ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the theoretical base of the study on risk and development. Building on Ulrich Beck’s notion of risk, and substantiated with reference to Ortwin Renn, the chapter argues that risk has social roots and is created in the administrative and technical decision-making processes that enable new markets, technologies, and changes in the conditions of labour and society. Adapting postcolonial theory, and bringing in a critical evaluation through the arguments of scholars such as Radelet and Pinker, the chapter argues that industrialisation, modernisation and neo-liberalisation are processes that altered the economic and political relations on a global scale between countries, creating risks in the Global South and demanding alternative forms of development. In light of this, the chapter brings in human development as an example of an alternative form of development. While acknowledging that the risks and benefits of the paradigms of global development do not affect the social, economic, environmental and political fabrics of societies in a uniform way, the arguments established in chapter are mainly used in the analysis of Phase 1 of the Sarvodaya Movement in Part II, Chapter 4 of this book.
