Abstract
The term inclusive development has become popular in the discourse and documents of the international donor community. 1 While the concept is sometimes interpreted differently by different agencies there is a shared understanding that it has to do with a more broad-based pattern of development than has been attempted or achieved in most developing countries in the past few decades. The prominence of the concept is reflected in the fact that inclusion was adopted as an underlying principle of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda which is to guide international and national development effort still 2030 which succeeded the previous effort known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agenda. The focus of the SDGs is not just on achieving gains in development on average but on ensuring that these gains are better distributed within the society. This also accounts for the wide range of SDGs that were adopted. The motivation behind the proliferation of goals was at least in part the desire to include items that were of great importance to some social groups, even if not of general importance to all. The SDGs thus differ from the MDGs in both breadth and depth. More goals are covered (breadth) and more goals have been specified in a way that encompasses distributional outcomes as well (depth). A flavor of thesis provided by the language used to describe individual SDGs. For example, many of the goals (such as health, education, access to clean water and sanitation, access to energy, availability of decent work, and access to justice) are described with the phrase “for all” embedded in the text. 2 This is meant to convey that the target is not just to achieve an improvement on average but for all groups within the society. For some goals, such as education, the word inclusive is used directly in the description of goal, as follows: “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” For still other goals, such as health, the inclusivity dimension is further reinforced by direct reference in the description to “all ages” as the target population. Finally, the phrases “leave no one behind” and “no goal is met unless it is met for everyone” are commonly used to convey the ethos of the SDGs. The concept of inclusive development has also been adopted as a foundational pillar of Vision 2025 of the Government of Pakistan. 3 As the text of Pillar II of the Vision document notes: “Pakistan is marked by socio-economic imbalances. There are horizontal and vertical, intra and inter-provincial, as well as rural and urban inequalities. We envision a strategy for developing a united and equitable society through a balanced development approach, social uplift and rapid broad based growth. This will ensure provision of opportunities and fruits of economic development to all segments of the society.” The words ‘equitable’, ‘balanced’ and ‘broad based’ are all meant to reinforce the impression that the vision is about better distribution and not just about an improvement in average performance. Against this background, the objective of this lecture is to highlight some of the challenges encountered by empirical researchers in working with the concept of inclusive development, with illustrations from the recent experience of Pakistan. These challenges are noted in Section II. One challenge in particular relates to whether distributional outcome should be defined in absolute or relative terms. This is elaborated in Section III with data from the recent experience of Pakistan. Some concluding remarks are offered in Section IV.