Half of the world lives on less than $2 a day. Every fifth child living in developing country doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. Every third person on this planet experiences poverty and its consequences. Every day 30000 children die world-wide due to hunger of preventable diseases.

In 2003 Mr. Nelson Mandela called for “Make Poverty History” - the statement is still relevant. In 1980 over 400 million people were below the poverty line in India, even today, over 400 million people are below poverty line in India. All these policies of development have failed to help us in our fight against poverty.

Most of the people living on the planet are struggling for basic needs – drinking water, food, shelter, health, education and employment. What we need is to spread “Access and Affordability” of these essentials. We have to deploy latest technologies in spreading the essentials.

Have you been in an examination, where you know the answers of every question, but spend all your time in other formalities and don’t get the time to answer the questions? How would you feel at that time? We all are facing that feeling every day. We know the solutions for poverty, but we have been spending all our resources in un-necessary things and not doing enough to fight against poverty.

The present day poverty is a man-made problem. It is due to our own policies and programmes. The government purposefully adopts such policies, which cause extreme poverty and ultimate put the marginal farmers and labourers in precarious conditions. Take up dearness for example. Most of dearness is due to government policies (passing burden of mis-administration to common people by increasing taxes, cess and additional charges). As dearness rises, the government increases salaries of government employees to placate them. However, the price of agriculture produce doesn’t rise proportionately at the ground level and the farmer bears extra burden of the rising prices. Similarly the income of the small entrepreneurs and wage-earners cannot rise in proportion to rising dearness and they face the burden.

Every other day you can listen about some heroic announcements from the government for allocation of budget for such and such cause (for example, recent announcement of Rs. 80000 Crore package for Jammu and Kashmir). Where does the money come from? Every other day there are un-productive expenditures, which common people have to bear (for example: recent Swatchhta Cess- why should common people bear additional burden when the government is already paying salaries and allowances to employees engaged for maintaining cleanliness?).  

The entire world is ready to allocate resources for any un-productive activities but not for fighting against poverty. The budget for arms, ammunition etc. of only one country (the USA) alone is over 120 times the budget required for eliminating Malaria – the disease which kills over 6 lakh people annually. The amount of money that is spent on research and development of arms and ammunition would be sufficient to eliminate most of the preventable diseases.
Lets all join together to raise our voice against public policies, which are at present causing poverty, and lets welcome those policies, which can eliminate poverty.  I have list down only three points (out of many such points which we all know): -

Let’s force governments to spread low-cost health care facilities using latest technologies in villages and far off places (including spreading mobile health vans all across regions).

Let’s force governments to provide access to clean drinking water, electricity, roads and information connectivity all across villages and remote places

Let’s force governments to stop all additional taxes, cess and surcharges which would burden common people with increased dearness.

When King Ashok the Great could construct Saray in every corner of the country and spread knowledge and wisdom even out of the country over 2200 years ago, why cant the present government eliminate poverty using latest technologies, resources and ideas?