Elvis Montero

Technology and Poverty

The Poor Children

Source: job_earth’s photo stream

The worldwide financial crisis has been receiving constant press coverage during the past two months or so. The occasion could not be more opportune for us to join the thousands and thousands of blogs that will bring attention to the Blog Action Day 2008. This year’s theme, poverty, timely arrives today, October 15, as an apropos reminder of the harsh reality affecting millions around the world in these treacherous financial moments. Thus, in light of the occasion, I decided to ask myself, and my readers, a very important question: Is technology alone enough to end poverty in the world?

In order to answer the question properly, or at least elaborate on it with sound intellectual rigor, we must define poverty and place it within a set of predetermined dimensions. According to a Wikipedia entry on the subject, poverty can be defined as “deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn, to obtain better employment to escape poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens. According to Mollie Orshansky who developed the poverty measurements used by the U.S. government, “to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us take for granted.”^[1]”

Evidently, this definition does a great job at describing the tangible aspects of poverty. Food, shelter, drinking water, clothing, health services, and many other basic elements required in order to have a normal life, must be present or else one would fall under the denotation presented above. Based on this definition, encompassing the short-term and most pressing fundamental human needs, we see how technology can be easily used to greatly alleviate poor people’s dilemma:

Drip irrigation (sometimes called trickle irrigation) works by applying water slowly and directly to the soil. It is the slow drop-by-drop, localised application of water at a grid above the soil surface. Water flows from a tank through a filter into lines then drips through emitters into the soil next to the plants. The high efficiency of drip irrigation results from two primary factors. The first is that the water soaks into the soil before it can evaporate or run-off. The second is that the water is only applied where it is needed (at the plant roots), rather than sprayed everywhere as in sprinkle or furrow irrigation systems.

Nutrients can be applied through the drip systems, thus reducing the use of fertilizers. Soil is maintained in a continuously moist condition. With a 100 square meter garden, equipped with low cost drip kit technology, a family of five can grow nutritious vegetables for consumption throughout the year.

Farming techniques are just an example. There are many more instances in which technology has had a positive impact in poor people’s lives. However, I am more concerned with poverty’s impalpable aspects. I firmly believe therein lies the solution to the puzzle.

When I was younger, I used to think technology alone could eradicate penury once and for all. I was both naive and overly optimistic since, in my mind, all poor people’s substantial necessities could undoubtedly be accounted for with the help of new technology. If they’re not hungry, problem solved. Right? Nevertheless, as time passed and I grew older, and after having been in contact with a few very impecunious families, I realized that even though science and technology could certainly improve poor people’s status quo, they would surely fail to completely vanquish the problem. The reason is simple: if you don’t educate the poor, recently developed tools won’t make a long lasting impact. If we really want to get rid of poverty, we must increase education levels in every impoverished area in the world.

A good, well-rounded education is not about sheer knowledge. It’s about learning how to think critically and introspectively. Because of this, I believe technology alone cannot defeat poverty. Being poor is a state of mind, not a situation. Granted, there are people that happen to live in the most trying of circumstances (with little or no money), but that state of affairs can be reversed in due time if a good education is provided. If one is not educated, then it’s very hard, not to say impossible, to extricate oneself from the vicious circle that poverty really is. This sort of endeavor should be the one getting the most attention and resources. Thankfully, others think the same:

For the more affluent among us, science and technology have improved, but not revolutionized, our lives, providing us, perhaps, more time to return to a simpler way of life and to restore the human touch. For the poor, however, science and technology are likely to have a far greater impact as they promise to provide new, important, even life-saving economic opportunities. I foresee the day, not far off, when there will be only one world–when a student sitting in a Bangladesh village can take a course at Harvard University through the Internet–a world in which everyone can have a voice that resonates through the great global village.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t use technology to cover the basic needs for the poor as much as we can. By all means, we should. Ideas like this one are absolutely praiseworthy. Nonetheless, we should also focus on the problem’s root. I believe that’s education.

If you’d like to know more about technology and poverty, please follow this link to ADB’s excellent Technology and Poverty Reduction in Asia and the Pacific.