Poorvoices’s Blog

Cover page of the research paper

I want to share a brief description of a Research paper entitled “Migration and Land Alienation and Ethnic Conflict: Causes of Poverty in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh” by Sapan Adnan.

Chittagong hill tract (CHT) is situated in the southeast corner of the Bangladesh. It is the home for indigenous people like the Jumma, the Paharis or the hills people. There are many hills and cliffs with thick vegetation. It is different than other “alluvial, monsoon- flooded plains” of other parts in Bangladesh. Though the area is located in the international border with India and Myanmar, people living there have very hard life. Though different development projects like Kaptai Hydroelectricity are established, but many other factors cause poverty in the area.

According to the research, some of the major causes of the poverty in the area are as listed below:

·         Exploitation of land area

·         Loss of lands, forests and biodiversity

·         Breakdown of community-based institutions

·         Cultural Values and norms

Major factors affecting poverty are:

·         Privatization

·         Globalization

·         Ethnic conflicts

·         Political violence

From above information, we can extrapolate that poverty means not only lack of resources but lack of mind to utilize it. Though people in CHT have resources many factors impede them from using the resources to raise their life style.

References:

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no37745.htm

http://www.pbm-cht.org/chittagong_hill_tracts.html

Location and Map of Trinidad

Today I was reading a post in one of the poverty news blog. I am sharing my feelings after reading the post.

“The country of Trinidad is about to host the Summit of the Americas. In preparation for the event some clean up the city has taken place. Some of the efforts to clean up include taking homeless to shelters, but it also includes building walls to hide sections of the city with high poverty.”

Firstly, I thought it is obvious to keep the street clean; after all such a big Summit was going to be held. Then, I thought is it rational to give the homeless home just so the rich people won’t see the poor faces. According to the news, a 5-foot tall was built to block the view of poor communities from the “gathering of hemispheric leaders” including President Barak Obama.

I don’t understand why the government should hide, the poverty, what should be addressed as major issue of their country. The Summit would be a great opportunity to discuss about the condition of the poor people and finding solutions to the problem. Rather than spending money to build those walls, it could have been utilized in some other beneficial works for the people they want to hide.

“They can talk prosperity. They can talk about development. But there can be no development in a country if you continue to leave behind any community or any of your people.” These are words of Sherma Wilson, a community activist.

Yes, it is true because unless a person in one community lives under poverty line, the community is not developed because each person is very important entity of a community or a country. This act of government of Trinidad adds to hundreds of other examples of how people build walls between rich and poor; instead of breaking it. 

References:

http://www.geographicguide.net/america/pictures/trinidad-tobago.jpg

http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/

Graphs showing annual and monthly inflation rate in Bangladesh

 From fig-1, we can infer that the annual inflation rate in Bangladesh has suddenly increased from the year 2006-2007 to 2007-2008. Also the inflation rate in all the levels; national, rural and urban are almost similar. Whereas, in the fig-2 it shows that monthly inflation rate is increasingly rapidly in rural areas than urban areas.

From the two graphs, it is explicitly seen that inflation rate in Bangladesh in continuously increasing each year. And from the second graph, it shows that the inflation rate is high in rural areas where people have limited sources of income. I wonder how the people from villages would be able to pay for the basic needs like food. 

In one hand, poor people are suffering because they cannot pay for the high price. On the other hand, incomes of people do not increase with price rise which again affects people’s economy.  Overall, increase in inflation rate affects economy of whole country. It is truly said that “individual tragedy and nation’s hardships go hand in hand.”

References:

http://www.bbs.gov.bd/na_wing/CPI_January-09.pdf

            Yesterday as I was researching about poverty in the internet, I came across with an interesting way of measuring poverty. I thought my readers would find it interesting, thus scribbles some words about poverty maps.
             There is huge difference between the levels of poverty within a country. It is hard to implement any strategy without having enough information from different geographical areas. The data sets that visualize the “incidence and magnitude of poverty across space” are called poverty maps. They are constructed including both monetary indicators such as consumption and income and also non monetary such as social and structural indicators. Data becomes clearer when hidden geographical variables are considered when collecting data. Poverty maps are useful in identifying whether or not geographical factor of a place affect economy of the place. They have made execution of effective measures in alleviating poverty through information on poverty from different parts of a country. After all, a country gets fully developed when each of its part is economically strong.
             But I wonder will these measuring strategies really compute actually poverty of a country? Though poverty maps include all non monetary factors, do they really include all the factors that affect economy of a country? Will, in future, policy makers come with an approach that measures actual poverty of any country? Can it be possible?

Reference:
http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:JVCLpxVBpkUJ:povlibrary.worldbank.org/files/5319_povmap.pdf+different+aspect+of+poverty&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=bd

The Marshall Island

After discussing impacts of humans on environment for almost 4 weeks, recently we had a very interesting discussion in our class about impacts of environment on human. During the discussion, I realized that many aspects of human lives such as social and economy are affected by environment. In this post, I would like to discuss briefly about the ideas of how poverty can be resulted because of environment.
There are many places in the world where harsh environment of the place directly affects people’s lives there. One of such place is Marshall Island. Below are some of the facts about the Marshall Island from the CIA fact book:

Location: Oceania, two archipelagic island chains of 29 atolls, each made up of many small islets, and five single islands in the North Pacific Ocean, about half way between Hawaii and Australia.
Natural Resources: Coconut Products, Marine products and Deep seabed minerals.
Irrigated Lands: 0 sq km
Environmental issues: Inadequate supplies of portable water; pollution of Majuro lagoon from household waste and discharges from fishing vessels.

