Poverty.It’s a sad word. Money troubles are a more polite and genteel word. I grew up in a middle-class family and we had real money troubles. Credit card debts and bad money choices by a parent, can cause chaos in even regular income families.

That’s why I learned deeply, the value of financial independence, of striving for financial freedom, the value of education and the other side of poverty. Abject poverty makes you helpless. Borderline penury makes your choice limited. In most cases, you have a choice to stop wrongful expenditure and spending more than your means. Here in comes the need for awareness. A small family is a happy family for multiple reasons. The biggest one is this.

If as a society we want to come forward to help people stay afloat and rise, platitude will not help. Nor will gyaan. What will help is straight talk and believe it or not, population and poverty are directly correlated.

How to Fight Poverty in India?

Does the chicken come first, or the egg? Do we fight poverty or the population explosion? Does a bursting India mean rising poverty? Or is this even more complicated?

Awareness about methods of contraception

Access to the entire range of family planning methods and a need for compliance is much needed. If you talk about carrot and stick, additional benefits for those who plan their family right. Cash surplus, tax benefits anything. But it needs to be done now.

The basic math of family planning and economics

If you talk about sanitation and poverty like #BLogchatter is doing through their #causeachatter social campaign, you must remember that more the population,

• Higher the waste
• Higher the sewage
• More resources needed.
• Earth has a limited capacity.
• It’s not just money, but the ability of our Mother Earth, to accept the load!

Uneducated, unemployable population with poor health means, you have scanty resources to generate. The Government or the individual can do even less, if those you want to help don’t understand the problem.

Read also: World’s Largest Healthcare programme 

For that, we need a carrot. Additional benefits for those who plan their family right

Long term goals

Contraception =Population Control =Additional Benefits .

Short term goals I think is skilling India

Each person gets skilled at a vocational course for generating additional income. Whatever your level of education, adult education can always increase your chances. Don’t stop now. The sky is the limit. Vocational training, urban and rural small farming projects, animal husbandry are all possible in small ways. This helps to create a culture of decreasing food shortage. When people are not hungry, their brain and body both work better. Hunger is painful and you will know that, only if you have ever gone hungry!

Questions were asked by Blogchatter at a Twitter chat, to raise awareness about Poverty and its impact on sanitation. Answering a few questions my way. You may agree, you may not. The point is you do something at your level and I do something with my resources.

How do you think poverty impacts the privileges received by a citizen?

Poverty and lack of awareness is a vicious cycle. People don’t know they have to encash cheques. They keep cheques received under the mattress. Poverty, lack of education, poor health, lack of awareness all drive down to deeper poverty.

Poverty Causes

Why do you think poverty exists?

In India and Mother Earth, Resources are limited. The population is bursting, India is going to overtake China soon! Baby making needs to have some limits. Poverty, population and education have deep connections.50k per month ten kids,50k per month one kid, what’s better? Do the math.

It’s not a simple question and the math is more complicated. But you understand, right? If you are reading this and understanding, you are privileged and the top ten percent of India’s literate population. The rest who need awareness, are not on Twitter and not reading this Blog.

Will it help if you speak in their language? Yes, it will.

Will it help if we do this offline? Yes, it will. But to reach them, the socio-cultural community heads, need to come forward for this to work. Talking about family planning can get you in hot water, in the wrong places.

Effect of Poverty

From your eyes, what has been the biggest impact of poverty on our society?

Poor health, education, and employability all take a nose dive when there’s poverty. Hunger is the first battle to fight. It’s not just in Hunger games that we need to win, but also in real life.

[bctt tweet=”There’s a reason we talk about roti kapra aur makan in that order! #Causeachatter” username=”misra_amrita”]

Sanitation & Poverty

Sanitation is the basic privilege of clean drinking water and proper sewage disposal. How does poverty impact this basic privilege?

That’s why #Swachhbharat and Toilet ek prem katha, is bang on. It has a deep role. Rising population excessive waste. But do we first battle hunger or sewage? Both need to start at the same time. But for it to work and be sustainable, we need a limit on the number.

[bctt tweet=”Unlimited population means this effort becomes unsustainable. #Causeachatter ” username=”misra_amrita”]

What do you think we as citizens can do to help uplift the poor?

No one can uplift. You have to lift yourself up.

• We can help create awareness
• Educate  all women and men
• The skill of all men and women.A difficult initiative, but a much needed one to make any real change possible.
• Marriage and age of first pregnancy need to be strictly followed. Poor health leads to excessive resource use but still, childhood malnutrition lingers. Malnutrition occurring in an underage mother is unlikely to have better results.
• Population in India is an asset and a problem at the same time. Its now time to remove the factors, which make it a problem.

Read: Empowering Rural Women

Statistics about Population of India

• The population of India 133.92 crores
• China138.64 crores‌
• The United States of America32.57 crores

The low female literacy rate means there’s a problem with family planning and population control measures. Literacy doesn’t mean they are educated enough to take measured choices. In many instances its the ability to write their own name with no understanding of the written language in their vernacular or any other language.

What is replacement-level fertility rate?

Replacement-level fertility rate, is the average number of children a woman has to have, to keep the population at a constant size, is 2.1.  India is closing in with the overall number of children per woman at 2.3.(Source)

If women in a nation or a region or a group have fewer than 2.1 children each, population decreases. If women have more than  2.1.then we will see the population continuing to rise.

Employable population in India

The percentage of employable population in India has achieved a 5.6 percent increase, from 33 percent in 2014 to 45.60 percent in 2018.Engineers are still most employable.

Final thoughts:

I feel, contraception choices are rarely exercised by the men and many women have zero access, especially in the strata who really need it. Too many babies, too soon, when you can hardly support your own health, is an irresponsible decision.

Parenthood needs responsibility and people are responsible for their choices. Only if you can support yourself and your family, can you grow your family? This needs to be a choice and not necessarily a rule. After all, we are all responsible for our own choices. Blaming other people is easy and useless.

If you can’t reign in population, if you don’t want to do family planning, there’s not enough money in the world to eradicate poverty or prevent destitution.

Writing this to lend a voice to  #Causeachatter with Blogchatter.

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