Begging's no longer limited to a few stray beggars driven to seeking alms as a last resort, says the Times of India. Photo: Heavenhated (flickr)

Calcutta's Laxmi Das was stricken with polio as a child, and raised in a society where people with disabilities are looked upon with pity. After 40 years of begging on the streets, Das recently opened her first bank account with her saved coins worth a total of 30,000 rupees or $700.

"I saved for the days when I cannot beg," she told the BBC, "I knew one day I would grow old and have diseases, so I was prudent and saved for my pension."

BBC.com visitors responded to Das’ heartwarming story with pledges of financial support. And who can blame them? People like Das beg because they have few other options.

But others are getting into the begging business because it's apparently lucrative. A variety of people are turning to begging not as a last resort, but as a profession. Now there are beggar pimps that send out children, women and the disabled (like Das), but also college graduates that are making a living off of begging. As an editorial in The Times of India points out:

“Begging's no longer limited to a few stray beggars driven to seeking alms as a last resort. It has become a profession for some, a way of life for others, and more horrific still, a lucrative racket for unscrupulous and ruthless operators, who have spawned a virtual ‘beggar mafia', using raw materials we have in abundance; human beings; poor, destitute and helpless.”

According to the Executive Director of Dnyana Devi, a local Indian NGO that runs a 24-hour helpline for children in distress, begging is considered “serious business” for the street children of India, so much so that they “know exactly which brands of cars to chase, how to ‘dress up’ to evoke maximum sympathy and how to fix false plasters on the legs to give the impression of being crippled.”

So far, India's response has been insufficient. The country has chosen to criminalize beggars under the 1959 Bombay Beggary Prevention Act, where they can be can be picked up at random and locked in a "beggars' home" for up to three years.

And while our sympathy and compassion will spare them some change, it is only a short-term solution that fails to address deeper underlying socioeconomic issues.

For the children who beg, receiving alms means that their parents are less likely to send them to school. For others it can confirm begging as an easy and valid means of making money.

Most of us cringe at hearing the word inflation. It takes a toll on everyone's pocketbook, but for many Indonesians, it is also tearing families apart.

Many Indonesian parents are being forced to place their children in orphanages. In a country where 100 million people live on less than a dollar a day, skyrocketing costs of food and fuel are making it difficult for families to feed themselves. Childcare institutions offer the children not only food, but also an education and the chance at a brighter future.

"I know my children are angry with me, but I try to convince them that is the best choice for us.… As a mother I want to take care of my children but I cannot be selfish. I want the best future for them, so I have no choice," said Tinor Niang, a mother who brought her two sons to an orphanage in central Jakarta nine years ago.

Only 6 percent of the 500,000 Indonesian children in childcare institutions are orphans, according to a recent report released by Save the Children in conjunction with UNICEF and the Indonesian government. Many of the institutions were understaffed, the report found, with nearly half running on less than $10,000 a year. When not being schooled, the children were found cooking and cleaning while caring for themselves and those younger than them.

While rising costs put financial pressure on parents, the children bear the price emotionally. "I just want to be with my parents, even if it means I cannot get an education," says 13-year-old Yulianto who has spent half his life in an orphanage.

Some parents argue that education is worth the emotional toll. "I just want him to get a proper education," says one mother who had to take her 11-year old to an orphanage. "I hope that one day he'll do something useful for this country and help his brothers, because we are living in poverty."

Photo: sektordua (flickr)

Children working in the Stung Meanchey Dump in Cambodia. Photo: EB78 (flickr)

Have you ever wondered what happens to the garbage after you leave it on the curb?

In developing countries, trash from the cities is commonly picked through by the poor and unwanted members of society. These trash pickers go by many names: the Zabaleen in Egypt, pepenadores in Mexico, and ragpickers in India.

These people rely on trash for their livelihoods. They spend hours sorting through these huge piles of rancid waste by hand. For them, almost everything is reusable. Organic materials are used to feed their livestock; recyclable materials are washed and resold. Indian ragpickers make only 100-150 rupees ($2.50-$3.75) for eight hours of sifting.

These overlooked members of society perform an important service for the rest of the population. In Delhi, ragpickers "represent almost 1% of Delhi's total population and handle about 20% of the city's enormous daily waste," according to Paul Colombini, who created a website on which Delhi recyclers can tell their own stories. It is estimated that these ragpickers save the city 600,000 rupees a day in trash disposal costs.

Though this work is dirty and smelly, they take pride knowing the invaluable service they perform.

