We explain what underdevelopment is and what its causes and consequences are. In addition, its characteristics and possible solutions.
Underdevelopment is a qualification of nations that refers to the lack of goods , services and productive mechanisms to generate their own wealth in a sustainable way. In general, it is used more or less synonymous with poverty , although it implies a series of shortages much greater than material wealth alone, such as quality of life , social equality or financial independence.
There are no agreements regarding the scale used to distinguish developed countries from " underdeveloped " or " developing " countries, but the term implies a kind of backwardness in the social, political and economic construction that translates into a series of weaknesses and negative consequences for the country.
Nor is there an agreement regarding viable options and solutions to lift a nation out of underdevelopment. There are, however, numerous theories regarding the possible causes of this phenomenon that affects most of the world.
The definition of underdevelopment is problematic, although it seems to be well understood in practice . The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines it as a "backwardness of a country or region, which would not have reached certain levels (socioeconomic, cultural)". The complicated thing is, of course, in defining what those certain levels are.
The underdeveloped nations are those unable to provide in a sustained manner a state of socio-economic and cultural well-being to their inhabitants, which allows them to interact in a sovereign and independent condition with the rest of the world.
Another way of understanding underdevelopment is that proposed by Peter Wosley in the 60s, relying on the three states of the French Revolution .
Thus, there would be a First World, more clearly developed and independent , located in Western Europe and the United States; a second developing world , which would be the countries of the Eastern bloc; and a third world , represented by Africa , Latin America and Southeast Asia that presents various forms of retardation in its own growth as a region.
Underdeveloped countries present some or all of the following characteristics, depending on their degree of “backwardness”:
Institutions such as the World Bank use the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in their regional study rates as one of the main indicators of the development margin of nations.
Others, like the UN , combine it with other measurements to achieve a Human Development Index , such as literacy level, average longevity, kilowatts of energy used per person, and access to telecommunications technologies .
For a long time, racial and religious criteria were accused as a cause of underdevelopment , which justified racist and xenophobic ideologies that are still not overcome today. Fortunately, there are enough examples of successful and racially distinct nations from Caucasian Europe, or with religions other than Christian Protestantism, to deny such reasoning.
Other possible causes pointed to the climate , accusing climate-benign tropical countries of lacking an environmental incentive for effort, thus leading more comfortable and less ambitious lives . At the same time, the harsh climate of some countries would deny them the minimum conditions to establish productive agriculture or exploit some marketable resource.
More historically documented criteria tend to blame European and North American colonialism for keeping weaker nations in a convenient state of backwardness . The former African, Asian or Latin American colonies, after achieving their independence (or being abandoned to it), must today compete in conditions of extreme inequality with their former oppressors, while they took advantage of the plundered wealth to strengthen themselves.
The consequences of underdevelopment are clear and difficult to control, since they tend to reproduce the pattern of deficiencies that produced them, such as poverty, dependence on foreigners, social inequality , political instability, democratic fragility, demagogy and, in the most serious cases, misery, famine, pandemic and extreme violence.
There are many theories of overcoming underdevelopment. Some emphasize the historical reparation that developed nations owe to their former oppressed; Others prefer to place responsibility on themselves and on overcoming certain cultural schemes that represent an obstacle to growth , or in regional integration between underdeveloped countries and exchange between peers, turning their backs on the large economies and their interventionist aspirations.
The latter motivated numerous political initiatives for integration and the common market in the last decades of history.
The following regions are traditionally considered underdeveloped or developing:
This term is often used for areas other than economic or political, being synonymous with a model of thought that waits for the solutions to its problems to fall from the sky , that is, they are provided by entities other than itself.
Many sectors critical to the division of the world between developed and underdeveloped prefer the dependent-independent duo, in order to reflect that what is truly harmful is the inability to manage needs on their own , and not reaching a kind of goal established by the way in which live the most powerful foreign nations.
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