Headline, February14, 2014

''' NO DECENT LATRINE OR TOILET :

 weightage : 1/18 '''

In for a  broader measure of straitened miserable circumstances?: how does one account for this subject:

Ever so often   -I see and find and record,  school and college girls, requesting restaurant's gatemen, for the use of wash rooms! It is high time, that we drew up a policy and a plan paper: ''This issue will just not die''.

But before I warm up to the subject, let me honour and welcome students  Talat Naureen and  Aasia Sana  to the global family of !WOW!. 

Stepping forward to serve selflessly and to be counted for striving, is the first attribute of a good student and a high class human. Knowledge is useless, if it is not for Action.

I often wonder and muse about the ''complex persecutions'' of a developing society.

At a time when Google, (In my private world, I call Google, Our Mother Ship) is about to release a computer that fits on a pair of spectacles, and Apple and Samsung are racing to build a phone-like device to replace the wrist watch, talking about Latrines and Toilets, is not very exciting.

'''In the developing world, talking about public Latrines and Toilets is a revolutionary thought'''.

!!! But over the Rubicon, we go !!!

Last year, in Bulgaria, in a desperate demonstration against an ephemeral government,  ''poverty protests''  moved  six people to set themselves on fire, in less than a month. Three later died. 

The death by self-immolation of Plamen Goranov, a 36 year old amateur photographer, and rock climber, shook the whole world.

Mr Plamen Goranov has become Bulgaria's  Student Jan Palach   the hero, who set himself on fire in 1969  to protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Bulgarians have been worn down by rampant corruption, mismanagement in both and public private sector, useless bureaucracy, high unemployment and poverty:

"The deep seated cause for the political crisis is  'poverty'  ,'' said Kristofer Pavlov. chief economist at the UniCredit Bulbank in Sofia 

But on the MPI, what is the point of building lots of deprivation together in a single index if you then have to unpack them to understand how countries are facing?

Critics, such as Martin Ravallion of the World Bank point out that the weights assigned to each deprivation are arbitrary.

A country can reduce MPI poverty by the same amount either by saving a child from an untimely death or by installing a cement floor, a flush toilet and a kerosene stove.

These critics prefer to use a ''dashboard''  of indicators, each considered separately, rather than combing them into one.

The index defenders point out that its weightings may be arbitrary, but at least they are explicit. They serve as a starting point for debate about the importance of safe water relative to consumer durables, and sometimes inadvertently, by the push and pull of politics.

Combining these deprivations into a single score, by which countries can be prepared, also concentrates minds. Just as the decathlon draws attention to unfashionable events like the shot-put.

The MPI highlights neglected dimensions of poverty,  such as sanitation, which policymakers often ignore.

Less the developing world forgets : No weight is more arbitrary than zero.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders of the Developing World; and the Students, Professors and Teachers. See Ya all on -!WOW!  the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

'''Students At The Gates'''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless