Cross Talk
Making the poor rich
IN Joseph Stein's musical megahit Fiddler On The Roof, a character named Tevya is told by his future son-in-law Perchek, that "money is a curse." Tevya responds by saying that "God should smite him with this curse." He then sings a song called If I Were A Rich Man. One of the great lines of that song is, "... when you're rich they really think you know."
If not for the poor who share this earth with the rich, that song today could become the anthem of the well-to-do in a world which is run by them. There is a growing number of rich people, while in the last quarter of a century poverty has also grabbed more space. Almost 3 billion people, half the world's population, are poor while 8.7 million millionaires walk upon the earth, their number grown by 6.5% in 2005 alone. United States has the highest concentration of millionaires, that is 2.7 million, or about 0.9 percent of its population.
By the World Bank definition, poverty is when someone earns $2 or less per day. So, here we need to draw the contrast. More than one billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than $2 a day. But the measure of earning isn't the only measure of poverty. Every year 17 million children die from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.
If we go by the dimension of hunger alone, every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation. Nearly 800 million people go to bed hungry every day, 300 million being children amongst them. Of these 300 millions, eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations and more than 90 percent are suffering from malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency.
More than 2.6 billion people -- over 40% of the world's population -- don't have basic sanitation and one billion still use unsafe sources of drinking water. Four out of every ten people don't have access to simple latrine.
Not a surprise that in today's world, poverty alleviation and wealth creation are going hand in hand. While poverty remains contemptible, attempts are being made to bring more affluence.
To say it more specifically, poverty is now being handled from rich man's perspective instead of poor man's imperatives. In other words, the concept of poverty is being squeezed by the expanding virtue of affluence. Yes, there is lot of emphasis on poverty alleviation, but the crux of that emphasis is income generation.
What is the difference? It goes without saying that the most effective way to overcome poverty is to earn more money. But must that income come from just any source? The world has changed in that respect. It's hard to find people who will refuse a financial inducement in the fear of moral compromise. Today, fewer people exist who will rather go hungry than touch dirty income.
So, most people live in a mathematical madness or an arithmetic aposiopesis where expenses don't add up to income. Income is guided by spending, not the other way around. Morality is dictated by greed, partly by speed, but seldom by need. Success is defined by acquisition, not by sacrifice. If nature is predisposed to create discrimination amongst men, that discrimination is now inculcated in the nature of men.
The push and pull of economic forces are both focused on the same thing. It's wrong to be poor, because it's right to be rich. It's the rich who are devising methods to overcome poverty, and the poor are simply following. The suggestions are that poverty alleviation is possible through income generation, reduction of illiteracy, increased healthcare and empowerment of women.
Abraham George is the founder of George Foundation, an NGO engaged in humanitarian work in India, and the author of India Untouched: The Forgotten Faces of Rural Poverty. He has argued that there is very little evidence that foreign assistance has made much difference in overcoming the poverty trap in any country. The reasons of this ineffectuality are misuse of funds, limited role of NGOs, and lack of private sector participation.
He has also strongly argued that micro-credit programs weren't the panacea for poverty. If poverty alleviation were a matter of lending, then the world could eradicate poverty easily.
Since the average size of micro-lending is $100, it would cost the world about $300 billion, which is a small sum compared to the trillions that have been already spent on poverty alleviation. The present form of micro-credit, as practiced in India, has resulted in little or no sustainable benefit for the poor, Abraham concluded.
The fact of life is that if all people are prepared to become rich, some of them must be prepared to stay poor. But what we hear is a new religion where the priests of money regularly preach that the salvation lies in earning.
There is so much talk about money these days that splurge of it has become synonymous with the survival of men. If the world once swirled around necessities that were luxuries, it's now swirling around luxuries that have become necessities.
Let us accept that the world is now ruled by the haves, not by the have-nots. The good news is that, unlike the wealthy people of the past centuries, the wealthy people of this century care for the unfortunate. They have worked out plans to help the poor, and the only way to come out of poverty is to amass wealth.
Abraham George gives an example of how, in the process of saving the poor, the rich are getting further rich. Commercial banks in India receive funds to run micro-credit programs from the government-run NABARD at 5% to 6%. They lend at 10% to 12% to a micro- credit intermediary, which in turn lends out to the final borrower at 24% to 36%.
It's true that the rich know everything. That includes plundering the poor in their plight of poverty.
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