World Poverty Eradication Day
Poverty: this century’s most difficult problem

By Kamran Ahmed Soomro

World Poverty Eradication Day is celebrated on 17th October to attract world’s attention to the severe issue of poverty throughout the world. Poverty has taken a serious form the world over. A large number of developing countries are severely affected by poverty.

Poverty is a wide phenomenon with a variety of definitions by various economists and experts on various criteria. It is defined generally as “the state of deprivation of basic necessities of life: food, shelter, clothes, education and health.” Moreover, it is also defined as the people earning less than $2 per day are assumed to pass through the state of poverty.

The World Bank report states that South Asia has 400 million poor people out of total population of 1.42 billion. Moreover, on the basis of $2 a day criteria, 50 per cent of the South Asian population is living below the poverty line!

Poverty in Pakistan

Pakistan is badly bound in the chains of poverty. Since its inception it has been the victim of this economic and social evil. Today, a large number of people come under the umbrella of poverty. According to Pakistan Planning Commission (2009), poverty rate in Pakistan has increased from 23.9 to 37.5 per cent in the last three years. In 2005, 35.5 million people were living below the poverty line, but in 2009, it has crossed much over the earlier figure. Due to unavailability of facilities and lack of development, the people of rural areas are getting poorer.

Furthermore, majority of the people living in these far flung villages and small towns are neglected in many ways. They do not have even the basic human rights. They seem to be cut off from the other developed areas; the urban areas. Most of the people in rural areas do not have access to employment opportunities and do not have any permanent income generation source. Majority of them being uneducated adopt manual labour as their vocation, which does not offer them enough income to make both ends meet.

People in rural areas are not even considered when decisions are made for them. National or government strategies and policies rarely focus on the rural areas. In these areas, there are excessive problems and issues rising from poverty - unavailability of pure drinking water, absence of basic health facilities, absence of good educational facilities, and lack of infrastructure.

Sense of inequality

This has been a great dilemma in the country that people belonging to the same state, having similar nationality are differentiated and discriminated into two major social classes: urban and rural. Now, the people in rural areas themselves feel inferior and backward as compared to the urban people. Because, once they are labelled “rural,” they are deprived of their very basic human, social and economic rights. Whether it’s the matter of amount of funds to be invested, planning and policies, quotas in urban universities and colleges, poverty alleviation programs, development projects, employment opportunities, social uplift programs or the institutional development, they are left behind. This kind of behaviour by the authority creates a sense of inequality among the people. The rights that people in big cities enjoy, the poor cannot even think of those.

No employment opportunities

There is a very small opportunity for employment and income generation in the rural areas due to lack of institutions and industrial sectors. Mostly people in rural areas are involved in agricultural activities or livestock industry and earn small amount of income.

Vocational training: as most of the rural people are uneducated, they cannot apply for good jobs. The government with the help of NGOs should provide effective and useful vocational training that may enable them to earn their living. Not only this, but the authority must arrange a program to utilize their learned skills and pay them their wages.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a good source of income generation opportunities and thus poverty alleviation. The government should encourage the public-private entrepreneurs to invest in this sector to uplift the rural areas by providing the local people with employment opportunities and cheap commodities. In this way we can also utilize our local resources besides labour, like agricultural products and other raw materials. These SMEs should provide the local people a chance to utilize their skills and expertise like handicrafts, pottery making, embroidery work etc. 

Microfinance: small credits can do a brilliant job by providing the poor a chance to earn their living through small level business. Though this system already exists in our economy, but lack of proper execution and management has caused failure to attain maximum benefits. So terms and conditions related with micro financing must be revisited.