A good contrast

Few years ago, I read the popular book The End of Poverty by famous writer Jeffrey Sachs, and I was very impressed by the way he dealt with the subject and the hope he rekindles in the reader. In fact, I became very optimistic after reading his book about the possibility of good times. Very recently, I read another good book Everybody Loves a Good Drought by P. Sainath, who is a very famous journalist. This book also talks about poverty but in some of the remote areas of India. The picture painted by the writer is really grim but seems to be the true depiction of harsh reality.

In some sense, after reading the latter book, I got a sense of how difficult it could be for any poverty alleviation program to reach such remote places and be able to provide direct benefit to destitute people, of course, until we make drastic changes in the machinery which already is in place.

For me, the contrast which these two books present is amazing- at a high level, the first book mostly deals with data along with a good dose of positive optimism, which would make the reader believe that complete eradication of poverty is achievable and that too in our life-time. Whereas, the second book presents the harsh reality at the ground level and depicts the multitude of problems (cultural, social, economical etc) which one needs to tackle to successfully deliver any poverty eradication program. Unfortunately, such things, which have a direct influence on the outcome of any such program, do not lend themselves well to any kind of traditional data-analysis techniques, and hence, often, get neglected at the peril of the success of such programs or intentions.

Wondering how others think about it ...