We don't like attention. Rubbish is never attractive and we're quite happy carrying on quietly ... but our work supports a whole industry that's virtually invisible to most people.

Photo: Tatiana Cardeal (flickr)

Peru has one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. Over the past six years, the country’s GDP has grown more than 6 percent annually. This is largely due to high market prices for mineral exports, increases in private investment and liberal economic policies that have been put into place by President Alan Garcia and his predecessor Alejandro Toledo.

Yet Peru’s economic growth is having a limited impact on poverty rates. While the capital, Lima, and the northern and coastal regions are flourishing, over 70 percent of the Andean region still lives in poverty. A major factor in this persistent poverty is the fact that many Peruvians continue to work in the informal sector of the economy, writes the Economist:

These unwaged people are often more or less cut off from the market economy. And it is market connections that make economic growth “trickle down” to the poor, points out Richard Webb, a social researcher and former central-bank governor. Enabling that to happen is thus a job for public policy. Better roads, education and social policy are all needed.

President Garcia has worked to increase social spending on anti-poverty programs, and staunchly advocates market-based solutions to Peru’s poverty problem. However, Garcia’s ability to combat poverty continues to be hampered by his unpopularity (his latest approval rating is only 26 percent), his lack of a legislative majority, and fears of corruption in lower levels of government. Unless Garcia can find a way to make Peru's growth work for more Peruvians, his liberal economic policies may lose support from those who aren't seeing the benefits of market capitalism.

Mexico City. Photo: Yetto (flickr)

Are the southern states of Mexico – Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca – getting left out of Mexico's economic growth?

An April 24 article in the Economist suggests that there is a growing socio-economic gap between these three southern states and the rest of Mexico. In 2000, Mexico’s GDP per capita was $7,495, compared to a combined average of $3,634 for Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, according to a World Bank report. Furthermore, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty – less than $1 a day – was 54-56 percent in the south, compared to 23-25 percent nationwide.

Recently, the government has proposed using large-scale infrastructure projects to address this economic disparity.

In 2001, then-President Vicente Fox released his Plan Puebla Panamá, a project to link southern Mexico and Central America with northern Mexico. It primarily provides funding for building highways and new air and sea ports.

More recently, current President Felipe Calderón announced plans for a six-year, $28.7-billion road investment project. A significant part of the plan focuses on southern coastal regions.

Critics argue that investing in infrastructure isn’t enough to promote economic growth in the south. José Antonio Aguilar, a government official from the state of Puebla (another southern state), tells The Economist that they have experienced “a total transformation” in state infrastructure "but we haven’t been able to turn this into growth in income." Likewise, Miguel Pickard for CorpWatch.org worries that these top-down approaches tend to overlook Mexico’s poor.

To what extent will these ambitious infrastructure projects close Mexico's north-south poverty gap?

Previous posts have examined how private enterprise can fight poverty through "creative capitalism" and corporate social responsibility. But one old idea made the rounds this week, albeit with a new spin: helping the poor by taxing global financial transactions.

The plan, proposed by Stephan Schulmeister of Austria's Institute of Economic Research, would tax global financial transactions — such as stock trades — at a rate of around one-hundredth of a percentage point. Even at this miniscule rate, Schulmeister estimates that such a global micro-tax could bring in revenue of up to $230 billion a year. Theoretically, this money would be used to finance development aid and projects aimed at helping the poorest cope with problems like climate change and rising food prices.

But the idea is not without its critics. Research from the World Bank notes that while the basic philosophy behind such taxes is economically sound, determining how to redistribute the revenue is likely to be politically problematic. An essay on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's website also wonders whether micro-taxes are administratively feasible or whether political leaders would actually use the tax revenue for development.

What is the best way to measure economic development? Most economists still focus on gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national income (GNI) per capita. Bhutan has inspired some to focus on "gross national happiness" (see my earlier post on Bhutan and GNH here). Researchers at the Center for Global Development are now proposing a new measure: income per natural.

Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett use income per natural to measure the average annual income of all individuals who are born in a given country, regardless of where they live at any given time. According to their calculations, almost 43 million people live in countries where income per natural is 50 percent higher than GDP per capita, and for over 1 billion people the difference is greater than 10 percent. Clemens and Pritchett argue that this new measure recognizes that, for many, emigration is an important means towards increased welfare.

The bottom line: migration is one of the most important sources of poverty reduction for a large portion of the developing world. If economic development is defined as rising human well being, then a residence-neutral measure of well-being emphasizes that crossing international borders is not an alternative to economic development, it is economic development.

