Executive Summary: The nation of India is known for its growing economic dominance as well as recent tourist booms, which continue to bring in revenue for the country. On the other end of spectrum, the same country has an estimated 36% of the worlds poor, many of which live under an insufficient 2 dollars a day. Throughout this proposal, I offer a detailed view of what the nation has done wrong, and how foreign aid can eradicate one of the world’s biggest issues in a short course of time.
Specific Development Program: Eradicating extreme poverty in the Madhya Pradesh region of India.
Statement of Issue:
It is no secret that India is now known as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but in Madhya Pradesh, containing over 75 million inhabitants (making it India’s sixth most populated state). Along with growing population, the number of malnourished children has gone up from 53.55 to 60 percent, while the number of anemic women has gone up from 47 to 57 percent.
India is measured to have 36% of the earth's poor. The World Bank identified that 32.7% of all individuals in the nation of India fall below the global poverty line of U.S. $ 1.25 per day. A projected 67.8% of India’s population lives on less than US $2 per day. Amartya Sen defined poverty to be a deprivation to the access of basic capabilities. In these terms, the number of impoverished people in India amounts to a staggering 300 million (Eleventh National Development Plan). Although this quantity has shown a slow decrease, almost one third of India’s population of more than 1.1 billion continues to live below the poverty line, and a large percentage of those who are impoverished live in rural areas, like Madhya Pradesh. Poverty conti...
... middle of paper ...
...ations given elsewhere for items like fertilizers etc. India also needs to implement a much more operational tax system as its private sector continues to grow exponentially. This will present the country enough time to finance the right pro poor policies and examine how efficient they are over the course of time.
Conclusion:
Truth be told, implementing new jobs presents new trials and altering an entire system is not as easy as it sounds in theory. In a nation experiencing such an intense transition such as India, now is more crucial then ever. The state of Madhya Pradesh has lagged behind the developing world for long enough and the government has shown their true colors in their limited concern for the states well being. It is up to the international community to put weight onto any nation that fails to provide its own with basic rights and tools to survival.
Unlike the North – a term in vogue today, among others, for highlighting the difference between the rich, industrialised nations of mostly Western Europe, North America, Australasia, and the rudimentary economies of Latin America, Asia and Africa – underdevelopment, characterised by low income levels, poverty, low living standards and other socio-economic ills seem to be a defining feature of countries in these regions, collectively described as the Global South. Thomas (2003), Hershberg and Moreno-Brid(2003), and, Solimano(2005) suggest, for instance, that the socio - economic structure of most Latin American countries remains defined by vast inequalities in income and wealth distribution, poverty, volatile growth, high mortality rate and a high level of economic vulnerability. In Asia, a number of countries including the large economies of India and China have made improvements in the 21st century in terms of reducing poverty. Yet, 22% of the developing countries in Asia live on a dollar a day . The situation is bleaker in the South and Southeast Asia region where 38% leave on less than a dollar a day and over 48% of the population living below the regions individual country poverty line . Likewise, absolute poverty is on the rise in Africa - generally recognised as the world’s richest continent in terms of natural resources - despite a recorded decline in global poverty rates (Bhattacharyya: 2005).
Poverty is not just an issue reserved for third world countries. Instead, poverty is a multifaceted issue that even the most developed nations must battle
... aid across the world. As we have established that we do have an obligation to redistribute globally in a cosmopolitan perspective, distributing wealth however we may need to rethink what the best assistance is. Amaryta Sen conveys that before sending aid to the third world state, we would need to fully understand the limitation of freedom in the country. Redistributing wealth to global countries requires it to be evaluated by the economic shortage that they are suffering and to see whether it will be efficient in the long run. The more effective ways to contribute would be to international relief agencies or NGO’s that would pursue international development projects to help those in poverty or the alternative option by Tom Campbell’s idea of a ‘Global humanitarian levy’ which suggests a more appropriate taxation on all citizens to collectively aid those in need.
