The menace of poverty

Madhur
Maharaja Sawai Man Singh Vidyalaya
India

Poverty can be defined as a person or a family not having enough money to take care of their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. It is a problem that presents a challenge to many countries worldwide. Although this phenomenon is present everywhere, its incidence is greater in developing countries.

More than 1.1 billion people worldwide sleep hungry every night, with the hope of seeing tomorrow as a day when they will get food to eat. According to the World Bank, a person is declared poor when he/she earns less than $1 a day. The level of poverty is worst in developing countries, where about 26% of the population sleep hungry. Poverty is a menace that is very tricky to handle.

Contributing factors to poverty are overpopulation, crime, substance abuse and exploitation of the poor by the rich. Other factors include a lack of infrastructure and opportunities. Such factors not only cause poverty but also debilitate the process of development. And the debilitation of this process leads to a world devoid of education, poor health and ignorance.

Poverty is worse than it seems. We cannot imagine ourselves, in the wildest of our dreams, being or sleeping hungry for one night. Well, this hunger of poor people certainly dents their psyche and makes their life very difficult. In the age when children should go to school, play with their friends, look forward to the first day of the school after fun-filled holidays, some are forced to work in factories or other commercial places to earn money for the sake of their poor family. Poverty leads to starvation, unemployment, illicit human trafficking, illiteracy, emigration, drug abuse and increased suicides.

Although we have looked at the dark side of poverty, there is also a silver lining. Governments of many developing countries are trying to eliminate, reduce or eradicate this menace. They are doing this by implementing five year plans and policies, such as millennium development goals which entail making school free with mid-day meals, imparting knowledge about community health, promoting breastfeeding and upgrading slums. A great deal of effort, however, is required to monitor the implementation of these plans.

We, as global citizens and the future of our nations, must help in combating this menace. For this we must follow these steps: we must help in spreading literacy, we must identify the people who are vulnerable to or are suffering from poverty and make necessary arrangements through various organisations by providing them with food and shelter and education. We should also encourage people to give direct monetary aid to these organisations so that they can serve the poor people in a better way. But the important decisions lie in the hands of the government officials who determine the overall course of action. So it is the combined efforts of the government and the people that will help us in combating this global menace.

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