South America And South Asia Essay

1) Nationalism, socialism, and religion have all played a major role in anti-colonial struggles and post-colonial constructions in India and Southeast Asia. Which of these three ideologies do you think was most effective for colonized peoples and why?

In his book, "Promises not kept" Isbister explains to us that most of the people living in poverty stricken Asia, South America, and Africa are plagued by disease, danger and uncertainty. Isbister asks us the question of why social change in the third world has come to a halt and how come there is massive and swelling poverty that continues to plague almost all of the developing countries. Social scientists have developed different approaches to help understand why there is poverty in the third world and also to help seek out the answers to why poverty keeps on persisting.

This essay analyses the Australian-China bilateral relationship since 1945 and in particular its political significance to Australia. Many global factors have influenced this relationship, including the advent of the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc European nations. In addition, internal political changes in Australia and China have both affected and been affected by the global changes. It will be analysed that Australia’s bilateral relationship with China has always had a sharp political edge but that approaching the new millenium economics and trade considerations are shaping Australias and for that matter Chinese politics.

It is clear that citizens in impoverished nations are stuck in a poverty trap, where they are unable to escape even with the assistance of aid from well developed nations. Many citizens are contributing money to charities because there is a moral obligation to donate if it does not put us into a state of economic instability. On the other hand, no matter how much aid is being given to nations stuck in poverty, this money is not helping any of the citizens. The money is going directly into the hands of corrupt governments and corporations, who constantly use it improperly. This aspect of money misuse is clearly illustrated in Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Boo focuses the book on the impoverished slum of Annawadi, located in Mumbai, India. Throughout the book, Boo shows examples of how the citizens of Annawadi are stuck in a poverty trap because of the country’s inconsistent and inefficient systems, leading to the failure of sustainable growth and poverty reduction to the nation. India is not the only place falling victim to this problem; many other third world countries grapple with the same issues. Other than helping the nations, aid has made impoverished nations circumstances even worse, pushing it into a further state of poverty. The main components of the failure of aid are due to developing countries not having proper infrastructure and institutions, no efficient government, and a dependence on aid.

Bianca, A. (n.d.). The Disadvantages to Centralized Control in a Business. Retrieved from Small Business : http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-centralized-control-business-20670.html

The two authors argue the main issue that India is continuing to face are due to the lack of concern for citizens especially for the poor citizens and women. Dreze and Sen proceed into their work as they continue to portray the way in which the citizens of India were being oppressed by the new economic and political policies. One of the issues Dreze and Sen use as an example of how India rapid economic growth is problematic is the countries lack to foster participation for economic growth. The lack of inclusion in economic growth leads to a wealth disparity between the citizens. The authors continue on depicting several other issues another one being the lack of enhancement to the standard of living despite generating economic growth from the use of public goods. The standards of living are a huge issue with India as it signals there is a large disparity within wealth. Dreze and Sen continue to document the lack of social and living standards especially in the case of education, medical care, and physical services like clean water, electricity, drainage, and sanitation. The authors proceed to make note how without a development of a social structure within India high economic growth can harm the citizens and ultimately neglect civil, political, and social rights. Dreze and Sen then

Last Decade governments and high ranking officials from across the globe came together under the magnanimous principles of The Universal Declaration of Human rights giving birth to the millennium development goals.The 8 goals and 21 targets capture ambitious promises such as eradicating poverty and hunger and achieving universal primary education by 2015. (UN.org) Yet with just a few months away from the deadline this historic chapter will close in tragedy.The setting for this tragic tale is Sub-Saharan Africa where 50 million children and youth still remain out-of-school.Despite extraordinary progress in enrollment stark disparities still remain. Poor children across the region are victims of an insidious “lottery of life” where the family they are born into means everything and nothing. (efa governance matters)For a poor child born into poverty the chances of that child finishing school once they start are slim, and if that child happens to be female she can only dream of what it’s like inside a classroom. Experts have declared Africa’s education crisis a state of emergency as dangerously low completion rates, and poor learning achievement have left an indelible stain on educational goals. Africa’s education crisis is a result strong socio-economic and cultural barriers which have created major stumbling blocks in both access to education and learning outcomes.Consequently millions of of children and youth are being robbed of their futures.

South America is a continent located in the western hemisphere. The population of South America is 422.5 million. There are 12 countries in South America Bolivia, Paraguay,Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and Ecuador. The largest country in South America is Brazil. South America has a history that has a variety of human cultures and forms of civilization.

Southern Uruguay consists mostly of rolling plains and is an eastward extension of the Argentine pampas. The Atlantic coastline is fringed with tidal lakes and sand dunes. Low, unbroken stretches of level land line the banks of the two border rivers, the Uruguay and the Plata. The Uruguay is the nation's longest river, with a total length of 1,610 kilometers (1,000 miles).

The early 1990s exhibited a boom in many economies throughout the world due to factors such as globalization and other trade liberalization practices, but this boom was quickly halted in the latter half of the decade when bad investments nearly sent the entire world into economic turmoil. With the introduction of free trade practices such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, the economies of many of the worlds “developing countries” skyrocketed due to an influx of foreign investment. At, first this exponential boom in small countries with emerging economies seemed like it would never end. However, this all changed when investors “caught wind” that these developing countries did not have the means to keep up with the massive inflow of investments. This led to what we know refer to today as the Asian Financial Credit Crisis. In order to understand how to prevent such a disaster from happening again, we must first examine how exactly this event was triggered, and what should have been done differently.

525.6 million live in poverty in Asia, 214 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 37 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The IMF’s bailout of Thailand was an agreement that would give the Thai government $16.7 billion in loans in exchange for the country adopting a tough program of economic and financial reforms. These reforms required the closing of 16 finance firms; these 16 firms would either have to merge with other banks, or submit their own rehabilitation plan. This agreement with the IMF

All the countries in South America are greatly affected by poverty to some extent. The countries that have the highest rates are Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela. However, in recent years most South American countries have experienced economic growth. All of these countries are trying to reduce poverty, with varying degrees of effort and success. New infrastructures are being built and more houses are being provided.

Neoliberal globalization is an economic system that promotes free market policies of liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and the cutting of social support systems. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank help promote these policies by making structural adjustment programs conditions for any aid or support. Unfortunately, once structural adjustment programs are put into place they tend to disrupt developing countries’ economies and end up making them even worse off than before. Before the 1980s, developing countries had a per capita growth rate of more than 3%, once these policies were put into place growth rates dropped to 1.7% (Hickel 2012: 7). This provides evidence that these programs are pushed at developing countries

Unfortunately, it was estimated that roughly 1.2 billion people in 1993 lived in extreme or absolute poverty, that which Robert McNamara regards “‘a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable standard of human dignity’” (Singer 219, 220). These estimates can be projected at nearly 2 billion today. A large majority of the people living in absolute poverty resides in underdeveloped countries. Among the nearly 4.4 billion people in these countries, “3/5 lives in societies lacking basic sanitation; 1/3 go without safe drinking water; 1/4 lack adequate housing; 1/5 are undernourished, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day” (Speth 1).