In spite of the fact that more than 90% of the people in the world follow some or the other religious belief system, the academicians and researchers in the development field are still acting innocent towards the strong co-relation between religion, faith and international development. Human beings wear a plural personality. They wear the identity of their countries, castes, languages, gender, age etc. Development researchers and policy makers, try hard to find the common factors among communities and countries to unite them but often fail to do so because of this vast plurality. Belief in one or the other religion or faith is the only common factor running across the global population, which researchers fail to acknowledge.
Development studies has given birth to many wonderful development approaches in the last 60 years of its inception. Human beings are the center of all the development approaches. For any development approach to succeed in policy and practice, we need honest and selfless contribution from many human beings. Unfortunately no development approach came out with the mechanism to produce good, honest and dedicated human beings. Religion and faith have the answers to this, which development researchers are rarely daring to explore.
‘Display’ of ‘morality’ lies at the core of the current international development practice. North, after exploiting south for many years wants to act ‘moral’ in the form of a donor. Forced global governance equations keep this relationship going. Religion has the power and wisdom to convert this forced morality into the basic human nature but unfortunately development researchers are still contented with their triplet of economics, politics and anthropology. For example, there is very little, if any discussion in the mainstream development debate on the interrelation between religion and development. Though a few noble initiatives like ‘Religion and Development’ (RaD) research program in University of Birmingham are trying hard to carve a space in the mainstream development research arena, but largely this arena is still hungry for researchers...
