According to wiki – Poverty (also called penury) is deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn, to obtain better employment to escape poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$ (PPP) 1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, estimating that “in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day.” The proportion of the developing world’s population living in extreme economic poverty fell from 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001. Looking at the period 1981-2001, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than $1 per day has halved. At this context i would to bring up an article in TOI which stated that “Poor paid Rs 98 cr bribe in TN last yr
“. So what does it really mean? Are poor really that poor? Poor are rich enough to bribe the corrupt, or lets say they are rich enough to bribe the people who are just waiting drink there blood??? Am sure this is not limited to the Indian Sub continent, this how the world runs! They people who don’t have money are always exploited! WHY? cos money is the other term for power!
So what I see as the real cos of poverty, is how unevenly better living is distributed in India and across the World! It’s nice to see many organisations setting up deadlines to set the world poverty free, or lets say increasing the living standards of the poor, bringing them above the poverty level! BUT IS IT ALL SO EASY? Are we here missing the larger picture? I really don’t know how to explain this thought which is running inside ma head! By increasing the life quality of the poor, we indirectly increase the life style of the rich, which i would say every you and me is, we are all way above the poverty lines set! And by this uneven increase of the lifestyle we are just again pushing the poor into what I would call “richly poor”. They are rich compared to there old standard of living, but poor to the current standard set! Again WHY? it’s the basic logic that the world standards are set keeping every you and me in mind..not taking in consideration of the poor. SO HOW DO WE EXPECT OF INCREASING THE LIFE STANDARDS OF THE POOR BY INCREASING COST OF LIVING? The cost of living, I would differ to say, but is actually set by the rich of rich, cos everyone aspires such a life style!
The POVERTY is very rightly divided into a pointer scale:
LACK OF FOOD!
LACK OF BASIC SHELTER
LACK OF UNIVERSAL EDUCATION
LACK OF GENDER EQUALITY
LACK OF BASIC HEALTH NEEDS FOR CHILDREN
LACK OF BASIC MATERNAL HEALTH NEEDS
LACK OF BASIC HUMANITARIAN NEEDS
HOW DO ALL THESE EFFECT?
everything is inter linked into a cycle, just like our much talked about ecological cycle! Everything ends up at the same spot it started!
And this is when i stumbled upon the The Zeitgeist Movement which explains straight at your face how the all money thing works, and its a real interesting stuff! Am embedding the YouTube video(it has 13 parts, watch all). It’s gonna be real eye opener, It will also help undersatnd the real poverty.
So where exactly are we?
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fOsSiL…the heart has its reasons that reason cannot know!!!
