difference of +1,007.71 %. More than 10 times expensive.
Yet,
A year later, I will have spent US$ 10927.2 in Norway and US$ 986.4 in Nepal.
I would have 6.04 times more cash left in Norway. 4.11 times in Nepal.
Assuming I decide to take my respective yearly income and decide to live in one room apartment for a year eating only chicken and rice,
Let’s say I eat 1 kg of chicken/3 days: I will need 122 kgs
I eat 50 kgs of rice per year
In Norway = 122*$9.81 = $ 1196 + 50*$2.28 = $114+ $10927.2 = $12,237.2 = 5.39 times more money left
In Nepal = 122*$2.53 = $308 + 50*$1.13 = $56.5 + $986.4 = $1350.9 = 3 times more money left
1.79 times more money saved in Norway! That’s a lot of save!
6.5 thousand kms — 12 years of life, twice the opportunity to learn, >4 times chicken, >8 times rice, 1.79 times more money saved. That is a lot of saving.
I could go on like that in Norway for 5.39 more years. In Nepal, I will have perished after 3 years!
That’s a lot more time, chance and shot at life.
In the beginning, I described developing countries as the poor, dirty, uncivilized, corrupt, erratic, scarce, devoid of opportunities and miserable
and developed countries as the rich, clean, civilized, sensible, pragmatic, abundant, full-of-opportunity and wealthy
Poor/Rich, Uncivilized/Civilized, scarcity/abundance, opportunities, misery/wealth, health has been seen with HDI by comparing Norway and Nepal. But there is a lot more to the idea of :
expanding the richness of human life
Sanitation and Corruption can also be compared likewise.
There’s an index that measures sanitation. It looks at:
The percentage of people using at least basic sanitation services, that is, improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households. This indicator encompasses both people using basic sanitation services as well as those using safely managed sanitation services. Improved sanitation facilities include flush/pour flush to piped sewer systems, septic tanks or pit latrines; ventilated improved pit latrines, compositing toilets or pit latrines with slabs.
Norway seems to be ranked 52nd with the value of 98.05
Nepal meanwhile is ranked 140th with the value of 62.05
In terms of Water-Quality, the Water and Sanitation index tells:
Norway is ranked 10th with a score of 99.65
Nepal is ranked 135th with a score of 23.54.
That is a lot of difference.
The larger picture of this is the EPI index which looks at factors such as Air quality, pollution Water Quality, Biodiversity and habitat, Species Protection, CO 2 Emissions (Total), Methane Emissions, N2O Emissions, Black Carbon Emissions, Water resources, Wastewater treatment, Agriculture (10%)
It has ranked Norway 9th with a score of 77.7
It has ranked Nepal 145th with a score of 32.7
Again, a lot of difference!
That’s a lot more time, chance, shot at life, sanitation and hygiene in a developed country.
The numbers mentioned above tell only half the story. The latter half might have even more contrast or even a different perspective.
This difference can only be understood by living in a place. You live in Nepal and you have water, electricity, gas availability issues. The roads are fucked up. This not only exists as a theoretical problem, but it hits you hard.
You go out in the streets, you get covered by dust.
You come back home to take a shower, water there is not!
You have stray-animals in the streets. People and their behavior. All these things are there! There is a difference, a HUGE difference — that numbers can’t measure.
All this makes me wonder — why is there such a difference anyways?
These are the major elements of National Power:
- Geography
- Natural Resources
- Raw Materials
- Food
- Industrial Capacity
- Military
- Population
- National Character and Morale
- Quality of Diplomacy
- Quality of Government
If we compare the maps of Norway and Nepal, geographical and geopolitical distinctions become clear.
On one hand we have a 385,207 km squared nation with a coastline of 25,148 km. On the other we have 147,516 km squared landlocked one.
Nepal for its crown has the almighty Himalayas with around 6000 rivers with a combined cumulative length of 45000 kms. But Nepal has almost no waterways. Norway in contrast has 1577 kms.
There are ~65000 lakes in Norway, 5358 in Nepal.
In terms of oil reserves, Norway had 5,138,767,000 barrels in 2016. Nepal has none.
We mentioned rivers. Among many things, they allow hydroelectricity production.
Norway has 1690 HYDROPOWER PLANTS which is 88 % of Norwegian production capacity. They produce 136.4 TWh in a normal year.
