It's our responsibility to eradicate poverty

Chhayankdhar
Maharaja Sawai Man Singh Vidyalaya
India

We are the first generation who can eradicate poverty. How can we make this happen? Poverty, the very word gives us cold shivers. It was because of this that the Romans said: 'Poverty is death in another form'. Although many measures have been taken on the global as well as the national level, this demon has not been eradicated. So now, the responsibility rests on our, the new generation's, shoulders. We must eradicate poverty so that the future of humankind is secure.

'Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.' So said Nelson Mandela. Slavery and apartheid have been eradicated from the planet due to the efforts of our forebears. So there is hope that poverty can also be eradicated if we make sincere efforts towards this. The reason behind this is that all the social evils, including poverty, are children of the human brain and can be eradicated by reforming our thoughts and beliefs.

Oscar Wilde once said: 'Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin, with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night'. Indeed, the people living in the darkness of poverty tend to choose the path of crime because this path is very attractive. Misery forces them to make this choice while shame tortures them inside. Unless they can be ushered into a new, bright world without poverty, they will never lead respectable lives. And we, the new generation, can bring about this change.

Every drop contributes towards making an ocean. If each one of us makes an effort to make poverty history, then poverty could soon be eradicated. Anais Nin once said: 'If all of us acted in unison as I act individually, there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way'.

Fair distribution of the world's wealth is a crucial factor. Income tax is levied in many countries of the world. If a certain portion of this and other taxes is used for eradicating poverty, then poverty will definitely be reduced. Statistics show that the active participation of governments for this cause has been very fruitful. India is one example: since the early 1990s, India has lifted 12 million people out of poverty every year.

Unfortunately, some of us can be selfish enough to question why our income should be taxed so as to benefit the people who are poor. A nation can never meaningfully progress however, unless poverty is eradicated from it. Moreover, wouldn’t we all enjoy living in an environment where there are no barriers and divisions of poverty? Indeed we will.

The General Assembly has declared 17 October as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The UN has declared 1997-2006 as the poverty eradication decade. But has poverty been eradicated? No. It is therefore very important that the new generation works for this goal.

Did you know that there are almost 1.1 billion people in Asia living on less than $1 a day? Indeed, Ursula K. LeGuin has so truly said: 'Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty'.

Child poverty is even more dangerous than poverty for others, as it means that children, the future of our planet, are at stake. Did you know that of the 57 million people worldwide who died last year, 10.5 million of them were children less than five years old? The majority of these children - some 98 per cent - were in developing nations and they were devoured by the demon of poverty. This is in spite of our conscience urging us to be more charitable. It is now very important that our generation bridges the gap between the rich and the poor.

We must stop lampooning other people's efforts and take the initiative ourselves. The new generation must bring a new dawn of equality in this world so that nobody eats the 'poverty grass' for, as David Lewis Paget has said,

Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know, alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.

Poverty grass
The paupered seed
So sickly poor, alas;
The souls of the great untamed grow weak
Despair
On poverty grass.

And you, my friend,
Grew sick awhile,
And cried and cried, alas;
While I grew fat on a flowering weed
Called pride
And poverty grass.

And when you left
The field to me
I almost died, alas;
For I was left in a fallow field
Piled high
In poverty grass.

Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know, alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.

Top     Senior Presentations     Discuss this presentation     Previous     Next