Perfect is The Enemy of The Necessary

Race vs. Class: The Future of Affirmative Action: Miller Center of Public Affairs.The debate has obvious parallels with the caste vs. class reservations :-



There may be a perfect way for solving all the problems. But there may be problem of implementation at the ground level. This should not stop us from doing what we are capable of in the required direction. Hence, despite of all merit talk, I prefer reservations and empowerment of class, caste or gender in our society. And make a statement that Perfect is the enemy of the Necessary.

Sustainable Development :

Engineering for sustainable development means providing for current human needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.The three components of sustainable development which are environmental responsibility, economic return (wealth creation), and social development.

Amartya Sen has talked of freedom as development . This means not just more consumption but more voice, access to accountability , access to influential networks and livelihood choice, access to good governance, and physical security. As math education is reduced to the calculation, the talk of development is reduced with data and statistics.

As Pakistan’s finance minister in the 1960s,a distinguished economist, Mahbub-ul-Haq was able to generate a growth rate of seven per cent. “And still people voted us out,” he acknowledged.  “It was a rude awakening for me. I then realized that a high economic rate of growth is no indicator of human development.” Mahbub-ul-Haq then gave me the memorable gem: “We were wrongly advised that we should take care of GDP and it will automatically take care of poverty. This is not correct. We need to take care of poverty and it will automatically take care of economic growth”.

The key issues of research in area of Human and Economic development include size, scope, ownership, technology, and management from the sustainability perspective. The domain is so large that it can draw concepts from anthropology, sociology, economics, ecology, public policy,  public administration, corporate social responsibility, law and governance, ethics, entrepreneurship, gender studies, and so on, necessitating a multi-disciplinary standpoint.