Poverty to prosperity
ECONOMIC growth is paramount for any country. The COVID-19 pandemic is worsening things. We have seen various economic turbulences from the decade.
Recently, one was Global Financial Crisis (GFC-2009). However, this COVID-19 pandemic not only attacked the health of people around the globe, but also made many governments, organisations, MNCs, MSMEs, SMEs, private companies and public limited companies go through extreme economic challenges.
Many of the established organisations, whether small or big, have faced bankruptcy, winding of operations, shutting doors to customers and employees with a huge catastrophic effect to various stakeholders in the business domain. This is one of the worst situation human kind of this generation has had to go through, where the extreme catastrophe is felt on both in the health sector and the economy.
This situation further worsens the issue of the health sector and economic poverty to organisations as well as individuals. When individuals go through this extreme effect of economic catastrophe, individual income sometimes reaches zero level. That’s where many individuals and families go through poverty and sometimes extreme poverty by putting people on the road to beg. This article will discuss the issue of poverty and how individuals can consider to get away from poverty and look for new opportunity to embrace the path of prosperity.
The word poverty derives its roots from the French word pauvre, meaning poor. It means the state of lacking material possessions, of having little or no means to support oneself. Any human being lacking the basic necessity of life to remain alive or lack of leading basic life is in poverty. It has generally been used in a manner so as to depict an element of money in it.
Poverty is a very wide and vast term. Its use cannot be restricted. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen sees poverty as the deprivation of basic capabilities/opportunities/ choices rather than merely as lowness of incomes. We can in this discussion conclude that poverty is not a state of material resources, but the state of mind that one lives with. People can have money, but a poor state of mind (depression, anxiety insecurity, uncertainty) will not lead to their prosperity. Thus, we need to separate the state of being financially sound and prosperous. The two of them are not synonymous. People can have a bare minimum of financial resources (enough to support oneself) and yet, at the same time be prosperous if they have good health, if the mind is healthy, and there exists a zeal to do something. It is the health of the mind which is the yardstick for measuring the prosperity of an individual. One needs to be wealthy by the mind and not by the pocket to be called prosperous.
Awareness of poverty was not that strong few years back, especially in Pacific nations. When we say poverty, there are various types of poverty we discussed above. As stated, poverty can be in relationship, financial, social, esteem, health and general living. However, we will focus poverty on monetary sense, which is becoming a modern world basic necessity. When the world started shrinking and globalisation took place rapidly, people from lower to middle class society structure evolved in understanding the importance of basic needs. A few years back, there were no comparison between different social class, caste, religion, ethnicity and people were happy with their lifestyle and their needs. This was because there were no globalisation and people used to live in their own domain, without getting exposure to other races, religion, living styles. The community used to live on their own with limited expectations and not exposed to global world to live their lives. Happiness index was certainly high in all communities just a few decades ago. People use to be less greedy and not exposed to material lifestyle. Society in general was caring, understanding, fulfilling and helped each other. This can still be observed and experienced with many Pacific nation communities. These characteristics were in the genes of society.
Over a period, globalisation and technology in our day to day lives has converted basic wants in two basic needs. With the evolving technology and economic growth, society living standards increased and generation X and Y demands have also grown substantially. The human being becomes more self-conscious and self-interested in their own lives. Joint family structure moved to a nucleus family structure to one person in one home. Kind of individualistic lifestyle.
One of the factors to consider in poverty alleviation is cultural values. Pacific culture was quite different than that of a western society. In Pacific society, people’s needs do not focus on individual needs, but of a society in general. This is really good as well as interesting where communities help each other in the cases of crisis. They shoulder the burden in all Pacific nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands, Guam, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Samoa, American Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor, Tonga and Vanuatu.
In PNG and also in Fiji, local residents got a concept of “one talk” where society is clustered with a small group of people with the same descent. You hardly see this beauty of “one talk” in other parts of the world where individualism is the new norm.
However, a society helping each other has its own limitations. The burden on a society is increasing rapidly. If the individual is unable to generate basic income; then that person won’t be able to share the income to other society members. This change of income generation vs existing modern lifestyle need gap will have a huge pressure to support each other. There will be a time, when Fiji and Pacific society will be unable to undertake this burden of one family structure or “one talk” system.
According to the Global Monitoring Report from the World Bank, extreme poverty has declined significantly. In 2011 one billion people (14.5 per cent of the world’s population) could be classified as extremely poor, down from 1.25 billion (18.6 per cent of the world’s population) in 2008. The World Bank Group’s interim target of reducing poverty to single digits by 2020 seems non-achievable now because of COVID-19 pandemic situation, where substantial job losses happened apart from a huge percentage of deaths all over the world. However, efforts to reduce poverty by all global organisations will not reach 3 per cent by 2030 without accelerating the efforts of governments in Pacific Island nations and genuine political will and society will reduce poverty.
According to Global Monitoring Report (GMR) World Bank Group (WBG) proposed two goals to measure the success in promoting sustainable economic development and to monitor its own effectiveness in delivering results.
The first goal is to essentially end extreme poverty by reducing the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to less than 3 per cent of the global population by 2030. The extreme poverty relates to hunger, water, education, sanitation, hospital and medical services to cure basic diseases.
The second goal is to promote shared prosperity by improving the living standards of the bottom 40 per cent of the population in every country. The shared prosperity means when developed nations do not have these basic problems and they wish to share this prosperity among the other nations and their residents in a uniform way. Critically, the goals need to be pursued in ways that sustainably secure the future of the planet and its resources, promote social inclusion, and limit the economic burdens, reduce slavery, give basic human needs to each and every human being on this planet.
According to World Bank study, growth has many drivers. There is broad consensus that macroeconomic stability, investments in financial, human, and physical capital, including infrastructure, good governance, even handed regulation of enterprises and financial institutions are at the core of any strategy for enhancing growth. However, more is needed to make economic growth inclusive and sustainable which will benefit not only a certain section of people, but uplift the underprivileged in society on this planet.