From the above facts, we can surmise that the environment of the Marshall Island has great impacts on economy of the people living there. The lands in the Marshall Island are not favorable for cultivation and there are only little natural resources. Thus, they import a lot of food which cost them huge amount of money for shipping for food. Hence, though the Marshall Island has enough human resource, there are not adequate natural resources to earn their living.
I am very grateful to Ms. Angela for sharing her ideas about the Marshal Island from her experiences.

References:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rm.html

                In my previous post, I discussed about some of the measures we can take to alleviate poverty. While writing that I wondered whether or not we could end poverty, and in a second one name stroke into my mind, Jeffery Sachs. I knew about him from one of my teachers when we were discussing about global problems.

               In reference to Jeffrey Sachs’ work, Onnesha Roychoudhuri says “one of the world’s top economists offers a blueprint for transforming the developing world.” You might me wondering who actually Jeffrey Sachs is. Below is a brief introduction on Jeffrey Sachs and the reason for including him in my blog.

              Jeffery Sachs is an American economist, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He has 25 years of experience observing the world from many vantage points which helped him to shed light on the most vital issues like the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the very real possibilities for a poverty- free future. He is the author of the book “The End of Poverty: Economic possibilities for our time” where he has stated that “Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time.”

                  In the book, Sachs provides “conceptual map of the world economy” and categorized different countries accordingly, “explaining why wealth and poverty have diverged and evolved as they have and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of economies.” For almost all the countries in the world, he has also suggested set of solutions to the “tangled economic, political, environmental, and social issues” that hinders societies’ development.

                  According to writer singer Bono, “Sachs is an economist who can bring to life statistics that were, after all, lives in the first place. He can look up from the numbers and see faces through the spreadsheets. Rather than a sense of how daunting the world’s problems are, Sachs provides an understanding of how solvable they are — and why making the effort is both our ethical duty and a self-interested strategic necessity.”

                I also believe that people’s ethical duty and a self-interested strategic is most crucial element in ending not only problems of poverty but also other global problems like climate change and terrorism.

Reference:

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/news/2005/story03-01-05e.html

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/pages/endofpoverty/index

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/05/end-poverty-interview-jeffrey-sachs

Rich Chittagong, Poor people Part 2

              In Part 1, I talked about how increase in population due to immigration causes poverty. Also, factors like illiteracy, unemployment and the social factors like dowry system and gender inequality are also the main causes for poverty in Chittagong. In this part, I want to discuss some of the measures that can help people come over the poverty line.

             To solve any problem, we should have a better knowledge on the causes of the problem. As mentioned in Part 1, immigration from the nearby villages is the root cause of poverty in Chittagong. So, if we can stop the immigration rate, we can solve the problem.

             Most of the people in the villages are illiterate and depend on agriculture for their living. Since they do not have access to technology and equipments, they cannot yield equal to their efforts. So, for better earning they move to city areas with dreams of getting better jobs and end up in slums with jobs such as rickshaw pulling and jobs at construction sites. Thus, educating people in the villages and providing them better job opportunities can be the best possible way to alleviate poverty.

              Providing efficient technological aid for agricultural purpose can help to add up to total food production of the place which can benefit the whole country. It not only opens ways for income but also helps to reduce problems like hunger. Also, empowerment of women can add up to family income ultimately raising the living standard of people.

             Also as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, social factors like dowry system and gender inequality also indirectly cause poverty. Thus, if we can eradicate such practices, they can help to reduce poverty. 

 In my previous post, I talked about different faces of poverty. Causes of poverty vary from place to place. I found an interesting article those talks about marriage dowry as one of the cause for poverty in Bangladesh. I think most of you might have not given it a single thought.

             Early marriages and dowry system are entrenched problems of south Asian countries. According to a research from the University of Bath, “Dowry payments of more than 200 times the daily wage and costly medical expenses are major causes of this chronic poverty.”

    The results of the research showed that illiterate people with less income had hard time escaping poverty because they had to take loans for marriages of their children and younger siblings. Though dowry system is illegal in Bangladesh, still it is practiced in rural areas, also in city areas like Chittagong. Moreover, medical expenses for the elderly members of family are also another cause for poverty in rural areas. People in Bangladesh normally pay more than 20,000 Taka which highly contributes to families with many daughters, while average earning of people is around 100 Taka. 

               Dr. Peter Davis, the researcher, says that “Some families face a ‘double whammy’, having to pay wedding expenses and dowry for their daughters at the same time in life when elderly relatives are needing more expensive medical care.”

               Bangladeshi government has encouraged enrolment of girls in school to end the practice of dowry system. On the basis of their research, the researchers have said that proper education, employment and health facilities could play vital role in alleviating poverty in families of rural areas.

               In general, I think education plays a major role in ending dowry system. If girls are educated, they can be independent and early marriage and abuses from husband after marriage are also prevented. I believe education is the best dowry any parent can give to their daughters. To conclude, ending dowry system not only uproots an evil system from our societies but also assists in alleviating poverty. 

 References:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/127710.php

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/rjo0592l.jpg