Poverty Eradication Through Media Is Possible?
By Kamala Sarup
It is amazing to some people that in the super-rich U.S., millions of tons of surplus food is kept in storage at great
expense as a result of farm support policies while people in the U.S. and around the world go hungry. The rationale for
such policies is that unloading this surplus food onto the market would depress food prices and bankrupt food producers.
Such is the thinking driven by market economics.
Today world has been suffering not because lack manpower, resources and national unity , but because lack visionary
leaders who can guide the nation to a path of development. So, I think, today, the fight to reduce poverty must be
extended from the legal level to the attitudinal level. It will succeed only by elaborate campaigns through Media.
Poverty writers will help these campaigns by writing convincingly for the general public. Reducing Poverty through the
media is the way to win the war on poverty.
The role of the Media in every sector of the society is more important when politics and political leaders fail, it is
the media that plays the lead role and comes forward to lead the nation and the society for the better future.
Poverty produces inadequate food, clothing, shelter and medicine. To get more money to poor people, welfare reformists
must spend more time and money using the media to change attitudes toward poverty instead of writing about it in obscure
academic journals. This switch in emphasis would reduce the reluctance of people to pay more to reduce poverty levels.
Furthermore, it is necessary to remind people through media that reducing poverty results in less dangerous and costly
criminality, and more productive workers and citizens; in other words, the rich amply benefit by helping the poor. The
media is the most effective means about poverty, and through them, the attitudes of government policy and law makers who
fund welfare projects.
So to solutions for reducing the high poverty, welfare reformers prefer to change the behavior of poor rather than give
more resources to poor. So it is very important we should advocate the tax reduction for poor, "which disproportionately
helps affluent families. Such support would enable the poor family to go out and find a work.
Poverty means living with inadequate amounts of food, clothing, shelter, medicine and medical care. Still more people
from developing countries are falling into deep poverty where incomes are only one-half of the poverty income level.
Lifts a far smaller proportion of low-income families out of poverty in comparison to other nations. The poverty also is
based on outdated family spending and homemaking patterns. It assumes the family will buy daily.
Other causes of high poverty, are the failure of wages of younger workers without a college education to keep up with
inflation, the rising number of families headed by single mothers, the low income levels of poor families, the failure
of absent family to provide supplementary income. So effects of poverty; for example, lack of food, family stress, less
learning, crime, poor housing, bad health, and so on.
The poor, therefore, are poor relative to the rich in that specific country. In other words, it is an arbitrary relative
measure. Compared to the numbers of poor in the world a century ago, ignoring the ups and downs of intervening business
cycles. But I believe poverty are constantly shifting with person, time, place, and circumstance. Another important
aspect of poverty solutions that we should prefer to ignore are the costs associated with social programs.
An estimate of the cost-benefit ratios of various poverty reducing plans and policies is convincing people to bear it.
Even, In the early century, much time, effort, and money were spent reducing poverty in the World by restricting child
labor, improving food and drug safety, establishing medical clinics, mandating compulsory school attendance, providing
free school lunches, increasing minimum wages, and more.
So I think media is always needed for leading the social movement because strong media is the foundation of development
and creation of a just and equitable society. Media should rally for bigger social transformation and stability through
social concentration, and to bring about social reforms. Media also can help bring about drastic and conceptual changes.
So, media have to be trained in the skills they will need to organize poverty reduction program, action, including
public speaking, managing people, preparing effective appeals for support, and identifying and neutralizing informants.
Media also can be organized by external actors such as NGOs, regional or international organizations and understanding.
*************
(Kamala Sarup is editor of http://peacejournalism.com/ )