Search

The article focuses on a scheme developed by the Congress party of India known by its Hindi acronym NYAY under which it will hand out 6,000 rupees to poor households in the country if it wins power in the 2019 national election. Topics covered include action taken by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to address rural resentment, failure of the government to identify the poor and possibility for NYAY to become a reality in line with the electoral prospects of Congress.

The article discusses the move by African countries to improve their welfare state schemes. Some governments have developed their social safety-nets to expand the number of people covered by their welfare programmes. The effect of welfare state schemes on poor Africans' expectations of their governments is discussed, as well as the challenge of removing the schemes in the future.

The article discusses the level of poverty throughout Egypt and the lack of the poor's complaints about it. While the rich get richer and the middle class is expanding, the rest have struggled with the inflation rate that is higher than in most comparable countries, according to the article. It is suggested by sociologists that poor Egyptians have appropriated the things they lack such as space and freedom. Why the poor don't complain because of security agencies and the mafia are discussed.

The article reports on the increase in number of people who were classified as poor in Egypt despite the mission of the Egyptian government to halve poverty by 2020 and eliminate it by 2030. Topics covered include official poverty line set by the Egyptian government, economic reforms introduced by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi with loans provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), how reforms led to increase in household expenditures and the limited cash-transfer schemes for the poor.

The article offers a firsthand look at the town of Lundazi in Zambia. The people here are so poor that all road signs are deliberately perforated, for otherwise they would soon be removed and turned into pots and pans. In the past, farming was almost entirely a subsistence affair with little grown except for maize. Now, though, there is evidence of cash crops. Basic tuition at the town's school is provided free, but the fees for boarding and any extra lessons come to nearly $200 a year. For most families, that is a fortune. Over 120 of the 864 students have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.

The article reflects on and compares relative poverty in Kentucky and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why juxtapose the lives of a poor man in a rich country and a relatively well-off man in a poor one? First, it puts the rich world's wealth into context. A Congolese doctor, a man most other Congolese would consider wealthy, is worse off materially than most poor people in America. What is the relationship between wealth and happiness? And what is the significance of relative poverty? "Poverty" describes two quite different phenomena: utter penury, of the sort experienced by the billion or so souls who subsist on $1 a day or less; and the situation of people in rich countries who are less well off than their compatriots. American poverty statistics are misleading. Poor people today live longer, spend longer in education and are more likely to have jobs. If poor Americans were to compare their standard of living with what is normal elsewhere in the world, let alone in Congo, they would see they have little cause for discontent.

The article discusses the trend towards microlending in India. Topics discussed include microloans offered to small entrepreneurs which can be repaid once their businesses start to make profits, the aim of microlending to help people get out of poverty, and a comparison of active microfinance borrowers in several Asian countries.

The author argues that the schemes adopted by competing political parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party, to give money to poor people in India, need rethinking due to the difficulty of identifying the poorest in the country. Topics covered include number of people in India who live in extreme poverty, outcomes of the schemes launched by the Indian government to help the poor, negative effects of the BJP and Congress' schemes and the cost of eradicating poverty in India.

The article offers information on low income people spends major amount of their incomes on things to enhance their status as well as impact of different personality on poverty.

The article reports on how mobile-phone firms have found a profitable way to help the poor help themselves. Mobile phones have become indispensable in the rich world. But they are even more useful in the developing world, where the availability of other forms of communication--roads, postal systems or fixed-line phones--is often limited. But despite rapid subscriber growth in much of the developing world, only a small proportion of people--around five percent in both India and sub-Saharan Africa--have their own mobile phones. Several operators from developing countries have teamed up under the auspices of the GSM Association, which promotes the use of GSM, the world's dominant mobile-phone standard. They invited the handset-makers to bid for a contract to supply up to six million handsets for less than $40 each. The contract was won by Motorola. Delivery of handsets began in April. This week the procurement process began for more handsets, to be delivered from next January. As well as letting smaller operators pool their bargaining power, this scheme aims to draw manufacturers' attention to the needs of developing countries. The GSMA is now making a 50-country study that will, it hopes, provide conclusive proof of the benefits of cutting taxes on mobile phones.

