Executive summary – Gareth Wall g.j.wall@bath.ac.

uk
Development Knowledge Creation and Dissemination:
A comparative study of taught postgraduate development
studies courses and their departments in India and the UK.
Higher Education Institutions within less-developed nations continue to be dwarfed by the
influence of their counterparts in developed nations. This creates a paradox within
Development Academia wherein the academic development ‘expert’ is more likely to be
educated in and/or hosted at higher education institutions in the western nations, and where the
research agenda in development issues is driven by institutions in the west and not the
developing countries of the south themselves. Despite well intended moves from the
predominantly western based development community to ‘raise the voice’ of the south, through
discussion of concepts such as participation, policy changes such as the introduction of PRSPs
and support of ‘southern led’ initiatives such as the Global Development Network, southern
academic voices seem but a whisper compared to the noise made by their western colleagues.

This paper is an attempt to stimulate further discussion on this key issue of voice, central to the
concepts of diversity, ownership and accountability in development knowledge. Here I suggest
that a key factor that ensures the voice of southern academics is much quieter than that of their
western colleagues is the common perception that higher education institutions in the LDCs
have a significantly lower capacity to deliver high quality postgraduate teaching and research
on development issues than their counterparts in the developed nations. This feeds into a self-
fulfilling comparative advantage for graduates from the west in employment, particularly
within the metaphorical amplifiers of the IFI, UN, home governments and development
academia, leading to a widening gap between those who claim to be supporting the voices from
the south and those who wish to be heard.

The capacities of a range of higher education institutions in India and the UK that deliver
taught postgraduate Development Studies programmes are compared. Analysis of academic
texts recommended by these institutions confirms that the ‘voice’ of development academics
from within south, though present, is not the voice that is predominantly heard by aspiring
development professionals. There is also a significant difference between the amount of
exposure to academic writing produced in the south given to course participants on the
Development Studies programmes in India and those in the UK, with the exposure of southern
academic writing through the modular recommended reading lists of a number of programmes
in the UK at negligibly low levels.

Comparing the facilities and course content of these institutions shows not only is the capacity
to deliver high quality postgraduate teaching and academic research on development in Indian
institutions comparable to the UK, but also that the comparative advantage of being hosted in a
developing country and cost effectiveness of funding such courses and research in the south
mean that these institutions will be able to successfully compete on the international market for
postgraduate Development Studies students and research grants. However, this will continue to
be hindered whilst there are stumbling blocks disabling the research of southern academics from
publishing widely and directly entering the main-stream and alternative critiques of
development that lead the international poverty reduction agenda.