Saturday, October 15, 2016

Poverty: A Wise Invention





People who invent things are either wise or they are struck by the need to do it. We usually think of science when it comes to invention, but one of the hottest, most concerned and famous challenge of the society, poverty, was a wicked invention. The inventor of poverty did not only have the need to invent it but indeed were very wise about it. This thorny word we come across today has an interesting history. This was not a problem, but a very significant factor for the westerners who created it. The idea did not start from a person being hungry for several days rather countries especially the decolonizing nations were declared as underdeveloped and poor who needed help. After World War II, world was divided into three blocs: Capitalists (First world), Communist (second world) and postcolonial bloc were named as third world. Philip McMichael says “The third World, the remaining half of humanity-most of whom were still food-growing rural dwellers-was represented in economic language as impoverisehd or, in Fanon’s politico-cultural language, as the “wretched of the earth.” ” (Page 44, instituting the development project). Poverty was branded only by material poverty.  A question arises that why were the westerners doing this?
By categorizing decolonizing nations as third world on the basis of GDP, an issue was created and they looked for ways to deal with this issue. Countries were judged comparatively; low GDP to higher GDP and a sense was created among the third world nations that they were lacking something and they needed to develop. Escobar states: (Page 81, The problematization of Poverty) “Almost by fiat, two thirds of the world’s people were transformed into poor subjects in 1948 when the World Bank defined as poor those countries with an annual per capita income below $100. And if the problem was one of insufficient income, the solution was clearly economic growth”. Thus the idea of modernity and development were pitched in to make the process of economic growth look more serious and formal. Economical growth became the goal for all so called underdeveloped nations and they even prioritize it before humans. “In a nutshell, modernization theory posited that the world was composed of national societies, some of whom are “ahead” on the road of progress or development, and others who are “behind”.”
(By Majed Akhter, TQ Salon | Electrifying Development in magazine Tanqeed).
 Many lives were snatched in the process and several were kicked out of their lands. The big question then was how to grow the economy and how to deal with the challenges which Escobar has termed as “abnormalities”. The answer was pretty obvious that capital investment was the utmost ingredient for economic growth. The capital coming from domestic saving was very less, so the only way for becoming capitalist for the new born countries was by importing machines from the European and other developed countries to make their own industries, factories etc. This act of import needed a huge amount of export of raw materials to the capitalist countries as foreign exchange. Here they were: sucking the resources of the underdeveloped countries according to their needs and playing it wisely by saying that they were fighting the poverty. Furthermore, this was not the end; they designed the issue of poverty in a structural way to make it live forever and thus it has been a discourse.
In the name of bringing development in the third world, professionals were introduced who not only studied the society of the poor but also they had their control on these nations psychologically. A minor example is the HAG (Harvard Advisory Group) who was sent to Pakistan telling them how to run our own country. In this way, they made the countries feel that they definitely are poor and they should look into themselves with the eyes of the rich nations. The analogy of whitening creams is a good way to describe how the professionals affected the third world people, their cultures and their general thinking in the name of modernizing and developing those nations. “ Indigenous populations had to be modernized, where modernization meant the adaptation of the” right” values, namely, those held by white minority or mestizo majority.”  (Escobar, Page85, The problematization of Poverty).  Poverty was literally used as wings to modernity and development and vice versa. Along with professionalization, the institutionalization of poverty was also necessary to give it a global look and to not let the issue go any dim. Escobar puts it very clearly on Page 88 that the work of development institutions has not been an innocent effort on behalf of the poor, but has been able to control countries and populations. In conclusion, the philanthropists we see today in the name of US AID, etc, are not really a support but follow up of the wise invention the west named as poverty.

“Mera tareeq ameeri nehi faqeeri hae                                                                                      
 Khudi na bhaej, ghareebi mae naam paida kar!”








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