Poverty and Underdevelopment: New Challenges

Poverty and underdevelopment is of utmost importance as far the subject is concerned. In the past few years, there have been tremendous discussions on the mass poverty and underdevelopment problems and what should be done about them. Poverty and underdevelopment have most crucial problems, not only for some but for all nations. We in India believe that our poverty, the abysmal poverty of Asia, is a product of the 19th century colonialization. A huge amount of resources went out of this part of Asia in the last century and helped to finance the Industrial Revolution in the North World. Asia thus exported wealth to West European nations in the last century, and imported “poverty” in turn. Poverty is not only always with us but everywhere with us. It is an inter-related condition of deprivation. Eradication of poverty can ultimately be achieved by economic development and more equal distribution of income. However, there is no other method of relieving poverty immediately except by a net transfer of income from the rich classes to the poorer people. We must remember that our most precious resources are our human resources. The author has proposed a new “GNP”. Instead of Gross National Product, with its materialistic implications, author suggests that we all establish as our goal the development of a new “GNP-that is each government should try to make its country a “Genuine Nesting-place of Prosperity.”