I have been reading Muhammad Yunus’s book, Creating A World Without Poverty, and the book is turning out to be nothing like I imagined. I expected the book to be preachy and filled with anecdote of giving and living together as one, it was not. It is a book with some smart and logical arguments for a different world view about doing business. I will put up a proper review in a few days when I done reading it. Here, I’d like to share the most poignant point that spoke to me in the book. Poor people are human. A simple idea, but policy makers and academics mostly meet this point. An African adage (translated literary), he that has found himself in a pit does not care whether the helping hand is dirty or not. This may not necessarily true in the fight against poverty. Economist over the decades have intentionally (for a good reason too) ignored the human angle to most economic principles because of the difficulty associated with modelling the phenomenon. However with poverty, the question that begs for an answer is whether poverty can be checked by policies that are many degrees removed from the human story.
Take this documentary (2006) for instance where an American set out for India to find out whatever happened to the job he lost in New York State. He started out frustrated and angry but by the end of his journey his world view was visibly changed. (Ignore the political incorrectness of some of his statement, they add to the realism of the documentary.
Many of us, are like this guys, in the way we approach the fight against poverty and underdevelopment.
