Dr Subhrendu Bhattacharya
The book deals with the concept of poverty, its causes and cures. The rich ordinarily blaming the poor that latter remain poor, because of their being lazy and the poor feeling that their poverty, arises from the exploitation by the rich, both views have been attempted to be dismantled. The dichotomy of poverty and the affluence has not been an age old phenomenon. The inequalities, in the non industrial ages, were far from being distinct, except an extremely thin layer of the royalty and the feudal. With prosperity of few nations, arising from industrial revolution, from the middle of the 1700s and the increased naval power, of a few nations, made the difference between the rich and poor regions and between the countries sharp. As money begets money, the economic development, too followed the same path. The author examined how the poverty, got accentuated by migration of labour and the rich engaging them, on security of contract basis, for longer periods, either paying measly compensation or with no wages. They also restricted their mobility to leverage, from their cheap labour. This is reflected even in the new millennium, in the form of denial of industrial democracy, by some gigantic corporations, to annihilate the bargaining power of the labour. The book also mentions how disengaged nature of the democratic politics of the poor in the developed world, kept them poorer and wanting in confidence. Remedial measures have also been discussed, in this study, which, as stressed by the author, need to be continent specific, rather than one cloth size fits all, approach of the multilateral Institutions. The book has not examined and researched poverty as one blanket entity but researched poverty at multi-layered level and at each level the author got to the bottom of the issue and provided unique solutions. The study suggests need for a gesture of benevolence, of the developed world, keeping in mind the downsides that resulted from colonization. The book goes into the question of emergence of avoidance of practical education, science and engineering education, lack of interest in academic rigour, in several industrial countries, in the recent years, which could be heavily challenging, for future generations. The book is unique, in its dealing with remedial measures, to which the book has considerably dedicated.
