Can the world really do away with the poor?

The World Bank dreams of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. But one wonders how!?
The bank claims to have cut down poverty to less than half in two decades. “In 1990, 43 percent of the developing world lived on less than $1.25 a day. The World Bank estimates that by 2010 this figure had dropped to 21 percent,” Jim Yong Kim, WB President, is reported to have said last week.
Eliminating poverty, however, altogether is an entirely different ball game. Twenty percent of the world—that’s over 1 billion people—is still below the poverty line, and it would take a huge paradigm shift to lift that segment out of its misery.
As much as one would like it to be, ours is not a utopian world. There will always be people willing to make a fortune at the expense of the destitute willing to work at meagre wages, and governments will continue to support them in the name of the omnipotent force called capitalism.
“What drives capitalism is the profit motive. You can profit not only by making good things, but also by exploiting people, by exploiting the environment, by doing things that are not so good...a lot of the inequalities in the United States are not the result of creative activity but of exploitive activity,” Joseph Stiglitz critiqued in an exclusive interview with Alternet–-syndication service and online community of the alternative press—in June last year.
But, blaming capitalism alone in a world wrought with poor governance practices, particular in the developing world, is unfair. Really underprivileged countries like Somalia, Uganda and even Pakistan, where poverty reigns high are the ones with governments most indifferent about lifting their citizens out of poverty.
Last year, much of the aid given to Uganda by the UK and some other eurozone countries ended up in accounts belonging to the prime minister’s aides. Let’s not even go into the misuse of aid funds for floods in Pakistan and during the 2008 earthquake, which affected subsequent aid money for the country.
So even though encouraging growth figures in the developing world may prompt Jim Yong Kim to believe that in 17 years there will be no one living on less than $1.25 a day, one can’t help but doubt ones wishful thinking. Mindsets and attitudes have to be changed; and governments, donors, civil society and the private sector have to be on the same page—something that doesn’t even happen in dreams.
It’s not just about the ambitious timeline WB has set for itself. It’s about the very possibility of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty entirely, even 10 decades from now. Halving the number of poor to 1.1 billion? Possible: Eliminating the 1.1 billion to zero? Not possible!