Chutes and Ladders is a well-known children’s game. While many children today may not know the game, the majority of adults in America are acquainted with the board game. While the game’s concept is to simply move up the board, in actuality the process takes time. Climb the ladders up. Disappointingly slide back down. What goes up must come down”, should be the games motto. As fast as one can move up in the game, one may also find themselves shifting back down. This is the main idea of Subir Gokarn and Rohan Sandhu’s piece titled, “Stairway to Prosperity”.
Gokarn and Sandhu paint a perfect picture of how growth and poverty are intertwined with Chutes and Ladders. They state, “Growth — the ladders — is an uncertain process for many individuals; benefits are elusive and, if attained, always at risk. Therefore, an essential element in any enduring poverty alleviation strategy is the prevention of large declines in household incomes that are caused by a variety of shocks — in effect, blocking off the chutes.” But how do we push to decline extreme poverty? By focusing both on the current poor and today’s children, a byproduct of these unfortunate situations—specifically through better health and education. While impoverished educated children are growing in numbers, the quality of education compared to the top 10 percent is much lower, according to Declining Inequality in Latin. In addition to failed education, the lack of quality health care including: shortage of medicine and inadequate care and treatment of patients, lowers opportunities for growth. One idea to reduce poverty is to implement Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs). CCTs are a reward system which aim to alleviate poverty by offering money to those living in poverty on the condition they comply with certain behaviors. These behaviors might consists of enrolling children in public schools, implementing better nutrition, vaccinations and regular checkups at the doctor. CCTs are used to break the poverty cycle. Gokarn and Sandhu claim CCTs are “ladders” to prosperity and can help reduce (chutes) long term poverty, as long as social infrastructure supports them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Indian Express is a daily newspaper which is published in Mumbai, India. Most interestingly it is an English written paper. The article, “Stairway to Prosperity” written by Subir Gokarn and Rohan Sandhu uses strategy in order to captivate their reader. By using a metaphor, in this case, Chutes and Ladders, the authors are better able to build stronger connections and understanding from their American audience. As I started off my explanation by drawing the reader in with a nostalgic memory, the reader is more likely to continue reading and remain focus as they better understand how the poverty cycle works. Hopefully, I am successful at implanting the same or similar strategies into my own profile piece.
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AuthorAnne is 25 years old and originally from the Bay Area, California, but grew up in the small charming town of Horseheads, just south of the Finger Lakes Wine Country in Upstate New York. Archives
April 2019
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