Monday, March 19, 2007

The Worm's Eye View

Read a document at MIT's website in the morning it had a Sr. Executive of World Bank describing their illusionary yet evolutionary (or may be in the reverse order) efforts for human welfare. He remarked that when they started off with the welfare thing they thought 'education' for all was the right answer to bring that much needed growth at the bottom of the pyramid... then they pondered upon exploding population vs much lagging capacity so then they focused on 'population control'... then they queried that government policies hinder growth and they pumped 'loan' money into their economy... then when they found that governments can't repay them they then introduced a policy of 'Loan amnesty'!

It rightly went on to point out that the approach till now has had a skewed point of view at the bottom. It looked at poverty in a top-down way symbolic to a bird’s eye view dealing with the lives of worms as if the poor is a target, not a resource. They felt that better life is something that needs to be provided to the people down there. All the time they forgot that traditionally wealthy societies were built bottoms up by empowerment from below. It occurred when the poor started contributing to the economy and thus earning their righteous meal.

So the approach should actually be a Worm's eye view. It said instead of seeing billion mouths to feed, better think what can be done to make those billion brains to think for themselves, those billion eyes and ears to keep watch on governments, those billion hands and legs to move things!!

And if we put that in the perspective of my earlier post on WMC that's exactly whats happening billion beings at work... participating in a horizontal collective economy!!

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