05-08-2005, 08:36 PM
<b>India's poverty: Help the poor help themselves</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Can India ever overcome its huge poverty problem? It depends on what strategy the country takes.
Today, India appears to have four broad approaches to tackling poverty. The first is essentially to abolish the poor, rather than poverty. This was graphically illustrated in Mumbai this year when slum neighborhoods were razed, making 400,000 people homeless. The Mumbai police followed up by beating protesters whose shacks had been demolished.
The second approach is often termed the trickle-down model, but perhaps better described as "ignore the poor." A favorite of many Indian economists, it argues that in the next two to three decades poverty will disappear as market forces go to work.
But even if prosperity does eventually trickle down, sitting back and doing nothing about poverty for yet another generation is a human and economic waste.
India's government is backing a third, developmental approach that aims to improve the social and physical conditions of the rural and urban poor. This means more and better roads, improvements in water supplies and rural electrification; it also means big steps forward in education and health, together with efforts at microfinance.
The fourth and most ambitious approach seeks to exploit the unused entrepreneurial abilities of the poor.
In the state of Kerala, near India's southern tip, bureaucrats work with the poorest women in a program called Kudumbashree, or Family Prosperity. The aim is to identify the women's needs - from literacy and training to housing, health care and jobs - and to put them in charge of managing their own development. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Can India ever overcome its huge poverty problem? It depends on what strategy the country takes.
Today, India appears to have four broad approaches to tackling poverty. The first is essentially to abolish the poor, rather than poverty. This was graphically illustrated in Mumbai this year when slum neighborhoods were razed, making 400,000 people homeless. The Mumbai police followed up by beating protesters whose shacks had been demolished.
The second approach is often termed the trickle-down model, but perhaps better described as "ignore the poor." A favorite of many Indian economists, it argues that in the next two to three decades poverty will disappear as market forces go to work.
But even if prosperity does eventually trickle down, sitting back and doing nothing about poverty for yet another generation is a human and economic waste.
India's government is backing a third, developmental approach that aims to improve the social and physical conditions of the rural and urban poor. This means more and better roads, improvements in water supplies and rural electrification; it also means big steps forward in education and health, together with efforts at microfinance.
The fourth and most ambitious approach seeks to exploit the unused entrepreneurial abilities of the poor.
In the state of Kerala, near India's southern tip, bureaucrats work with the poorest women in a program called Kudumbashree, or Family Prosperity. The aim is to identify the women's needs - from literacy and training to housing, health care and jobs - and to put them in charge of managing their own development. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->