Introduction

Earlier this week I received a copy of a wonderful book called Poor Economics written by professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the renowned research university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  It is one of the best gifts for anyone truly interested in development models and processes to help the poor and who reject the banal notions and mindless efforts of politicians across continents. The irony of our Guyana example is that our politicians have managed, quite spectacularly, to rise over a single electoral cycle from need to affluence even as they pretend to write and implement poverty strategies that will go nowhere and help no one. Poor Economics is a book that simply cannot be praised too much, winning acclaim from across the spectrum, including from heavyweights like Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Robert Solow, and journalists from the pro-capitalist Financial Times, Economist and Forbes to the liberal Guardian and El País – no easy feat.

The book is no ivory tower approach to the complex issue of poverty or why a poor person needs to borrow in order to save, why the children of the poor go to school but do not learn, why they pay for drugs they do not need while missing out on easily available life-saving immunizations, why they spend so much on dowries…..