Poverty is a state of life in which a person lacks the financial resources and essentials commodities to earn a minimum standard of living such as housing, nutrition, clothing etc. Poverty is felt, when a person lacks socially acceptable amount of material possession. This is not a recent problem but prevailing from ancient times. More than 20 per cent of the world’s population is living under poverty. It is one of the major problems in the world because more than millions of people die every year. The problem of poverty started, when rich people began to get richer, making other less competent people poorer. Rich people started utilizing most of the resources for their leisure and other people were left with the scarcity of resources.
This particular issue leads to several problems in our society such as unemployment, illiteracy, inequality etc. Poor people do not have sufficient money to educate their children and then children do not live the standard/ basic lifestyle. Every day about 800 million people die under poverty. They do not have access to nutritious meals, healthy environment, safety and sanitation, medical facilities and much more to come up with.
The Philippine economy grew by 6.5 percent in the three months to June, likely one of the fastest in Asia, the government said on August 17, defying concerns over President Rodrigo Duterte’s unconventional leadership. / AFP PHOTO / Noel CELIS (Photo credit should read NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images)
In rural areas some of them do not have facilities of pure drinking water; they have to walk for a very long distance (over many kilometers) just to fetch water (unhealthy). Recently during the pandemic, in lockdown – billions of workers did not get their salaries and faced financial crisis. People, who get daily wages, faced toughest times of their lives. They did earn enough to feed themselves even a single time in a day, eventually ending up dying out of starvation. In the end they had to walk several miles and came back home.
There are many plausible reasons which lead a person into poverty. Such as lack of education, inequality, scarcity or resources, no strong support or no support at all, physical and mental problems, addictions, loss of things and living, not enough government aid and countless reasons to look for.
Lack of education limits the people from getting job opportunities and also the basic life opportunities. In today’s era, most of the jobs are available only for the educated and skilled people and less educated people miss the chances to get jobs. Due to poverty many parents (particularly in village/ remote areas) do not send their children specifically girls for studies and girls are forced to marry at a very young age. They become completely dependent to get the basic necessities on their husbands and families. If, by any chance… their husband dies or something happens to their earning sources, then they would simply work as a caretaker, domestic worker to fulfill the very minute needs (food, water and shelter) of human life and their lives become much harder than ever before.
If we talk about farmers in village there are numerous numbers of small farmers who do not get much profit in their farming due to multiple reasons for failure like erratic weather, insects, poor chemicals (very strong chemicals), market vendors not buying at MSPs, poor luck and many more to count on. They are unable to repay their loans, which they took from money lenders to sow the seeds. Unfavorable scenarios, forces them into vicious circle of debt trap. Chennai National Crime Record Bureau for 2014 reveals that about 70 farmers die every day in India due to financial crisis.
One of the main reasons of state of poverty is inequality. Inequality in very sense it can be social, economic, gender, caste etc. Poor becomes poorer and rich becomes richer. Children raised in rich families go to foreign lands for higher education on the other hand children of poor families don’t even have access to basic education. Some times their children are forced to beg.
According to the UNICEF’s Executive Director Henrietta Fore, child labor had faced a rise of 0.7% to 1.0% in certain countries. He said, “In times of crisis, child labor becomes a coping mechanism for many families.”
In a new survey done by Save the Children and UNICEF, the number of children living in multidimensional poverty has been soared up to 1.2 billion circa, due to COVID-19 pandemic and a rise of 15 percent in the number of children living in deprivation in low- and middle-income countries.
As per the available studies and data the poverty can be diminished to minimum levels by doing some changes in the system and the society. Some changes has to start from the caste system and deprivation of lower castes, corruption should fall, equal and dynamic education system, medical system, good structure for safety and sanitation, equal opportunities in jobs and basic necessities with no manipulation done by powerful and rich, to treat all humans equally by the society and the laws, and most of all having respect for each individual on this planet.