'POOR' ISSUE
| Date :16-Oct-2019 |
THE fundamental issue raised by Professor Abhijit Banerjee, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics seems to relate to what many thinkers have touched upon over time, like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya -- controlling or regulating socio-cultural consumption imperatives of people with no resource. Now that Prof. Banerjee, his wife Ms. Esther Duflo, and Professor Michael Kremer have won a joint Economics Nobel, there will be a more pointed discourse on the issue. Let us hope that the world will certainly pick up the right strands of thought from the work of the trio and gets going in its fight against poverty as a global scourge. In his book ‘Poor Economics’, Prof. Banerjee has raised some basic issues seeking the answers for which may bring us close to a right method to combat poverty.
“Why should a man in Morocco who does not have enough to eat buy a television? Why is it so hard for children in poor areas to learn even when they attend school? Does having lots of children actually make you poorer? Answering questions like these is critical if we want to have a chance to really make a dent against global poverty,” Prof. Banerjee has written in the book. At this precise point in time, it is necessary to think more deeply about the various dimensions of these questions raised by Prof. Banerjee. These questions seem to relate more to socio-cultural patterns that actually influence thinking of members of any modern society, no matter whether they are poor or rich.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has said in its citation, “The research conducted by this year’s Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research”. It is obvious that the new Laureates have really added some basic points to the core economic thought in which proper management of available resources -- howsoever low -- by defining what the people at that low level of economic facility should require for consumption and how it could be disciplined. So, a man in Morocco, for example, who does not have enough to eat may not opt for a television set for his home.
There is yet another angle that the new Laureates seem to have insisted upon -- about how the overall poverty saps the energy of the afflicted people. Hence the issue as to why children from poor economic background are not in a position to learn or study even when they attend school? Both these angles, for example, have a strong cultural core -- which needs to be mastered. It appears that the Laureates have stepped out of pure economic thought and have tried to extend their outreach to discussing how people with poor resources respond to various facets of life. They also seem to have dwelt on issues of what people generally think to be imperatives of consumption.
Basic thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Upadhyaya and Dr. Lohiya have talked of similar aspects of individual and collective economic behaviour of people. Gandhiji used the concept of aparigraha (declining to consume or store anything that is not needed) to promote economic discipline in people of all resource-levels. Various economic theorists also have touched upon the issue of imperatives of consumption and the social influences that bear upon the way people define their life’s needs. On a practical level, this approach to management of individual economics may prove highly effective. The Laureate threesome seems to have applied this core thought to the experiment it conducted for two decades. There is a reason to believe that a possible practical method of combating poverty has finally emerged.