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how does that justify having the poor out in the open begging for a living? What would you do? You can't magically produce houses, schools, hospitals and other

how does that justify having the poor out in the open begging for a living? What would you do? You can't magically produce houses, schools, hospitals and other basic infrastructure to service several hundred million people. Forget that, I doubt you could engineer an efficient distribution system that just provides these people with nutritious food. Keep in mind these people are distributed across a fairly large country, belong to many different religions and speak hundreds (possibly thousands) of different languages. The majority of these folks are illiterate, and the overwhelming majority have no education beyond high school. If you think you have a good solution to the problem, I am all ears, because I've been thinking about this for a long time and I can't see one.

pdeuchler 14y ago
I never promised a solution. I'd completely agree with you that it is a hard problem. Just because I don't have a solution doesn't make the fact that having the poor, out in the open, begging for a living any less "bad".
vacri 14y ago
Efficient food distribution is an interesting topic with respect to India - Mumbai has an industry based around moving food from affluent workers' homes to their place of lunch and back again, moving 200k meals a day. Even more interesting is that the workforce is largely illiterate, yet the failure rate for delivery and return is amazingly low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala
- pm90 14y ago
  this is a very good point, but remember that there is an economic incentive for this system. The people using the services are the ones paying for it. If the govt. tried to implement such a scheme in, say, a village, the guy in charge of disbursing the money wouldn't do it, he would keep it for himself. The villagers, meanwhile, don't even know of the existence of this scheme.

pdeuchler 14y ago

I never promised a solution. I'd completely agree with you that it is a hard problem. Just because I don't have a solution doesn't make the fact that having the poor, out in the open, begging for a living any less "bad".

vacri 14y ago

Efficient food distribution is an interesting topic with respect to India - Mumbai has an industry based around moving food from affluent workers' homes to their place of lunch and back again, moving 200k meals a day. Even more interesting is that the workforce is largely illiterate, yet the failure rate for delivery and return is amazingly low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

pm90 14y ago
this is a very good point, but remember that there is an economic incentive for this system. The people using the services are the ones paying for it. If the govt. tried to implement such a scheme in, say, a village, the guy in charge of disbursing the money wouldn't do it, he would keep it for himself. The villagers, meanwhile, don't even know of the existence of this scheme.