Nepal has 101 Hydropower Plants of over 1 MW. Generates 4.15 TWh.
Norway seems to have no scarcity of tap waters at their homes. Kathmandu meanwhile is blessed with tap water once every 3 days for 3 hours (if favorably lucky).
THESE RESOURCE COMPARSIONs CAN GO ON AND ON. WE SHOULD STOP!
We defined development in this context as the growth, strength and emergence of humans of any particular nation.
We then compared a developed and a developing nation on different indicators defined by prevalent relevant institutions through which we saw health, education and income difference and impact.
We wanted to see why these differences exist in the first place.
We then, realizing that Geography and Natural Resources have a great hand to play in a nation’s development, compared two nations. We found out that the developing nation in our context is clearly devoid of certain natural blessings. However, it also seemed to be devoid of the ability to utilize whatever natural blessing available.
This particular devoid of the ability, is what I want to quickly enquire now. My guess is, the final two bolded elements of national power have something to do here!
There are examples of nations which have lacked natural resources, yet have been able to develop themselves on the things that matter:
Top 7 Countries That Developed Without Natural Resources | After School Africa
This proves that things can be done even without a pocket full of direct dough-makers.
Hence, it all boils down to two factors:
- Quality of Diplomacy
- Quality of Government
While this may seem like a chicken-egg situation, it’s actually not. There is absolutely no example of successful societies which lacked the above two.
Let’s try to briefly see the meanings:
Quality of Diplomacy — is the quality of management of international relations by means of negotiation. It is the art of negotiation. Diplomacy of high quality brings the ends and means of foreign policy into harmony with the available resources of national power. (International Politics, Rumki Basu).
Quality of Government — is the quality of the government to strike a balance between available natural resources and the objectives and methods of its foreign policy…its foreign policy and goals have to be commensurate with the resources at its disposal. Secondly, the government has to maintain a balance between its available natural resources in the pursuit of its foreign policy. (Ibid.)
These two make up the backbone of a developed society. Any society or system that lacks the above two, falls.
Not just externally, it applies in the internal management too. Eg, if the youth of a country are useless, it’s the job of the government to pick them, drag them and make them useful. If the government of a country is useless…it’s a different matter altogether! (It is supposed to be the duty of youth to pick them, drag them, kick them out…but what if both are useless?) (
It is sure to mess things up as it shows the lack of will to do any substantial development.
Corruption perception index refers to an index that scores countries on the perceived levels of government corruption by country.
They do this by working together and collecting data from various organizations.
Norway — ranked 3rd with the score of 84
Nepal — ranked 47th with the score of 33.
How corrupted might the indexing organization be? That’s for another day!
That all nations pursue their national interest is a truism.
In this battle of cold predators, everyone is out for himself.
Hence, it’s all about the ability of each — to will and to do!
This is where developing countries fail. Yes, the powerful will try to manipulate and threaten you. That is why it’s all in the balls and the brains!
Developing countries lack either one or the other. Either they lack the balls to resist, suffer and step out of their self-interest, or they lack the brains to play smart.
It’s not been about nationalism. Hell, it’s not even about patriotism. It’s about things you have no control over.
What kind of human right or natural right is allowing certain humans to be born with such head starts in life while others having to begin from the back of the grid?
Shouldn’t we all humans have a basic right to be equal by birth? Why can’t the starting grid be wider?
Who is supposed to take care of it all?
Why are some born among clever foxes while others among vultures and hyenas? How long will this last? Why should it even last? How do we make it un-last?
Yes, even the developers are not naive. There are areas, black areas!
Can there be an alternative to prevalent forms of governance?
That’s a lot more time, chance, shot at life, sanitation, hygiene and ability.
Finally, CLIMATE.
Yes, developed countries are responsible for the changes in climate because developing countries aren’t much capable of doing so.
While Norway emitted 0.12 % of global Co2 in 2016, Nepal emitted just 0.02.
In terms of impact from CC though,
CRI score tells us that Norway ranked 106th in 2019 with a score of 92.33.
Good ‘ol Nepal was the 12th most vulnerable nation with a score of 20.00.
That’s a lot more time, chance, shot at life, sanitation, hygiene, ability and damage.
What is development by the way?
