Creating capabilities : the human development approach If a country`s Gross Domestic Product increases each year but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education health care and other opportunities is that country really making progress If we rely on conventional economic indicators can we ever grasp how the world`s billions of individuals are really managing In this powerful critique Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self respect. For the past twenty five years Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach.