(EID-001) “INTEGRATIVE DEVELOPMENT”

The term “integrative development” is already popularly used in the field of medicine, but it appears to be rarely used in the field of socio-economic development. Compared to the term “integrated development”, it seems to be more dynamic and proactive, which should be the character and manifestation of all development efforts.

I believe that the integration of development programs and projects should happen in two levels and two spheres. It should happen in the local and national levels, and should also happen within the smaller sphere of a sector, and in the bigger sphere of interactions between several sectors.

Following the “infrastructure-content-manpower” (ICM) model that is popularly used in computer systems development, it would be best to have an “infrastructure base” that would host or receive the “material content” that is delivered by the “manpower pool” involved in development.

Not unless the ICM model is made complete, we could not say that development programs and projects are fully integrated. To illustrate my point, let us apply this model towards solving the five major economic problems of our country, namely hunger, poverty, criminality, sickness and homelessness.

In similar order, I think that the solution for hunger is agriculture, for poverty is education, for criminality is justice, for sickness is health, and for homelessness it should be shelter. Logically, the infrastructure for agriculture should be farms, for education should be schools, for criminality should be police stations, for sickness should be hospitals, and for homelessness should be tenements.

Despite the diversity of these five problems, it appears that their common denominator is the lack of modern technologies that should upgrade their infrastructure. At the core of these technologies should be the assets that would enable the manpower pools to manage databases and to communicate with other spheres, while banking on these same databases.

I am just using general terms in this essay, agricultural infra should go beyond the farms, the education infra should go beyond the schools, the justice infra should go beyond the police stations, the health infra should go beyond the hospitals, and the shelter infra should go beyond the tenements. In particular, tenement housing offers the homeless the chance of owning a place to stay at the price of renting an apartment monthly.