Poor, poor and poor

I am going to share you an idea which is very much realistic as i belong to India: a village. I am reading a book namely "Poor Economics" by Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Du Flo.

Paragraph which touched my heart:

"The basic idea of a nutrition-based poverty trap is that there exists a critical level of nutrition, above or below which dynamic forces push people either further down into poverty and hunger or further up into better-paying jobs and higher-calorie diets. These virtuous or vicious cycles can also last over generations: early childhood under-nutrition can have long-term effects on adult success. Maternal health impacts in utero development. And it’s not just quantity of food – quality counts, too. Micronutrients like iodine and iron can have direct impacts on health and economic outcomes.

But if nutrition is so important, why don’t people spend every available extra cent on more calories? From the look of our eighteen-country dataset, people spent their money on food… and festivals, funerals, weddings, televisions, DVD players, medical emergencies, alcohol, tobacco and, well, better-tasting food. So what stands in the way of better nutrition for the poor? And what policies can eradicate the “hidden hunger” of a population who may feel sated but whose diet lacks essential micronutrients?"

I am not going to focus on the answers of the questions rather i would like to comment on certain rather fact. These shcolars, while describing poverty and poor economics, have use S shaped curve which obviously based upon the prsent and it is true, in my view, that each of us are living on S shaped curve.

When both the scholars are surprised by the fact that especially in India, Bangladesh and S.Africa, people pay more on wastage than on nutrition, we should be aware of the fact that these poor are poor because their thinking are poor as narrated elsewhere in the book that in Udaipur, India, they were visiting a primary health care centre and the village was affected by cholera. Patients were not prescribed ORS (Oral Rehydration Solutions) because poor were in a notion that costly medicine can only work not these free kind of things. (ORS is about to be freely available as discussed).

I am a man who have seen village from heart and soul. Though my education and living were in a town but i am attached to the village. I have seen people who have no future planning, who have nothing to give as a nutrition to their children, who have nothing to provide their children education, they are very much keen on physical luxary. I suspect, govt.'s economic policy can do alone anything. They need counselling, they need thinking out of politics, thereafter poverty can be alliviated.

"What Would Happen if There Was No School"

Dear Reader,

This post is nothing but an essay written by ISHU SINGH, A CLASS V STUDENT, LUCKNOW. This essay was published in "Pratham Annual Status of Education Report 2005: Final Edition." I am posting this for her appraisal how an Indian Girl Think. Brilliant Essay.

A class V student can learn this.

Can We?