This article discusses how 2005 could be a significant year in the fight against poverty. We have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science--but do we have the will? Do we have the will to make poverty history? That is quite a question: big, crucial and--so long as "we" is defined broadly--entirely valid. And it is a question to which--according to Bono, the rock star and modern-day prophet who posed it--the coming year will go a long way towards providing an answer. In 2005, poverty reduction is scheduled to dominate the global policymaking agenda as never before. First will come some visionary reports, led by Jeffrey Sachs's study for the United Nations (in January) and Tony Blair's Commission for Africa (probably in March). In July, if Mr Blair does not unexpectedly lose a British general election in the meantime, he will host a G8 summit of rich-country leaders which will focus on tackling poverty, especially in Africa. In September, the UN will hold a special General Assembly Summit to review progress towards the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000, which include a commitment to halve the proportion of the world's population living in poverty by 2015. For so much high-level attention to be paid to the needs of the poor is unambiguously welcome. So, too, is the spirit of optimism with which policymakers and campaigners view next year. Yet it does not take a cynic to wonder whether so much international summitry might, in the end, generate far more hot air than action. There is a genuine danger of this. So before giddy rhetoric gives way to disappointment, it is worth asking what battles, realistically, might be won in the war on poverty in 2005.

Discusses wealth. Increase in the number of wealthy people in the world as of June 2001; How the gap between the income of the poor and the rich has risen; Thoughts on the world economy in light of a possible recession; How gaps in wealth often coincide with democratic reform; Views on anger which the poor may feel toward the rich; The need to battle poverty.

Reports on figures related to poverty in Argentina. Growth of poverty in ten years; Poverty levels relative to those in Chile; Widening gap between rich and poor; Class structure; Inability to obtain health care; Need for the modernization of Argentine society. INSET: The wrong side of the tracks.

This article discusses the plight of some of Indonesia's poorest people. The article suggests that the number of poor people in Indonesia has reportedly increased from previous years. The Urban Poor Consortium believes that the number of people falling into poverty in Jakarta, Indonesia, has risen by almost twice as much as reported in government statements. A report on the subject, being prepared by the World Bank, argues that artificially high rice prices are much more to blame than the effects of the fuel price increase.

The article discusses poverty in Latin America. All but a wretched pair (Haiti and Nicaragua) of Latin American countries are officially classed as "middle-income" and all (except Cuba) are democracies. Yet Latin America has another trait: a hugely unequal distribution of income and wealth. A disproportionately large number of Latin Americans are poor. The region's democratic governments have started to make innovative efforts to tackle poverty. These center on programs that offer poor families cash payments on condition, for example, that they keep their children in school and take them for regular health check-ups. In Mexico, 5 million families now get such payments, and 7.5 million in Brazil.

The article questions why poor democracies are not better at ending poverty. India, unlike China, is a vibrant democracy with a proudly robust habit of turfing lousy governments out of office. Yet, in poverty reduction, at least, China's unelected leaders have done better. A book by Bimal Jalan, a leading Indian economist and former governor of the central bank, lists some of the woes afflicting Indian politics, such as the rise of small parties, the dwindling of inner-party democracy and the shrinking role of Parliament in ensuring accountability. In poverty-reduction, as in growth, India is typical of other developing-country democracies, having achieved steady but not spectacular success. The relationship between caste and class helps explain the wide regional discrepancies in India.

The article discusses a new attempt in Europe to improve the social and economic conditions of the Roma, or gypsies. Eight central European states and many international institutions launched a "Decade of Roma Inclusion." Europe's seven to nine million Roma are its biggest and poorest ethnic minority. Their social and economic indicators veer from the bad to the catastrophic, especially along the European Union's (EU) eastern borders. Poverty rates everywhere are high. The organisations supporting the decade will help governments to carry out ten-year plans focusing on education, employment, health and housing. In December a donors' conference pledged money for a Roma Education Fund. But the main aim is to get governments to give more help to the Roma from existing budgets, and to make better use of the funds already available from international institutions. Central European governments have often dealt brusquely with Roma problems in the years since communism collapsed. But with membership in the EU mostly achieved or assured, and incomes rising, they now have less excuse for looking the other way.

The article focuses on the growth of homelessness in Vancouver, British Columbia. Most Vancouverites love it when, as frequently happens, their city gets rated as one of the nicest places in the world in which to live. But to its poorer residents such seals of approval can seem like a sick joke. The Downtown Eastside, a scene of battered and boarded-up buildings, is the most concentrated pocket of poverty and crime in Canada. Vancouver's homelessness rate, though lower per person than in some of British Columbia's other cities, has doubled in the past three years: in summer up to 1,800 people are sleeping rough or in shelters, according to a plan presented by the city council's homelessness coordinator. Most critics blame British Columbia's Liberal government for social-service cuts in its three-year drive to eliminate its deficit.

