Where Does Poverty Come From?

The imposition of free market economics on colonial territories in the 19th Century massively increased death tolls from drought and monsoon: as many as 18m died in India and China alone in two years in the 1870s. Famine in China sparked the Boxer Uprising. ‘Modernization’ caused village stocks of grain to be centralized in the Indian Empire and then exported to England whenever there were bad harvests. When famine struck, the colonial administration raised prices beyond the reach of the peasants who starved, fled the land or turned to banditry and even cannibalism. Money sent by European governments for relief often ended up funding increases in local military establishments and ‘bush wars’ against colonial rivals or were pocketed by the colonial merchant and ruling classes – the very crime that Saddam’s Iraq was accused of throughout the 1990s. Despite a decades-long effort to ‘civilize’ and ‘develop’ India, there was no increase in the per capita income of people between 1757 and 1947. Wealth flowed in both directions but did not pass out of the hands of the ruling classes into that of ordinary Indians. In Africa and Asia the rural population live on the poorest land. They are forced to grow cash crops for export, although their primary need is to feed themselves: 15 million children die every year from malnutrition. In Brazil the IMF (International Monetary Fund) typically insisted that the huge $120 billion debt was paid by reducing imports and maximising exports. This has inevitably led to the worsening rape of Amazonia through increasing the output of primary products such as minerals, meat, coffee, cocoa and hardwoods. Living on the worst land and burdened by debt, is it any wonder people over-cultivate, deforest and overuse the land, becoming more prone to ‘natural’ disasters such as floods and droughts. This land is also the most dangerous: the poor live in shanty towns of flood-prone river basins or foreshores, or in huts of heavy mud brick, on steep hills, that are washed away when the rains come.