Human Development District

Human Development District Hankaritax Lékréstrax Distriktuv
Flag
Location
Country	Mid-Atrassic Crona
Capital	Horizon City
Population	est. 700,000
Governor-Resident	Morodvenir Karteret
Managing Commissioner	Varula Itelveren Alêtor
Governing Body	Directive Commission
Advisory Council seats	3
Official languages	Coscivian (working) Chesequaki [others]
Postal Abbreviation	HLD
Time Zone	West Punth Time

The Human Development District is a civil administrative unit of Mid-Atrassic Crona. The District was created as an administrative unit to facilitate the implementation of comprehensive Kiravian-funded and -directed human development efforts in Crona.

Geography

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The Human Development District is situated amid the inland plateau that covers most of Mid-Atrassic Crona, centred on the Manacusank Bend in the Patapskuv River, where the river turns from the southwesterly course it has followed from its source in the Ramkono Mountains and thereafter flows south-east toward Yordest Bay instead. It has a temperate continental climate, and its native vegetation is predominantly mixed softwood-hardwood forest, though the landscape is peppered with parcels of land cleared for traditional agriculture and (more recently) modern development.

History

Pre-Kiravian

The lands that would become the Human Development District were mainly inhabited by the Chesequaki people prior to the dissolution of Nanseetucket.

Origins of the Project

The HDD is the brainchild of Kiravian development guru P.D. Cavriolan. Cavriolan's approach to large-scale holistic development emphasises the spatial dynamics of the development process, noting that the beneficial effects of successful development interventions radiate spatially from their epicentres. Appropriating the revolutionary socialist concept of a compact revolutionary zone, Cavriolan introduced the 'compact evolutionary zone' model for organising development projects. Cavriolan's thesis states that successful development efforts are multi-dimensional (addressing different and overlapping human needs, such as nutrition, sanitation, housing, education, social capital), that successes in development compound one another and can become subject to a law of increasing returns, and that the benefits of these successes diffuse radially across space. Therefore, he argues, it is most effective to concentrate efforts addressing all aspects of development intensively in a few compact geographic areas, rather than to independently address different development needs in many locations across a wide area, which he perceived to be the norm. Later in his career, he expanded these same principles into the related concept of the 'development mandala' as a model for harnessing the synergistic effects of multiple autonomous development projects over an extended geographic area.

The HDD is a large-scale realisation of Cavriolan's development mandala. Its creation was proposed by a high-level study committee inside the Overseas Development Executive tasked with providing the Cabinet with recommendations for a national reconstruction strategy in the aftermath of the dissolution of Nanseetucket, after which the Kiravian Federacy found itself in possession of half of the former country, inheriting its pervasive preëxisting development deficiencies and the devastating effects of the war. Following Cavriolan's theory, the committee recommended adopting a clear distinction between relief efforts and development efforts, and initially concentrating most development efforts for the native population in a single, reasonably central area of the country that would also serve as a "hub" for relief services, logistics, and subsequent expansions of development work into more peripheral regions.

Administration

The Human Development District has a special governmental structure suited to its unique purpose. Ultimate executive authority belongs to a Governor-Resident, who is appointed by the Governor-General of Mid-Atrassic Crona. The Governor-Resident has wide-reaching authority to issue decrees for the district, but generally confines their activity to such matters as security, policing, the judiciary, and mosquito control. Most other governmental functions are overseen by a Directive Commission.

The Directive Commission...

The HDD's civil service and police force are provided by the Overseas Governance Executive of the Kiravian Federacy.

For administrative and statistical purposes, the District is divided into 33 counties (*amtra*). Currently, most counties are numbered rather than named.

Demographics

According to the Passport Bureau, which collects population statistics for Mid-Atrassic Crona, the HDD has an enrolled population of 745,346, though it notes that registration and the issue of passports to the members of several tribes living in the District is not yet complete. This figure does not include the thousands of Kiravian nationals living and working in the HDD as administrators, military personnel, aid workers, missionaries, and contractors, though it does include several hundred Kiravian transplants, mostly farmers and merchants, who have settled in the district independently. State-sponsored Kiravian workers in the District are encouraged to remain in the District after the expiry of their assignments and are eligible for land grants and Human Capital Transfer Programme payments.

Most of the population of the district belong to various native Cronite tribes. The largest of these are the Chesequaki and [Other tribe], whose traditional homelands included parts of the District's present territory. In addition, a number of other Cronite tribes - mostly from easterly regions of former Nanseetucket - have been relocated to the HDD for various reasons, whether in whole or in part.

Criticism of the District

The Human Development District and its associated initiatives have been the subject of criticism, much of which has been levelled by opponents of the Kiravian government's allegedly imperialistic policies in Crona. In 21203, the editorial staff of the newspaper Ɣábravik condemned the HDD as a "model concentration camp designed to divert and deflect attention from the ongoing atrocities being committed by the Candrin administration" and as a "foreign and domestic propaganda tool being used to delude Cronites into accepting Kiravian domination as a benevolent force." Marcelo Teixeira, a former executive for Hornbill Freight Systems, a logistics contractor for the Kiravian government, told Ɣábravik that government agencies working in Mid-Atrassic Crona prioritise shipments of food, medicine, and other necessities to the HDD and the Joint Security Areas around Chappaqua over other areas. Delegate Terésa Krestor Avorrin (CSU-Metrea) led an effort joined by 35 anti-administration members of the Stanora to conduct a legislative investigation of living conditions in the District, but this was blocked by the pro-administration camp.

Others have criticised the management of the District rather than its existence. Ivardus Hopsin, former director of a government-funded literacy programme in the District, told an annual meeting of the Worshipful and Very Quiet Guild of Kiravian Librarians that "the way things are done Human Development District is reflective of an administration that still isn't sure what it wants to do in Crona. In one subdivision, with one tribe, they want Coscivian cultural education and they want textbooks to use Coscivian loanwords. In another they want calques and synthesis from native roots. In Horizon City they want to teach Coscivian itself. This is what we see in the educational sector, but the same pattern applies across the board as far as aid distribution, development, job training, and so on." Similarly, Nestorius Y.P.G. Grampian, a Shaftonist-democratic political theorist and general supporter of the Candrin administration wrote in the circular Persistence of Vision that "in the HDD we see once again that perpetual Ancient Coscivian logic of Verticalism, an order in which one's economic life is determined by bureaucrats on the basis of tribe, clan, and caste. Kirosocialism defeated, we had thought that this creeping vine had finally been extirpated from our polity, but it is clear now that the errors of Verticalism are so deeply imprinted in the Coscivian psyche that they become the default manner of administration to which we invariably revert in the absence of strong organic institutions."