The Return of Poverty
[I first wrote and posted this in July of last year. Recently, the U.N released a statement that 3-4 million of our countryfolks in Myanmar are likely to be starving in the coming 2-3 months, and about half of our people will go down under the poverty line in the coming year. Ah yes, they said this.]
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All along these years, when it comes to the ‘reduction of poverty’, we have been constantly on the bright side. Be it in Africa, or in India, or in China, or in other third world countries, poverty and the numbers of dirt-poor people are said to be in constant decline. Within the past 30 years, China alone has pulled nearly 800 million people out of poverty! Yes, the greatest feat of this kind in history.
India did the great performances too. Africa, as a union, is rising. Now, even Africans have their billionaire club, with some of them were in the Forbes list. Latin America has been, for the most part, doing fine. South East Asia has been doing fine. All in all, we have been in a ‘Golden Age’ of poverty reduction for the last three decades. The global GDP, as a whole, was on the rise.
Maybe Covid will end this era and demand for new measures on the issue. Currently, we are under lock downs. Business is ‘not as usual’. They are not functioning fully, as before, and nobody knows for sure how long this condition will last. Amidst them all, just before Covid, we have the warnings from scholars of the WHO who say that, because of global climate change, our old friends like TB, the plague, or big, big flus can be re-emerging in the future.
With all these economic shutdowns, and with a good chunk of our budget allocations being re-directed more and more on the new Covid issues, we will have weaker programs on poverty and less energetic efforts for poverty reduction.
Covid lifted the veil on the true faces of the superpowers and made them show us their true identities. And in the future, we are witnessing more and more arm races, especially in Asia Pacific. And nobody will stay behind. (Even hot wars between superpowers are possible. Maybe regionally or by proxies after the fashion of Korea or Vietnam.)
The above prospects, plus a toothless United Nations, all translate to the fact that poverty reduction will be less of a priority issue in the coming future, and that again, it will translate to the fact that more regional conflicts will be rising in developing countries under the title of countless issues. And that will enhance the probability of proxy wars among Superpowers.
So it begins.
Yes, this how it always begins.
Phoe Wa
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