The poor half billion: What is holding back lagging regions in South Asia?
South Asia is bringing a distressing logical unacceptable situation. It is known as the fastest developing countries around the globe. Unfortunately, it is also a place of the biggest absorption of people living in extreme poverty in the world. Although South Asia is ahead in development than Sub-Saharan Africa, many people are still living in poverty.
The economic growth in South Asia decreased the poverty rate but despite of this significant effect, the great number of poor people still grows. The poor people earned 1.25 dollars per day and these numbers expanded from 549 million in 1981 to 595 million in 2005. As an example, India came up with a great number of people who experience poverty from 420 million in 1981 to 455 million in 2005.
In addition, the rapid increase of population did not keep the continuous speed of income development. The most affected individuals of poverty are women and children. In some South Asian countries, over 250 million children are malnourished and over 30 million cannot afford to go to school. Women are suffering in anemia. Aside from that, women are not also given job opportunities and it makes them the lowest in employment around the world.
According to research, South Asia is a place of precise variance and overwhelming imbalance. It has many proclaimed regional imbalance compared to other countries in the world and classified into two Asias. Too much consideration has been given to “Asia Shining”. However, there is another Asia that lives in equivalent, “Asia Suffering”. The exact difference between the two harbored in two separate centuries and the space is expanding.
E. Ghani