Secrets of the Heart: Adding Subjectivity to Policy Prescriptions for a Pleasant Economic Development

Growth and development efforts worldwide and their guiding economic principles have been well rooted in one theory or the other. They apply scientific rational approaches as per their beliefs in positivist and postpositivist designs; they are objective and materialistic; they believe in independence of the mind and body. As a result, they address more to history than offer solutions to the futuristic desires of the masses. They lack predictive ability. Therefore, most of the time development drives produce dissatisfaction and dejection for those who were intended to benefit from them. Also, many a time, policies derived from theoretical conclusions overlook the whole construct of the human being. They tend to ignore subjectivity. If life is for stability, tranquility, and felicity, development policies must recognize masses as both angelic and corporal. For the approval of `heart—the seat of happiness, aspects of subjectivity—intuitions, faiths, whims, and aspirations that one dreams about must find their place in policies meant for people. The aspects of subjectivity not only provide pictorial information about the real individual, but also address the question of freedom of masses and enable them to penetrate into the future. Subjectivity provides space to the “synthetic a priory” part of the construct for a pleasant development. This paper deals with the spectrum of personal construct for secrets of the heart by dividing the shades of spectrum into “rational” and “extra rational” colors. It shows how shades of rationality—absolute, relative, environmental, or emotive—are necessarily a priory analytic and posteriori synthetic; they dissect and explain. Therefore, optimization—constrained or unconstrained—deals with partial and loses the holistic. The “extra rational” parts—emotions and beliefs—extend the agenda of personal construct. They are found to be better predictors. One feels, therefore one believes, and the belief enables a judgment that is pleasant. The scientific neglects stages of development in which the “Principle of Pleasure” plays an important role. It ignores the role of “identity,” “memory,” and “conscience.” It ignores the role of the “will” and it ignores “heart” as the ruling organ. It rejects “felicity” and as such the role of fantasies and fictions. The three parallels—Freudian, Indian Yogic Psychology, and Arabic—approaches add holistic to the construct resulting in chaotic and contradictory/complementary forces producing indeterminacy and nonlinearity. It is captured by “poetic logic” as an individual’s words are vivid, livid, and mutes. For them “time” is not linear and not equally spaced but is an intuitive comprehension. Therefore, future can be penetrated through experiments that enable intuitive judgments stimulated by carefully chosen “tools.” The paper concludes by making propositions such as the individual is holistic—both physical and beyond; the decision frontier is in a state of flux—nonlinear and chaotic; it is easier to deduce from the whole than to add up to get the whole; it is the “Principle of Pleasure” that governs; time and space are intuitive judgments; a futuristic data set is experimental—spurred by stimulants. How one may actually do it is given as a “postscript” to the argument. A simple case study of development of spiritual tourism in Varanasi city is explored. The study uses experimental data and its propositions to consolidate the subjective whims to find alternative strategies to make development a pleasant experience for local populace. It has successfully shown the difference between optimized and loved strategies. It suggests that pleasant betterment of the labor force in spiritual tourism can be achieved by shifting them elsewhere rather than creating more tourism options.