[Asia] Poverty on the wane?

Liberalisation of the Indian economy began more than a decade ago. But the number of poor people only seems to be increasing. Why?
by Dilip D'Souza
THE HINDU
India's National Newspaper

THE one significant impression from two recent 24-hour journeys in second-class trains in India? Poverty.

I was simply stunned at the number and variety of people who streamed through asking for coins. Or who did so at the stations. Or who were obviously destitute even if they did not beg. Blind couples; man on his behind with a leg draped around his neck and bag of grapes hanging from his toes; young girls singing tunelessly; boys and men and women sweeping the compartment, some with the shirts off their backs; filthy mothers with a seemingly lifeless kid lolling in their arms; a silent bearded midget; men without one or more limbs, on crutches; eunuchs; teenager who picked up watermelon rinds from under the train and ate them; a smiling old man who asked for money in Tamil, then English, then Tamil again ... From early in the morning, all through the day, well into the night. On and on.

So many poor

I've travelled second-class for over 35 years, short and long journeys in every part of the country. For what it tells you about India, this is by far the best way to travel. But I have never seen so many beggars, so much poverty.

And circa 2005, that too tells me something about India. We are a decade-and-a-half into reforms and the tearing down of socialism that, we hear, is addressing India's problem of poverty in the most efficient way possible. Proponents of the process will quote any number of figures to persuade us that poverty is on the wane. But then I do this second-class journey, and I am fumbling for answers. Why can't I see this decrease in poverty? Why, in the years that I've been aware of realities in India, have I not sensed a perceptible drop in the number of poor people? On this one journey, why did I see more beggars than on any previous trip?

Anecdotal evidence, the proponents will say, smiling superciliously. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count! Look at the numbers! Then you will understand: moving to free markets is bringing more people out of poverty faster than anything else has ever before. It's a proven fact that free markets are the only mechanism to truly tackle poverty. So just give it some time. Surely you don't expect poverty to vanish overnight?

No. Yet the reforms have been in place 15 years. That's over a third of our socialist period, from 1947 till liberalisation began. Hardly overnight. By any standards, if hordes of people have escaped poverty through 15 years, I should see fewer poor people around me. Not on this trip.

Consider: let's say I've been piling my trash in my compound for a year. Let's say I've ignored the society's pleas to clean the horrible mess.

But today, I tell them I'm finally going to clean up. A huge job, but I get going. I regularly show the Chairman the number of truckloads of dirt I've carted from our compound to the city dump.

Four months into this — a third of the year that I dumped garbage in the compound — should he expect that the trash has visibly diminished? And if not — if instead it seems to him just as large or larger — he might just think, if this guy is doing anything, he's doing it wrong. Then would it make sense to smile superciliously at him? Tell him that his fears about the pile are just anecdotal evidence, which doesn't count? No. Because by themselves, figures mean nothing. The anecdotal evidence gives them weight and believability.

Judging levels

Or consider: If I had never seen Indians defecating on the rocks at low tide, by the side of the road, in fields — if I never had seen these sights, I would find it hard to believe the dismaying fact that nearly seven of every 10 Indians lack access to sanitation. But I have seen them, as you have. That's why I know that the figure is likely to be true. What's more, it's the only way I have of judging its truth.

In the same way, meeting poor Indians is the anecdotal evidence that allows us to understand poverty levels, judge for ourselves if they have decreased.

What's more, they are the only way we have to judge that. Reforms must happen; of that, I am certain. But 15 years after they began, I wonder if we are doing them wrong. For I find it hard to see the effect they must have above all: a visible lessening in the scale of Indian poverty. Fewer miserably poor Indians.

On this train journey, Indian poverty streamed past me like a surreal alternate Republic Day parade. And that says something about my country.

[Borgen Project] Financial World Meets Poverty Reduction

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[Asia] Asia, Africa vow to better fight poverty

AFP/VNA/VNS
24 April 2005

JAKARTA — Asian and African leaders yesterday squared up to the task of fighting poverty and corruption at a summit to rekindle a 50-year alliance that has done little to help some of the world’s poorest countries.