This article presents the opinion that deploring economic injustice is ineffective in bringing relief to the world's poor. Surely there is no more commanding moral imperative for people in the West than to urge each other, and their governments, to bring relief to the world's poorest. And what a tragedy it is, therefore, that many of the kind souls who respond most eagerly to this imperative bring to the issue an analytical mindset that is almost wholly counterproductive. They are quite right, these champions of the world's poor, that poverty in an age of plenty is shameful and disgusting. But they are quite wrong to suppose, as so many of them do, that the rich enjoy their privileges at the expense of the poor--that poverty, in other words, is inseparable from a system, capitalism, that thrives on injustice.

A new report gives governments some facts to ponder about economic development. For a better understanding of the plight of the world's poor, the protestors against capitalism who descended on the World Trade Organisation's meeting in Cancún last month ought perhaps to have gone to Haiti instead. In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, prospective business people have to wait an average of 203 days for permission to start trading. Then they have to pay registration costs and satisfy minimum capital requirements of around four times the average Haitian's annual income. The juxtaposition of stifling bureaucracy and abject poverty is no coincidence, argues a new report, "Doing Business in 2004", by the World Bank. It offers one of the first consistent, rigorous portraits of the costs of business regulations in poor countries. These often concern macroeconomic questions such as monetary policy and fiscal discipline, and the means of globalisation, such as free trade and foreign investment. Countries such as Haiti which, through colonialism, inherited laws from the French legal system are especially prone to red tape.

If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly. Stanley Fischer, formerly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the IMF, now a senior executive with Citigroup, delivered the prestigious Richard Ely lecture at the annual meetings of the American Economic Association. Fischer delivered a tribute to his friend, Rudiger Dornbusch, who died in 2003, and then an overview and defence of globalisation. Fischer's essay deserves to be read carefully by globalists and anti-globalists alike. He also presented a pair of charts. The more closely one looks at these charts, the stronger the case for globalisation seems. The real question--at least so far as reducing global poverty is concerned--is not whether globalisation is a good thing, but why some countries (and in Africa's case an entire region) find it so difficult to participate. The answers, as Fischer relates, are complicated. Rich- and poor-country governments alike are partly to blame.

Focuses on the popularity of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Efforts of Chavez to promote social and economic justice in the country; Support for Chavez among the poor, whose numbers are increasing; Way that Chavez eliminated fees in public schools, which helped to increase enrollment; Health care reforms of Chavez; Idea that Chavez is venerated in a religious manner by the poor.

Discusses the life styles of poor people in Argentina, following an economic collapse. Way that the poor may scavenge in rubbish piles; Unemployment and poverty in the country; Use of bartering instead of money; Hyperinflation of the barter system; Increase in crimes such as theft.

Focuses on the threat to the livelihood of stonebreakers in Uttar Pradesh, India from the Forest Department. Rights of the Kols tribe to mine stone into gravel in the area; Statement of forest officer Biswajit Banerjee that the soil in the area is not useful for planting trees; Way that the land used by the Kols has been cordoned by the Forest Department for forestry purposes; Problems of poverty and disease among the villagers.

Discusses economic conditions in Turkey. Widespread poverty in the nation, which has worsened due to the effects of an economic crisis; Attitudes of the Turkish people; Comment that apathy still outweighs anger about the situation; Social impacts of poverty, including increasing corruption and emigration.

Discusses a report published on the world's poor by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). United Nation policy towards helping the poor; How IFAD would like to see an expansion of the use of genetic technology in farming to increase crop yields; Focus of IFAD on women.

Reports that the world's financial leaders have gathered in Madrid, Spain for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to debate about the world's poor continues. Mandate of the World Bank is to alleviate poverty in poor countries; Intention of the IMF to help countries out of financial difficulties; Study conducted by Elliot Berg, an American development economist, which suggests that life for the world's poor may not have deteriorated during the 1980s; Study on Latin America conducted by Oxfam, a British charity, which suggests that after a decade of structural adjustment, and despite economic growth, more people than ever are living in poverty.

Discusses the difference of lifestyles in Cambodia, where city-dwellers live like kings while the peasants in the country live in horrible poverty. Response of the Khmer Rouge, a peasant guerrilla group; Details.