Even as the global market looks increasingly unsteady, China's economy continues to boom. It has already become apparent that this rapid growth is contributing to increasing income inequality.

The Financial Times argues that China should learn from Brazil by combatting economic inequality with more social spending on things like health care and education.

The BBC takes a look at the contrast between India's high rate of economic growth and the widespread poverty that continues to plague the country. Though India has become a major global player in information technology, some are worried this high-tech development will only lead to "silicon bubbles" that do little to improve conditions for the Indian poor. Anand Mahindra, managing director of one of India's largest conglomerates, disagrees:

"The IT sector was a kicker to growth," he says. "Its impact was psychological. It signalled to the world that India was much more than its old historical stereotypes. It suddenly in an exaggerated manner, if you ask me, made the world think that every Indian was smart and could fix their computers. But that helped entrepreneurs in India from all industry segments, because it gave them a more receptive environment in which to do business."

Photo: dziner (flickr)

Like all policy choices, the decision of many developed nations to pursue greater conversion to ethanol and biodiesel has consequences. But who will pay the costs associated with the shift from oil to biofuels? According to the World Politics Review, it is the world’s poor who are going to suffer the most from the negative effects of the biofuel craze.

With current technology, almost all of the biofuel produced today has to be made from corn or soybeans. Though other sources may be able to be used in the future, the use of crops for fuel rather than food has already taken a huge toll on the world’s commodity markets. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global food prices have increased by almost 40 percent in the last year, after a 14 percent increase in 2006. Many countries have introduced price controls on staple foods, and food shortages have caused protests in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Photo:whiffer (flickr)

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the former chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly argues that Chavez has failed to live up to his pro-poor rhetoric, and that the policies of his administration have hurt both the national economy and the Venezuelan poor. While many observers outside Venezuela believe that Chavez has made the welfare of the poor his highest priority, the author notes that neither official statistics nor independent assessments show any evidence that Chavez's policies have helped combat poverty in Venezuela.

Photo: Andrew Heavens (flickr)

One of the more critical and less talked about environmental changes occurring right now in several regions of the world, is a developing shortage of water. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has partnered with the Common Language Project to send journalists into East Africa in order to report on this growing crisis: According to the Pulitzer Center, "Water scarcity in East Africa is fueling conflict and thwarting development while growing in step with local populations and rising global temperatures."

The blog postings by these journalists, as they learn more about the politics of water in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, are worth reading, watching and listening to.

Youyouyouyouyou! Shout tiny little kids at our beat-up land rover as it races down the arrow-straight road from Yabello, slowing occasionally for dust devils and herds of annoyed camels.

We’re on our way to Dillo, to report on some of the most extreme water scarcity problems in the country. I’m trying to focus on my notes, all of the interviews and statistics I’ll need to contextualize the interviews we have set up and the long-distance water walk we’ll be participating in the following morning.

Problem is there are too many distractions.

A BBC photo essay explores how some Ghanaians dream of boxing their way out of poverty.

Fidel has resigned, but a Castro still rules over Cuba. What are the differences between Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, and what will these differences mean for a post-Fidel Cuba? While there is a general consensus that Fidel's official resignation is unlikely to bring substantial political and economic change in Cuba in the near future, there have been indications that Raul may follow the "Chinese model" and gradually open up the Cuban economy while maintaining strict political control.

Many Cubans say Raúl will have no option but to give Cubans more leeway, economically if not politically. “People here say they are fidelistas, but not necessarily socialistas,” said an analyst in Havana, who asked to remain anonymous. Without Fidel, “Raúl will have to renegotiate an agreement with the Cuban people”.

Raúl is hardly likely to jettison half-a-century of socialist reforms and throw the country open to foreign capital, as Russia did in the 1990s. But he has hinted that he wishes to gradually open up the system, acknowledging the “excessive number of prohibitions” in Cuba and starting a national debate about the shortcomings of the regime.

A Brazilian anti-poverty program known as Bolsa Familia ("Family Fund") is getting attention from governments around the world, writes the Economist. Modeled on a similar program in Mexico, this conditional cash transfer program has been tested successfully in several other Latin American countries, and the World Bank is now looking to start similar programs in Eastern Europe.

In the Brazilian version of the program, poor families with children receive direct transfers of around 70 reals (about $35) a month, on the condition that their children stay in school and have regular health checkups. According to the World Bank, this relatively simple and modest program is unique in that it can help reduce both current and future poverty and inequality in Brazil.