Under heavy security, almost 50 heads of state representing two-thirds of the world’s population, and representatives of international organisations met in Jakarta to discuss new challenges at a summit marking the golden jubilee of the first conference between the two continents.

Tackling graft, poverty and the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS were high on the agenda alongside plans to forge billion-dollar trade links and close the gap between Asian and African countries and the developed world.

Opening the summit, Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Asian and African countries, though freed from colonial rule since the first meeting which spawned the Non-Aligned Movement, were still sidelined by poverty and disease.

"In 2005, we have to sound a new battle cry ... now that Asia and Africa are free, we now must take on the next phase of the battle for human dignity," he said.

Yudhoyono said a strategic partnership envisaged by the summit’s organisers should prioritise efforts to stamp out corruption, which blights many of the nations represented – including Indonesia where graft is endemic.

The Indonesian president also stressed the need for unity, evoking the message of the original summit 50 years ago in the Indonesian city of Bandung, where leaders sought to challenge the bipolar world of the Cold War era.

Challenges ahead

Representing Viet Nam, President Tran Duc Luong said developing countries still share the challenges and threats of war, ethnic conflict, terrorism, the gap between rich and poor nations, unilateralism and power politics in international relations.

"Swift developments in globalisation and revolutions in science and technology have further widened the development gap, thus threatening to marginalise many of us in the development process, " Luong said.

He called on the leaders of both continents to develop a plan of action to support each other in the struggle for development.

He thanked Asian and African peoples for their assistance and support to Viet Nam in its past struggle for independence and in its current national construction.

On economic terms, Luong emphasised the success of tri-partite co-operation on the model "two plus one," between Viet Nam, one of several African countries, and a donor.

Viet Nam has worked with Senegal, Benin, Madagascar and Congo under this model on poverty and agricultural projects financed by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.

Trade volume between Viet Nam and Africa last year soared 70 per cent compared to 2003.

The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called on all the delegates attending the summit to celebrate 50 years since the Bandung conference, by reviving its spirit and make 2005 a true turning point for the developing world, as well as for the UN.

Annan said Bandung set forth a vision to overcome the divisions of the Cold War, based on peaceful co-existence and the principles of the UN Charter, and it gave the peoples of the developing world a voice on the international arena.

The UN chief said the vision eventually led to the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77. As each new nation found its freedom, and took its seat in the UN General Assembly, the "Spirit of Bandung" completely transformed the UN.

Also at the meeting yesterday, South African President Thabo Mbeki delivered a scathing attack on globalisation, saying poorer countries must now claim their share of the world’s wealth.

"We continue to face the daunting challenge of eradicating the poverty and underdevelopment that afflict millions of our peoples, which co-exist side-by-side with the availability of sufficient resources," he said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged that China would never abandon its status as a developing world country but would use its formidable economic success to support those less fortunate.

"In pursuit of world peace and common development, China will always stand by, and work through thick and thin, with developing countries."

As Asia’s second-largest economy, China is among several successful Asian countries keen to enhance ties with Africa.

[Global Poverty] Global Debt: Poverty's guarantee

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
24 April 2005

Americans sometimes worry about the effects of a globalized economy on themselves and their children. As legitimate as those uncertainties can be, the fears are much stronger in the poorer nations of the world.

In Africa, Latin America and Asia, the harm is overwhelming -- and the results are poverty for millions of people.

Repaying these mountains of debt has crushed development efforts, stripping many countries of budget resources for health care, job creation and even education. International financial institutions frequently have imposed loan conditions that force poverty-stricken populations to pay more for electricity, water and other necessities.

In Seattle, a group of international experts and activists is here to talk about the need for large-scale relief. They came here at the invitation of Jubilee Northwest Coalition, which includes churches, labor organizations and others.

