You. The World. Connected?
My undergraduate years were focused primarily on trying to make an impact in the world. My graduate career in International Development has similarly been about impacting the world; albeit with a little dose of reality – and substantially more sleepless nights. I guess the one thing I have been forced to learn from my one year in graduate school is that there’s no blueprint to achieving development, vis-à-vis, industrialization. Apparently, my desire to learn the skills needed to become an effective development specialist has left me with a less desirable truth: there’s no such thing as an effective development specialist. (Easterly even calls such people “planners” because their goals never come to fruition).
As such, while I still view child labor as a distasteful and inhumane endeavor, the academician in me cannot help but ponder the view that it’s simply the cost of industrialization. It’s the same thinking that goes with environmental pollution. From a third world perspective, at least, one might ask, “Why make a fuss about pollution now, when developing nations are just taking giant strides toward growth and development?”- “Isn’t pollution simply an externality that comes with rapid industrialization?”