Poverty - A definition(s)

Defining everything might be the sole purpose of human intelligence as of now, however, not everything we know at present has been defined. Anyways, defining an entity makes it a lot easier for everyone to think further upon it. And providing definitions has always been a habit of science, although now extended to different fields of human indulgence.

Even after so many years we’ve known several phenomena, properties, or entities, yet we’ve failed to define them. And a major part of these topics are shared by social ones.Terrorism, poverty, feminism, absolute justice are some of them. Saying that these topics haven’t been defined would be not correct totally, and because of that it is correct too. These topics are seen from different perspectives by different people in different situations, and therefore, different definitions, sometimes contradictory, become the evident reason for failure in achievement of a single definition for such topics. And this leads to insolvency of these problems and thus, conflicts.

Poverty is one of the topics not being defined absolutely the same for everyone. Governments try to cure poverty by providing food, employment, jobs to earn money, to the poor people. For them, poverty is defined by a threshold income. If a person earns less than that limit, she/he is poor, and needs help, according to most of the governments. This is a practical definition, being used for a long period of time, however, the sad fact is, even after realizing this reason for poverty, people are still poor, as I type. Even if this lack of basic income definition of poverty seems correct, and the cure is to provide those people with assets, we all know that it isn’t working out.

Various human rights organizations, NGOs, and the plenty of popularly good people of society try to, if not completely cure it, help those in need. I’ve seen many groups, religious or non-religious, feed the poor people occasionally. These poor people mostly include the ones who we define as beggars, sleep on footpath, signals etc., that is, visibly poor. For these well-wishers of society, feeding them and helping them with money or assets is a good deed. Indeed, that's the ethically correct definition of poverty; those who need help, should be provided with it by those who can provide. However, those who constantly need help, I don’t think will get help constantly. If there is some cultural festival, then for the sake of good, the people celebrating it, most of the times, feed the poor too. But the thing is, the festivals are periodical, and, if providing help to the poor during these festivals would’ve actually helped them to rise above poverty, then there would be no poverty at all. Despite this act, however, the fact remains true that people are still poor, as I type. Even if this visibly poor definition of poverty seems ethically correct, and helping them whenever we can seems the cure, we all know that it isn’t working out.

Another kind of poverty popular in trend is mental. Mental poverty is a matter of controversy, because, stating that - ‘people who are poor, are poor because they don’t want to uplift themselves from poverty’, contradicts with all the other intuitions of poverty, and is indigestible to the people believing them. That’s very natural, as you cannot simply blame the patients for something they are suffering from. However, the above two paragraphs explaining two broad ways of understanding poverty have been not yet successful for a very long period of time. Mental poverty is something defined as psychologically correct, because, will power is a thing we all require to achieve something. If you don’t want to push yourself for something you actually need, and expect others to provide that to you, then this won’t actually lead you to anything. In case of poverty, even if people and governments help poor people, it doesn’t actually help in curbing poverty, as mentioned earlier.

Consider the richest person in the world. If that person starts thinking that she/he is poor, this will lead them to work and earn more, so that their poverty, which is mentally thought, is curbed. For others who know she/he is already rich, that person would become richer than ever. Simple. This is what realization of mental poverty does to a person. So, from this example, it seems this psychological definition of poverty actually helps to curb it. However, even if it does, who will tell this to the actually poor people? I mean, no one would like to tell a beggar, that they are poor because they don’t want to be rich. And the expected reply would be - ‘Definitely I want to be rich, but at the moment please help me!’, leading to the act prescribed by cures of other definitions of poverty, as mentioned earlier.

So, what is actually to be perceived as a proper definition of poverty and thus its cure? As providing them with basic income isn’t working out, helping them forever isn’t plausible, and telling them that it is their fault, isn’t socially acceptable. Therefore, poverty is eternal, and will always be there. Just kidding.

The proper definition of a problem can lead to its proper solution. To define poverty, we need to encapsulate two different perspectives into one, which will work asynchronously and might cure poverty too. Here we go -

‘The fact that will power leads to achievement of one’s desires, is to be implanted in thoughts of the ones who are poor, and to make conditions favourable for them, the helper class of people should have the thought of poverty being a lack of basic assets.’

Whoa. Sounds like a complete statement? Let's check. The fact that will power does help in achievement of dreams and desires, (which is true as mentioned earlier), and if they are unable to get this then somewhere it is their fault, if a person thinks like this, then surely she/he will push themselves to pursue what they want, and might end up achieving that too. However, if the conditions do not comply with their sincere efforts, then they might end up losing all hope, and start blaming the helper class. For this situation not to occur, the helper class will act upon their definition of poverty, which being the lack of basic needs, (and not mental poverty), thus providing them with whatever help can be done. Both definitions will work asynchronously, and to be fully efficient, these two have to be isolated from each other, because if the definitions are switched between the two categories of people, then the poor will remain poor, and the stable helping people will hold the poor people responsible for their poverty. Thus, avoiding this, the definition of poverty mentioned above, has to be acted upon by respective people, and people have to choose - if they are poor, then they are responsible; if they are not, then helping the poor is the cure to poverty.

It is important that the psychological part of definition is to be meant only for the ones who consider themselves poor, and the practical part for the ones who tend to help the poor.

Hence this definition(s) of poverty might suffice the need for cure of it, and if it doesn’t, then I haven’t programmed that path yet.