Poverty vs. Prosperity

Nandy brings up a very important point in his article, “The Beautiful, Expanding Future of Poverty,” stating that poverty is not the problem, our idea of prosperity is. It is true that despite years and years of prosperity, the world still is plagued with the problem of poverty. While Nandy lists a bunch of possibilities as to what states could do in order to reduce poverty -- like getting rid of nuclear armament for the United States, and for buying cheaper grain instead of consumer goods and military products for India – he goes on to say that no matter what states do, there will always be poverty. Poverty is kind of like a social norm, or a binary relationship, such that wherever there is prosperity there will inevitably be poverty. In addition Nandy states that, “Many communities did not know they were poor until development agencies told them so.” (116) It seems to me that not much has be done in the war against poverty, and as Nandy says, it seems that instead of fixing old problems, only new, modernized forms of poverty have been added to the world’s problems.

Poverty is also becoming more of an economic issue, rather than an ethnic or cultural problem. Those that are rich in the United States are very different than those that are considered rich in Third World countries. It is the same with the poor; it changes relative to the country you are considering. World views are constantly changing, as is the perception of what a “normal” life should be. It is hard to qualify at this point those that are living in poverty, because there seem to be some many different levels of poverty. While Nandy blames everything to be economically related, I don’t think that you can entirely count out cultural and ethnic factors. It is without a doubt that those living in Third World countries, with different cultural and ethnic customs than us in the United States, will have a different poverty line. And even though people are trying to come up with solutions to the poverty problem it will no doubtedly require some sort of “sacrifice” of those not living in poverty. While we would like to say that we want to help others that are in need, it is difficult to change one’s standard of living. It is very hard to take away the comforts most of the United State’s citizens are used to since they have grown so accustomed to them. Then again, poverty is not the problem according to Nandy, prosperity is.