What are some of the major problems faced by the third world countries today?
What challenges do we face in overcoming these problems? What are the causes and remedies for the same including the barriers to successfully overcoming those challenges?
There is no global issue – whether poverty, population and hunger, environmental pollution, disease and malnutrition, illiteracy and superstition, lack of basic infrastructure that doesn’t bedevil the third world nations.
There are monumental developmental challenges in the Third World nations. Moreover, unlike the countries of Western Europe the third world nations do not have the luxury of executing the challenge of national building through economic growth and democracy in a sequential fashion over centuries. These processes must be carried out simultaneously even if they may not always be mutually reinforcing.
The Third World nations must be ready to meet these challenges in an open and increasingly networked global economy. However, they also run the risk at the same time that international players with their own agendas could undermine these nations’ efforts at nation building by competing for economic resources as well as political loyalties.
Hunger and malnutrition are perhaps among the greatest challenges faced by the poor Third World nations. Nevertheless, the explosion of community based, participatory, grassroots action in most of the Third World over the last two decades appears to be quite an encouraging trend. There are literally millions of grass root organizations and tens of thousands of non-governmental organizations across the world. These organizations aim to “increase agricultural productivity, improve basic health care, increase poor people’s incomes, design safety nets against exceptional entitlement shortfalls, improve the quality of environment, change dietary practices, curb fertility rates, and assure assess to land, water, and market opportunities.
This however, does not mean that government has no role in addressing the developmental challenges, for even as these organizations occupy a crucial position in its fight against poverty and hunger, the government and international organizations are crucial actors with the vast financial, legal, and intellectual resources with them.
A dominant model of development thought appropriate for the Third World nations, the neo-classical economic model that suggested a trickle-down approach began to lose credibility since 1970s. The neo-Marxist critics of this model found the underdevelopment in the Third-world nations rooted in the economic development of Western Europe and North America. This model was also criticized for its negative view of religious culture, patriarchal biases and andro-centrism. Indigeneous developmental models have been suggested as a consequence of this disillusion.
The Third World nations face a number of challenges including hunger and poverty. The globalization process has come both as a solution and challenge to these nations. While, there are hundreds of thousands of grass-roots organizations and non-governmental organizations making sincere efforts toward upliftment of millions of poor people in these nations, it is imperative for the governments and international bodies to address these issues. There is also the issue of choosing a model of development for these nations.
