In case people doesn't know Blog Action Day is a global initiative where bloggers from all over the world contribute to a conversation about a particular topic. You can read more about this here, on their official site.
Poverty, despite all the talk about beggars being happier than the rich folks, is dehumanizing. It robs people of their dignity, takes down the quality of life by several notches and prevents them from using their talents for betterment of the individual, family and society. Being poor sucks.
But how do we wipe out something as intrinsic to human society as poverty? After all at no point of time in human history has poverty been totally absent. One basic rule is that whatever the time and the place, there will always be haves and have-nots. But what can be done is reduce the disparity between these two classes to the maximum manageable level.
There has been different ways in which this has been attempted across various places and in different times, with varying levels of success. Communism has attempted it, socialism has attempted it, the capitalists, the globalists, the nationalists: all have their stated aim as preventing poverty. With rare exceptions, most of these experiments have not delivered the results. Now the latest thinking is use of technology to combat poverty.
Take an example. Kiva is a social networking site where people, instead of making friends fund needy entrepreneurs in third world countries. A struggling cosmetic seller in Nicaragua, a chicken farmer in Thailand, a jam maker in India...all have benefitted from this website. Usually their loan requests are small (less than $1000) and they can't borrow from formal channels. Kiva has partners, mostly NGOs in different countries who put up the profile of the entrepreneur on the site and solicit funds. The process is transparent as the repayment record is tracked online. In this way Kiva has disbursed over $46mn in funds. It might seem small but when you consider the fact that most of the donors are individuals and rarely donate above of 2 figures (in USD), that's a monumental effort.
The way ahead to combating poverty is, according to me, using the Internet. Organizations, individuals and governemrnts need to leverage the power and each of the Internet in creative ways. Too often corruption and poverty exists in a vicious circle. The Net can be used for reducing the incidence of corruption too- the Central Vigilance Commision in India used to put up the names of corrupt officials in its site.
The poor does not need empty promises by politicians, they need solid initiatives. In the context of India they need, perhaps, for governments to adopt a hands-off approach.
