In the words of Adam Smith, no single society can be said to be jolly, flourishing and happy when a bigger part of its population is languishing in misery, poverty and when they are suffering from malnourishment especially due to social exclusion and segregation (Vollman 210). These words highly resonate on the strong sense of social responsibility that is considered inherent to a big proportion of feelings, thinking and breathing human beings. However feeling pity for the poor in the society is not enough, proactive steps are supposed to be taken so as to eradicate poverty within the society.
In addition, the steps should be geared towards getting rd of misery and reducing the levels of inequality between the haves and have not’s in the society. This should be considered as the primary and core role of the government in power (Calderon & Serven 98). We are left wondering how a person is able to enjoy a festive meal in his or her house’s comfort knowing very well that a poor starving person is sitted outside the house. A person who has not bathed for days due to the lack of water and a person who has spent countless nights in the cold of the freezing night because he or she does not have enough clothes to cover him or her.
Poverty can not be asserted as a thing from the blues, in a number of times at least all of us have felt the shortage of cash within our pockets; there are those moments when we have felt the crunch of insufficiency either of one thing or the other. However, this can be said to be an experience encountered by a single person, and it can not be considered as a social problem. However, poverty as a social problem arises when a problem is heavily embedded and this wound permeates at least all the society’s dimensions both socially and culturally. Poverty as a social problem involves low income levels, inaccessibility of social amenities and the complete feeling of hopelessness (Sen 119). Poverty when measured on the universe scale be said to be caused by a number of factors such as slavery, colonialism, conquest and war.
The poor within the society are assumed that they will constantly remain poor. Some of the factors that are said to be playing a higher contribution to making these desperate people to continue remaining desperate range from ignorance, disease, apathy, dependency and dishonesty. Ignorance refers to the unavailability of information and the absence of knowledge (Dollar & Kraay 27). The poor in the society will continue to lack these crucial forces that can be employed to pull them from this poverty hole. An old adage categorizes knowledge as power, this therefore implies that lacking knowledge, one has no power to improve him/her welfare and that of the society.
Vollman (189) notes that high disease rate in the society means that the rates of abseentism are very high and this is reflected on the production levels. A community whose work fore is constantly suffering from diseases is denied the power to participate in productive activities that will help its economies and make them flourish. As it has been evidenced, the poor people within the society are often suffering from diseases. This means that as they are absent from work, the production rate goes down so is their income levels. As a result, they do not have enough survive on (Banerjee & Duflo 34).
The dependence ration among the poor is also very high. The number of birth or children within the poor homes is significantly high compared to well to do homesteads. This in return implies that there are more extra mouths to feed in these homes unlike in affluent families. The family has to struggle to provide for the big family and in times, the family will not have enough to feed. Children from poor families are never sent to schools and this means that in future they will not have the knowledge that can make them improve on their welfare. In return the cycle of poverty will continue being passed down from generation to generation and the chain continues (Dixon & Macarov 167).
The greatest danger of the society arises when the society gets too comfortable and immune to the sufferings of the poor within the society. The dangers arise when the society is indifferent and shows no caring attitude to the less fortunate in the society especially since these are the people who make the largest percentage of the society (Banerjee & Duflo 67). Many countries in the globe have experienced the kind of hardships that are being tackled and described in this document especially the disproportionate figure that exists between eh poor and the rich in the society. According to Calderon & Serven (43), a rapid and efficient policy is supposed to be structured so as to prevent the problems that are caused as a result of poverty from spilling and being irreparable. Apathy refers to the state of mind where they do not seem to care; this is a case where people are in a powerless state
The government is owed with the responsibility of protecting the welfare of tits citizens and its general well being. This is because the government is entrusted with the people and the constituency in place to come up with policies that should be able to improve the people’s lives and the general society as a whole. According to Dollar & Kraay (49), the government’s decisions and actions have profound impacts on the general conditions of the people within it. Most of those to be hard hit by these decisions are those who are considered as the less fortunate. In a way, it has been noted that the government has often come up with policies that favor the affluent in the society. The rich and elite classes of people have often been in power for a very long time. Due to this, the policies they structure are those that are geared towards protecting them ands making them to continue taking the little from the less fortunate. The policies are structured in a way that the haves will continue having more wile the poor will continue loosing the little at their disposal making them poorer.
According to Dixon & Macarov (98) government policies such as those that have been evidenced in Asian tigers can result to the eradication of poverty in the society. Countries such as china, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have successfully managed to eradicate poverty among its societies by the use of well structured policies and frameworks (United Nations Development Programme 45). From this, it is behold any reasonable doubt that well structured and disciplined policies can work wonders in the eradication of poverty within the society. These policies can help shorten the gap existing between the poor and the rich in the society.
The government is owed with the responsibility of ensuring that its population can be able to access various amenities. Amenities such as schools and health facilities are very essential in the reduction of poverty hence shorten the gap between the rich and the poor. With education powered empowered, they are armed with the skills that can be used to explore resources and from this improve on their lives. Seemingly, with the presence of health facilities, diseases are decreased, the production levels are boosted since abseentism declines.
From the above, it’s clear that poverty and government correlates highly. In relation to how the government has structured its policies, poverty can be reduced and this will also require the people involved to be industrious in fighting for what they believe is theirs. There are many reasons that have been forwarded as the major causes of poverty in the society. This means that more than a single factor can be blamed to be the cause of poverty within the society. The government’s role to eradicate poverty is of paramount essence the same as is inequality (Banik 78). Therefore, the government’s role can not be underestimated.