The concerns around debt have also begun to make an impression among policy-makers in richer countries. Last weekend, World Bank and International Monetary Fund representatives talked about eliminating or reducing some of the debt burden.

The meeting ended unsatisfactorily, without any agreement among the wealthiest nations. The Bush administration's treasury secretary, John Snow, and Britain's Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer for Prime Minister Tony Blair, seem to have talked past each other. U.S. and British officials tried to portray the conference as having enlarged support for their own competing versions of debt relief. The conflict throws into some doubt the hope that an upcoming meeting of the G-7 nations will lead to an agreement on helping African and other poverty-stricken countries, as Blair desperately wants.

There are advantages to both Bush and Blair proposals. Our plan offers a complete write-off of debt for some countries, but without a guarantee of continuing aid. The British proposals do better on sustaining assistance but come up shorter on the extent of debt relief.

Neil Watkins, a Jubilee USA official, says there is no excuse for delaying on relief. Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone can consider many of the debts as legitimate.

Magda Lanuza of Nicaragua, one of those making the Jubilee visit here, says her country's cycle of debt extends back to the dictatorship of Anastasio Somosa. His regime, which she rightly calls one of the worst ever in the Americas, specialized in siphoning development money and evading efforts to assure that the money was used as agreed. In one case, trees were planted along a highway to conceal devastating clear-cuts.

Ana Maria Nemenzo of the Philippines talks of similar abuses under the U.S.-supported Marcos dictatorship. Zimbabwe's Jonah Gokova says that civic activists in his country want to find out where loans have gone under the increasingly arbitrary and brutal regime of Robert Mugabe.

The biggest obstacle to a stronger commitment to future U.S. aid and erasing the debts of more countries is the Bush administration's own obsession with making its irresponsible tax cuts permanent. But the administration has made real progress in the way this country treats the poorest countries, especially in Africa.

With the administration's inclination to help, a push by Congress to support the proposed Jubilee debt relief act would be valuable. Activists will meet with several local congressional offices tomorrow to seek support.

Debt relief won't solve poverty by itself. A freer, fairer international trading system would also offer hope to hard-pressed farmers, workers and families in poor lands. That's why U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is pushing for a new international trade treaty next year.

First, though, wealthy lenders should stop burdening struggling nations with the costs of debts that impoverish the world's ability to bring about better conditions for everyone. The Bush administration and other governments owe that much to salve the world's conscience.

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[Global Poverty] U.K. Leaders in World Poverty Day pledge

24 April 2005

The three main party leaders have committed themselves to tackling the plight of the world's poorest countries in speeches to mark World Poverty Day.

In an emotional 25-minute unscripted speech, Mr Blair told a rally at the Old Vic Theatre in London: "We have to make 2005 the year of the new beginning for Africa."

It was time, he said, with the help of other leading wealthy nations, to end the "scandal" of death from Aids, malaria and other preventable diseases.

Mr Blair said Britain would use its presidency of the G8 leading industrialised nations to make assistance for Africa a key priority and end the "scandal" of thousands dying needlessly every day.

"If we are given the chance and are re-elected, I can make you this commitment. We will work night and day to end the scandal of poverty in Africa."

Tory leader Michael Howard sought to play down political differences on the issue, saying that all three main parties shared the goal of achieving the UN target for aid by 2013 while working to cancel debt.

"I'm particularly pleased that the cause of making poverty history is something that has united the parties in this country," he said on a visit to Tabernacle Christian Centre in west London. "If we can work together to achieve that we will all be performing a service to the rest of the people who share this planet with us.

However, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy insisted that his party would move faster than the others, reaching the UN aid target by 2011 at the latest.

In a speech to supporters in Barnes, south-west London, he called for 100% debt relief for the poorest countries as well as action to tackle the spread of Aids and HIV.

"Britain is a wealthy country, a prosperous country. It is the duty of countries such of ours, with the means to help, to take action to make poverty history," he said. "It is not only the right thing to do, it is in our national interest too.

Source: www.thisisLondon.co.uk