This map is taken from a website entitled
World Map of Railways. Take a look at it and answer the following questions.
World
Map of Railways
(http://theintrepid.blogspot.com/2009/10/world-map-of-railways.html)
1. Focusing on
Africa and India, write a paragraph explaining what you can learn from this map
concerning the relationship between the development of train networks and poverty.
2. Discuss what
aspects other than infrastructure are necessary to fight poverty.
Answer Keys
1. Focusing on
Africa and India, write a paragraph explaining what you can learn from this map
concerning the relationship between infrastructure and poverty.
I can learn from this map that whether a
country has its infrastructure in place or not is related to its poverty.
Africa, the world’s poorest continent, has few railway
networks except in South Africa and countries up in the north, while India, which
is now regarded as an emerging economy, has railways which are as closely woven
as those in many developed nations such as England and Japan. This contrast
between these two countries, which share the history of colonization, independence
after WWII, and epidemic-like poverty which followed after the independence, tells
that the existence of railways can be one of the factors that have decided
their destinies. During the Green Revolution in the 1960s and the IT revolution
in the 2010, India had a transportation system that the British had built
during the colonial period. It was ready to accommodate the needs to move
materials and people quickly and in large amounts. Africa, on the other hand,
has few railways to provide necessities such as food, medicine, and materials,
and this hampers the efforts for development.
2. Discuss what
aspects other than infrastructure are necessary to fight poverty.
The key to successful fight against poverty
is to assist the poor out of the vicious cycle of subsistence by making them
able to support themselves and develop their community by themselves. To help
start their self-sustaining growth, developed countries can assist them in four
areas other than helping build their infrastructure.
1) assistance in agriculture: We must help
them out of food shortage through provision of materials, technology, and
skills.
2) assistance in health care: We must help
them eliminate preventable deaths from bad healthcare conditions, providing
basic healthcare, and fight against epidemic and endemic diseases.
3) assistance in education: We must help
their children receive proper education so that they can contribute to the
community.
4) assistance in reducing violence: We must
support the people to escape from violence by men, the powerful, and the
police.
5) eliminate discrimination: We must get
rid of discrimination based on race, religion, or sex, which prevent people
from functioning normally or getting appropriate results for their efforts and
ability.
Reference
Excerpts from Common Wealth Economics
for a Crowded Planet, Jeffrey D. Sachs
Underlined by Sasaki
pp.227-228: Unlike the Eurasian landmass,
sub-Saharan Africa is inherently isolated by the Sahara and by the lack of
rivers navigable from the ocean to the interior. Moreover, the colonial powers
did not build much infrastructure in the interior of Africa. In India, the
British raj constructed a thorough rail network often connected to rural roads,
in part to bring India’s rural cotton production to
British factories. In Africa, by contrast, rails were not built to reach
villages but rather a few diamond and gold mines. The result was not a rail
network but some disconnected rail capillaries that reached only a tiny
proportion of Africa’s rural population.
pp. 229-231: The poor know what to do
but are too poor to do it. Since they can’t meet
their immediate needs (food, safe water, health care) they also can’t afford to save and invest for the future. That is where foreign
assistance comes in. A temporary boost of aid over the course of several years,
if properly invested, can lead to a permanent rise in productivity. That boost,
in turn, leads to self-sustaining growth. The logical chain is the following:
Temporary aid→Boost
of productivity→Rise of saving and investment→Sustained growth
The escape from extreme poverty requires
four basic types of investment. The first is a boost to productivity of the
core livelihood, agriculture. This is the hallowed Green Revolution that
initially lifts smallholder farmers out of subsistence. The second is health,
including control of the main killers－infection,
nutritional deficiencies, and unsafe childbirth－through
the provision of preventative and curative health services. The third is
education, which ensures that households develop the requisite skills to
navigate the local global economy. The fourth is infrastructure, essential for
productivity in every sphere, including power, roads, safe water for drinking
and sanitation, phone and Internet connectivity, and port services. The boost
of farm production has very often been the deus ex machina that triggers the
long term growth process. It is also a process that often starts with outside
help, as when the United States funded the initial research and many of the
inputs (improved seeds and fertilizer) that went into India’s Green Revolution, which began in the second half of the 1960s. In
the urban areas, the initial investment will not support agriculture but rather
manufacturing or services. Perhaps the trigger to growth will be improved roads
that facilitate trade or an improved port that permits the start of an apparel
sector or a power plant that provides vital power for factory production.
Whatever the particular investment, the concept is the same: raise productivity
above subsistence in order to trigger a self-sustaining process of economic
growth.
