Poverty and its Alleviation

 Poverty is a social condition, more related to human beings, especially in a civilized society. It may look absurd to witness poverty in a civilized society and so the definition for poverty may depend upon varying measurement or assessment. Poverty being the condition of a person where he/she may be lacking in basic necessities such as food, cloth and shelter, can be observed in almost every country, bet it a developed one or underdeveloped one. For the sake of our convenience we normally consider the poverty line as the one that is below certain level of income and this level may vary from one country to another depending upon the domestic condition of the availability of basic commodities.

 The main reason for talking about poverty here is to understand what kind of measures we have been taking in order to alleviate poverty and whether such measures are really helping in eliminating poverty. We want to claim that we are living in a civilized society by taking various measures in addressing poverty. But one must ask why certain section of people remain with poverty despite tremendous economic and scientific advancements. While people in several pockets continue to become billionaires a large section of rest of the people remain poor. So, we have intervention by governments, NGOs and other individuals, which has helped the poor to survive even under drought conditions. But no measures have been successful so far in eliminating poverty completely. People are happy with little bit of progress achieved in moving some people above poverty line. But that may only help in gaining political mileage for some people in power and for those who are engaged in philanthropy and other social services.

 By continuing to feed the poor for the rest of their lives can we call it a noble act? One’s ego may get gratified by helping the poor but it cannot be called a noble act because, a poor has lived as poor and died as poor only. So, where is the transformation in him? Ha anybody else stopped him/her calling a poor? So, any poverty alleviation steps may not really help in eliminating the poor or in transforming them. So, what is essential is to remove the tag “Poor” on his forehead and bring him to the mainstream as anybody else. He should be able to live as one among rest of the mass. This will be possible only when the poor have equal opportunity to lead their own life independently without relying upon welfare measures either by the governments or by NGOs. They should be able to earn as much as they need on their own to lead a basic and dignified life instead of begging others.

 A civilized society must think in these lines and create multiple opportunities for everybody so that they can decide what kind of life they want to lead without being dragged into the unethical comparison as rich and poor or dignified and undignified, etc. When only a handful of people are able to capture most of the Earth’s resources bringing this transformation in the poor may not be a difficult task. What we need is to be sensitive and live like a true civilized people. But unfortunately we have not been able to live like that in spite of many rich religions, cultures, scientific and technological achievements, etc.

 The lack of basic necessities such as food, cloth and shelter may be considered as existential poverty. There are other types of poverty, which almost every one of us may have at different point in time. They are intellectual poverty, social poverty, literacy poverty, spiritual poverty, emotional poverty and so on, which are all important for one to overcome in life in order to live fruitfully. Only when all these poverty are eliminated we can probably call ourselves a true civilized society.