Mandatory reading.... Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs (2005), the Nobel Laureate and Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University, in his book “The End of Poverty: Economic possibiliteis for our time” provides global poverty statistics and describes many countries’ poverty situations with examples. The book narrates the role of international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in increasing poverty in developing countries. Jeffrey Sachs raises many issues of social, economic, and cultural nature, such as public health, HIV Aids, child mortality, maternal mortality, population problems, malaria, polio etc. in the book. He articulates environmental problems like environmental pollution and climate change, and their devastations that destroy our Mother Earth in different countries and exacerbate global poverty, particularly in the developing countries. The book describes how the poverty trap works globally at the expense of the human face. It narrates the ups and downs of the economic development histories of different countries like India, China, Russia, U.S.A. and Japan. Moreover, the book compares and contrasts the economic histories of China, Russia and India.

The book mainly focuses on global poverty and its miseries in the poor countries. Jeffrey Sachs provides many suggestions in the book about how to end poverty in the poor countries. He narrates with examples how different countries have started their economic development processes. The book tells about technological change, the flow of technological innovations and their development (invention of the steam engine, use of coal, invention of the rail engine and railway, electrification of industry), IT information flow and their contributions in society. The book also argues the pros and cons of science and technology and their contributions to economic progress and economic decline throughout the world. Moreover, the book touches upon the contribution of computers to socio-economic development in society; however, there are problems that exist in using computers and IT in the developing countries. Therefore it is important to identify how developing countries can overcome problems in using computers and in developing IT industries.

Summery.....This book creates new knowledge, thoughts, policies and strategies that might inspire poor countries to organize them against poverty and to develop partnerships among international agencies and rich countries for foreign funding and foreign investments for the well-being of the poor countries. It tells us how to use IT and energy resources, and reminds us of the human potential for creative cooperation exemplified by the sharing of resources for ending global poverty. The book is critical of World Bank and IMF international funding schemes. The book awakens international donors and international investment agencies to improve their funding/investment policies and strategies. The book has many economic statistics, facts and figures that show that possibilities or opportunities exist so that poor countries could develop people-centered economies for the well-being of all their people. This book review could promote cooperation among international donor agencies, and increase collaborations among rich and poor countries based on Jeffrey Sachs’ recommendations. The reviewer of this book thinks this book summary and review provide readers with a synopsis of the book and shares Jeffrey Sachs’ ‘The End of Poverty’ and its features, such as descriptions of different policies, strategies and services, that might help researchers think about and find out ways of implementing economic development for altruistic communities, making life better in the contemporary world.

I hope that if you are reading this book you understand the changes that have to come.