The first thing I found extremely interesting and sad when researching India current situation regarding the poor, was that they only spend one percent of their GDP on health. That is astonishing. We all know that in order to provide for
Recently, in India the more powerful people have been depriving the poor of their mere wealth. According to the author, " million living below the poverty line is that the public exchequer is being looted, and that the money earmarked for development is going into the pockets of the rich and the powerful."(2 Bunker). This portrays that the donated and tax money that has been put forth for the poor is going into the high authority pockets. This leads to a greater gap between the rich and poor. The ones that deserve more are being deprived and tormented of their rights. Only 17% of the development money is reaching the poor the rest is taken by the corrupt officials. This is also shown when the article states, "Thousands of schools, dispensaries, roads, small dams, community centres and residential quarters have been shown to be complete on paper, but in reality are incomplete, inhospitably unutilized and abandoned."(1 Bunker). It is evident that the government is showing these facilities have been provided to seem diligent on paper. However, the basic necessities which is a citizens right have been taken away from the poor. Many rights including the voting rights of the poor village people are snatched by the officials. The poor do not have the right to true information of where the money for the poor from the government is being spent. It is because false receipts and vouchers
This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though
Poverty is affected by many people in the world, nearly half of the world’s population, more than three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty,
The first reasons to think that foreign aid should be spend is that “Aid saves lives” which is clearly illustrated by the researches conducted. Compare 1990 to 2010, as a result of aid in vaccines and health, there was a decrease in number of children who died from illness of pneumonia and diarrhoea (BBC). For example, in Botswana, the foreign aid fund had provided a test of HIV for pregnant mothers and therefore decrease the amount of newborn babies which catches HIV. Furthermore, in Bangladesh, there is a 62% drop in death rate for the under five children, the aid fund allows the government to be able to afford “vaccines and trained the midwives”.
Though the world economy as a whole has grown in recent years, a factor that is not taken into account is that the number “of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million” (Roy 3). In other words, the gap between rich and poor is widening. For India, this has startling implications. Though it is a nation that is developing in many ways, it also is a nation blessed with over one billion citizens, a population tally that continues to grow at a rapid rate. This population increase will greatly tax resources, which can create a setback in the development process. The tragedy, of course, is that the world is full of resources and wealth. In fact, Roy quotes a statistic showing that corporations, and not even just countries, represent 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world (Roy 3). For a country struggling to develop, such information is disheartening. However, there is also a more nefarious consequence of the growing disparity between rich and poor, and power and money being concentrated in the hands of multinational corporations: war is propagated in the name of resource acquisition, and corruption can reign as multinationals seek confederates in developing countries that will help companies drive through their plans, resulting in not only environmental destruction but also the subversion of democracy (Roy 3).
The Economic Lives of the Poor, written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo is an essay about the lives of the extremely poor. The Economic Lives of the Poor exhibits the patterns of how the poor live around the world and the troubles they confront on a daily basis. The article talks about various aspects of life of the poor, including, money, savings, assets, education, and infrastructure. The extremely poor are defined as the people of the world who make less than $1/day. To analyze this, Banerjee and Duflo conducted surveys in 13 different countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania, and Timor Leste). The article talks about how the poor people
[6] Kripalani, Majeet & Egnardio, Pete. The Rise Of India. Business Week Online. December 8, 2003. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm
...an HDI of 0.36. These discrepancies in levels of development have led to an exodus of people, from less developed areas to the areas that have been benefitted by development. This situation seems to depict that predicted by the Dependency theory in which the developed countries progressed due to the exploitation of peripheral nations; the same seems to be happening in India. The states that are wealthier are exploiting the poorer states. It would be difficult to imagine India having the economic status that it now has, if it was not for the terrible working conditions and wages at which the Indians are willing to work and the massive work force available in the country. Now that India has seen economic growth the government should start taking care of its citizens by implementing policies that protect the labor rights of the workforce.
India, the second highest populated country in the world after China, with 1.27 billion people currently recorded to be living there and equates for 17.31% (India Online Pages 2014) of the world's population, but is still considered a developing country due to it’s poverty and illiteracy rates. As these nations continue to grow at rates that are too fast for resources to remain sustainable, the government’s in these areas wi...
“India was a latecomer to economic reforms, embarking on the process in earnest only in 1991, in the wake of an exceptionally severe balance of payments crisis”(Ahluwalia 2002).The idea being simple ,there was a need to ...
As one of the biggest problems facing the world today, poverty continues to have significant negative implications for the society. The effects of poverty are extremely severe and far-reaching, so much so that it was one of the top Millennium Development Goals agreed upon at the Millennium Summit of the UN back in 2000 (Hatcher, 2016). To understand the effects that poverty has on the society, one must critically analyze the societies in which poverty is rampant, as well as analyze poverty from the relative perspectives that it presents. The core aim of this paper is to develop a holistic understanding of poverty and elaborate on the diverse ways in which it continues to affect societies across the world.