Poverty

POVERTY
Poverty is much more than absence of money. Often generations in poverty lead people to a sense of utter hopelessness and deprive them of their sense of self-respect and dignity. They are deprived of access to essential assets and opportunities such as education, healthcare, employment, land and other natural resources, services, infrastructure and credit. They have little say in their polity and society. They are not empowered to participate in making the decisions that shape their lives. They become increasingly marginalized, excluded and vulnerable to exploitation. This exploitation manifests in several forms such as bonded labor, child labor, inadequate compensation for work if and when they get work, ill treatment and deprivation of basic rights.

It will be naïve to believe that we can solve the problem of poverty by providing access to computers and telecommunication to the poor of the world

We have always lived in an unequal world, but now the gap between information “haves” and “have-nots” is widening fast. As Kofi Annan has noted, ‘there is a real danger that the world’s poor will be excluded from the emerging knowledge-based global economy.’

When a person is hungry don’t feed him fish instead teach him fishing
If one feels that poverty can be eradicated through charity, then think again. For more than 50 years World Bank, donor nations, various aid agencies, national governments and lately civil society organizations have all done their best, but were unable to eradicate poverty

There are 4 billion people who are living at les than 2$ a day, these are the people at the bottom of the pyramid.

As the famous writer C.K.Prahalad suggests that these four billion people can be the engine of the next round of global trade and prosperity, and can be source of innovations.

Prahlad presents his new view regarding solving the problem of poverty as co-creation solution towards economic development and social transformation (figure) of which parties involved are:

• Private Enterprises
• Development and aid agencies
• Bottom of the pyramid consumers
• Bottom pf the pyramid entrepreneurs
• Civil society organisation and local government

While market opportunities do exist corporate may refrain from adopting this model as the market at BOP is generally too small monetarily to be very profitable for most multinationals. At the same time, the private sector can play a key role in poverty alleviation by viewing the poor as producers, and emphasize buying from them, rather than selling to them.

By adopting either of the above two strategies poverty can be eradicated sooner than later.