Fayyaz Baqir. Poverty Alleviation: The Bird’s Eye View and the Worm’s Eye View

Helping the poor is a chicken and egg issue. You may define poverty with reference to calorie based, income based and access based measures at the risk of excluding the views of the poor. If you want to ask the poor you cannot do it without a measure of poverty. This conundrum is followed by another one; should we subsidize the poor or invest in expanding the range of their choices? Should we provide the fish or teach the art of fishing? Why it is not naturally happening through market and public policy? These questions were answered by an out of box approach known as Diagnostic Dialogue, used by Aga Khan Rural Support Programe (AKRSP) to double the income of mountain communities living in the most treacherous mountain ranges of Karakoram, Hindukush and Himalayas. This talk will share the dynamics of three step Dialogue and its underlying assumptions defining a new praxis for transforming the ‘culture’ of poverty.  

To read more about Dr. Baqir's work, please visit his profile at McGill's Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism.