I was going through my philosophical rambling with my mentor on how we human have progressed, and suddenly put forward a question , “how to decrease poverty ?”, and i was speechless.

I started thinking about Poverty. What is meant to be poor ?, when you dont have enough to eat. For, America, Poverty means, when you dont have T.V, For UN, it is when your income is less then one dollar per day. that is , if one earns less then 1200 rupees per month, he is poor. But then i again thought, that this decision, does not take into account, inflation, about cost of living, price of food, and above all the “bailout money” provided by the american goverment, which above all, will affect the value of Dollar in the future.

Rather then explaining what is being poor ?, i want to muse on what is being poor. Now as i see, it is nothing to eat, means living in poverty. If a person gets easy access to food then he is not poor, well agreed. Now, I see a beggar, who i have seen for the last four years, sitting at the door steps of “Dher ka Balaji” mandir, i.e temple near my house. He gets plenty of food, that is for sure, and i constantly see him sitting there. Now, i know he is poor, but he constantly lives in poverty. So there is no use of using the above defination and hence the method to uplift poverty. Cause, basing on this assumption, and the empirical evidence, i see, providing food will not help people to get uplifted.

Then what is it being poor, is it a state of mind, as you see that a person getting regular food through “beggary”, would stop working.

Now, why we look at Japan and say it is rich, and again look at India , and see its poor. Well, Slumdog Millionaire paints the picture of the abject poverty India lives in.What it shows, not the dearth of food, but the dearth of good shelter, and dearth of security. For my defination, whom i consider to be poor, i would take the defination of Maslow.

Now, for those who do not know about Maslow hierarchy of needs, just click on the following link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow_hierarchy_of_needs

Now,For me poor people are those for whom Physiological and Safety needs are not satisfied. So, in the case of Slumdog, the people depicted no doubt have plenty to eat, but they lack safety, good shelter, and always have a gnawing tension of survival.

Now the second question, how to erase poverty ?

Now, there are two ways to remove it. One is more to do with the system, and the other is more humanistic approach.

The system approach is simple, create more avenues or puncture more holes in the Rich men belly so that money trickle down to the poor. Now pucnturing is always done by the goverment, and which have not , in history , has done anything. From greeks to Y2K, the Rich men belly are piped to the Administrative people, to fill there own belly, leaving the poor in there own state. The second approach is creating avenues, that is done by Grameen bank in Bangladesh,which provided cheap credit to the poor, and to all surprise, they were more trustful then the guys from wallstreet, they not only return the money,but also the grameen bank uplifted many people from “poverty”. More Industries, More fertilizers and More Greed are other method to improve “poverty”. Now these all are system approach, the second approach, is the “humanistic approach”.

Now, i thank god, for having made me born in an elite society, but i live in a very “intellectually poor” society. Now too much money, will no doubt make everyone rich, but do money is the sole driver and sole goal of human life. Now if money and comfort remains the sole motto, then man is doomed to remain in poverty. What i see around is kind of “Status Poverty” ?, What my father friend, who is a CEO of a reputed company, put the current generation as, “longing for status” . If you have a Maruti, go for Santro, then go to Honda City, then go for Merc, and then there is a spiraling of endless desire.

Now, my approach to remove poverty is the approach towards art, and i am happy that providing good music, providing easy access to Television, to the poor , minus the fear driven news, will provide human a view to look at the world with wonder.

Opening more libraries, more parks then malls, making newspaper which stimulate thought then showing glamour parties, and making “South Park”, free to watch are some of the approach, which can lift a man from real world poverty to imaginative wonder.