WITH the global financial markets faltering, developed economies in distress and income disparities widening, the World Bank has launched a more ‘Open Data Initiative’ to enable a ‘citizen-centered development’.

World Bank Group President Robert Z. Zoellick says: “inclusive and sustainable development depends on shifting the focus from an elite, top-down approach to one that democratises development.” And the “global economic freedom should be combined with good governance, citizen’s voice and social accountability.”

While the concept of ‘democratisation of development’ appears to fill in a much needed gap that cannot be closed by the market alone, it has to be seen whether the idea can be put into practice effectively in elitist states whose policies are driven by powerful market forces. Such virtuous moves are also subverted by corruption.

‘The bank plans to work with communities to map their own social infrastructure—-such as clinics, schools, and water sources——so villagers can hold officials to account.’ One should hope that it does not turn out to be another NGO-like experiment.

But the need for such a powerful concept cannot be denied to fill the space provided by the withering away of the ‘welfare’ aspect of the state and ‘democratic socialism’ which has, more or less, coincided with the collapse of Russian and Chinese socialism. However, ‘democratisation of development’ can best be implemented by ‘democratic capitalism’. The ‘ citizen-centered development ‘ can only be realised by ‘citizen-based democracy’ and definitely not by ‘market-democracy.’ New ideas are being thrown up on how to regulate markets when they fail or do not observe voluntary self-discipline but, of course, without upsetting the applecart. It is felt that administrative controls, that have generally failed to work, need to be minimised and be substituted by more sophisticated policy measures. ‘ Democratisation of development’ may be one of the ideas whose time has come provided enforced effectively.

Capitalism has brought about tremendous socio-economic progress over the past few centuries, and along with it, unprecedented development of pluralism. The complex and complicated conditions so created, and the wide range of problems they give rise to, cannot be resolved either by the market, the state or any single institution alone or even all of them put together, without the civil society being an active stakeholder in building an egalitarian social and economic order. That is why there is so much rhetoric about community development and so much movement towards devolution. Social scientists want return to the ‘citizen-based democracy’ because the common citizen can only be activated through democracy, rather participatory democracy.

In democracy, at least conceptually, rights and responsibilities, power/ authority and wealth/resources are to be equitably shared. Market economies have created a large middle class but national wealth has tended to be skewed in favour of the rich and income disparities have widened. In the past, the problem has generally been mitigated by such deviations as ‘ welfare state’ or ‘democratic socialism’. They have ceased to be options. In the current global financial and economic scenario, the social spending is being cut and the present nature of economic growth is creating more income disparities between and within nations. Global poverty is on the rise.

In the ongoing phase of development of the market, one may discover that economic growth may not produce any employment or enough jobs. The rich tend to collect cash rather than building productive capital. Multinationals prefer to acquire running businesses rather setting up new ventures. In fact they seem to be back on the path of pre-capitalism mercantilism. The global financial market is facing organic failure and is trying to survive on oxygen provided by tax payers’ money or currency printing.

But the information technology, that is emerging as the driver of growth, is transforming the market. The IT is empowering individuals and small enterprises to access global markets where only multinationals could reach only a few decades back. Then there is more of networking in building of value chains and shared benefits made possible by freer markets. It is a process of technology-driven devolution.

Acquisition, mergers and alliances are the preferred choice of multinationals while competition does hold as strong a sway as it did only in the second half of the last century. But the myth of ‘too big too fail’ has been exploded in current financial crisis. Multinationals are too big to manage and many of them are trying to survive on their core business and shedding off their extra fat.

In domestic politics, coalition governments are the order of the day and not a majority party rule. In internationals affairs trend towards multilateral co-operation is gaining grounds while the confrontational approach to control the world’s oil flows and other natural resources may take more time to wither away. And the World Bank president says, there is a strong need ‘to modernise multilateralism’.