I got so caught up in my own mess that I omitted blogging in the past week, as I pre-posted a couple of entries (ha, ha - gotcha!) and got off my computer a bit, that I missed taking part in the Blog Action Day. Shame on me. What blogging development practitioner am I, missing this...
So to rectify this mistake, I am still, with a few days of delay, going to join in and address this year’s topic: poverty. And, à défaut of a professional analysis on the state of poverty in the world, I’ll just share some quick thoughts about poverty in Egypt.
My first awareness of poverty, as a child, was when I read about people buying the subsidized bread from government bakeries a day after it was made - 10 piastres (2 $cent) for 3 loaves, rather than 5 piastres a loaf of fresh bread.
5 piastres were the smallest coin denomination at the time. 5 piastres bought you a chewing-gum. And just then, I realized that some people didn’t even have it.
I didn’t buy anything from the school canteen for a week.
Poverty in Egypt has only been getting worse. The new 50 piastres coin looks like the 5 piastres of my childhood. And has roughly the same purchasing power - a 900% inflation rate.
The people who didn’t have the 5 piastres for the loaf of bread now have them; but the bread costs 25 or 50 piastres now.
Development in this country does not trickle down. The destitute have consistently increased, and poverty is increasingly visible.
The rise of poverty, and the continuous disregard to poor people will have to either be rapidly addressed - or the poor masses will take things in their own hands. And it won’t be pretty.
-------------------
But never mind me. If you want to read a real development economist working on poverty, I strongly recommend this Q&A with MIT's Esther Duflo. Reading this reminds me of why what we're trying to do matters.
So to rectify this mistake, I am still, with a few days of delay, going to join in and address this year’s topic: poverty. And, à défaut of a professional analysis on the state of poverty in the world, I’ll just share some quick thoughts about poverty in Egypt.
My first awareness of poverty, as a child, was when I read about people buying the subsidized bread from government bakeries a day after it was made - 10 piastres (2 $cent) for 3 loaves, rather than 5 piastres a loaf of fresh bread.
5 piastres were the smallest coin denomination at the time. 5 piastres bought you a chewing-gum. And just then, I realized that some people didn’t even have it.
I didn’t buy anything from the school canteen for a week.
Poverty in Egypt has only been getting worse. The new 50 piastres coin looks like the 5 piastres of my childhood. And has roughly the same purchasing power - a 900% inflation rate.
The people who didn’t have the 5 piastres for the loaf of bread now have them; but the bread costs 25 or 50 piastres now.
Development in this country does not trickle down. The destitute have consistently increased, and poverty is increasingly visible.
The rise of poverty, and the continuous disregard to poor people will have to either be rapidly addressed - or the poor masses will take things in their own hands. And it won’t be pretty.
-------------------
But never mind me. If you want to read a real development economist working on poverty, I strongly recommend this Q&A with MIT's Esther Duflo. Reading this reminds me of why what we're trying to do matters.
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