According to the author, which of the following cannot be viewed as the cause of development?
Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
The past decade has upset many preconceptions about development and this more than anything else makes it difficult to be overly definite about what the next decade has in store. But there are a few things that one can assert with some confidence. First education, health and productive employment are crucial both for growth and for equity. We have tended to assume that all of these are the consequences of rapid economic growth and that only growth can generate the resources required for these purposes. But increasingly, it appears that these are better seen as the causes rather than as consequences of development. Virtually every case of successful development involves a prior improvement in literacy, technical skills, health status and access to production work.
Second, technological competence is the most important resource endowment and it explains a far larger proportion of growth in output and trade than more conventional actors like natural resources or capital accumulation. The competence required is not just in research, in fact technological dynamism in the factory and the farm is more important than the presence of a larger research establishment.
Third the environmental imperative can no longer be ignored today as an international issue; it is second only to disarmament. Nationally, the developmental consequences of environmental neglect are increasingly obvious.
In the Indian context there are at least two further factors which reinforce the above propositions. The first is population growth. Given the pace of expansion of the population and the workforce, human resource development acquires an added urgency. Population growth is also one, but not necessarily the most important factor which underlines environmental stress in rural and urban areas. The second factor is that as a larger country we cannot carve out an independent position in the global system without building up a substantial capacity for self-reliant growth. The acquisition of technical competence is crucial for this purpose.