Conventional Economical and Political policies and systems developed in the West only looks after the well off, the “Citizens” who live in cities and towns. It promotes and fosters urbanisation in their own countries which has succeeded to some extent since majority of their population were brought under the formal and conventional economic sector through industries that saw a huge growth after the Industrial revolution. The remaining poor were given unemployment benefits, grants, etc. On the other hand, in the Third World, the majority of people lives in rural areas and they are below the threshold of conventional economic policies and programmes. Microcredit has helped a part of them in Bangladesh, again in the upper segment of the left-outs, and the majority still remain out of any programme. Besides, without any technology input, microcredit alone cannot make a sustainable impact. We need indigenous technology based agriculture and small industry to fix this base, but for this we need firstly, an inhibition free environment for the small growers and entrepreneurs, which needs freedom from all kinds of taxation and regulatory measures. Whatever control one needs for this segment, have to be done through education and pursuasion through the combined effort of local civil society and associations of respective growers and entrepreneurs. Secondly we need a level playing ground against competing imports. With the slogan of globalisation, the poor has been made poorer. We need globalisation of knowledge, globalisation of information, but not globalisation of products. True globalisation cannot happen unless global free movement of people is achieved. This is a prerequisite to any attempts at globalisation; any alternative argument is likely to be tainted with hypocrisy. Since this pre requisite is not going to happen soon, we must present the cases against globalisation of commerce loud and clear.

The poorest in the Third World form the base of a pyramid. Unless we do something to fix this base through direct proactive policies and programmes, the top will always crumble down whatever policies we take, at whatever expense. We started at the top in the past. Nowadays in the name of SME, poverty alleviation and Microcredit we are looking at the middle and lower middle, but still have a long way to come down to the real base and view the problem from their perspective. This is the reason that the whole of the Third World cannot come out of the shackles of poverty.