Ep 6: From Poverty to Prosperity - How can Fragile Nations Manufacture Turnarounds

One of the world's foremost development economists Professor Sir Paul Collier from Oxford University, Blavatnik School of Government joins our host Waheed Rahman (@iwaheedo) for this breathtaking episode on poverty alleviation and turnarounds. Sir Paul has previously written 4 books on the topic of poverty alleviation, governance and sustainable growth including one of the most famous books in the development literature called 'The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It' (https://www.amazon.com/Bottom-Billion-Poorest-Countries-Failing/dp/0195373383). Prior to this Sir Paul also held the position as the Director of Research at the World Bank.

In this episode we talk about:

-definitions, types and causes of poverty.

-properties of fragile states and the 'bottom billion' people in the world

-how states can manufacture turnarounds including learnings from examples of growing middle-income countries such as Bangladesh, India, Singapore etc.

-where Western institutions working in the development sector get it wrong and how to ameliorate those errors.

-how to achieve good leadership and governance at a state-level.

Follow our host Waheed Rahman (@iwaheedo) for more updates on tech, civilizational growth and progress studies.

Here are the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players, you should be able to click the timestamp for the episode.

(00:00) - Intro

(06:23) - Humble roots and what made Sir Paul interested in the topics of development economics and governance?

(08:25) - What is poverty? Does poverty always have to relate with a financial benchmark? What are the types and causes of poverty?

(10:37) - Who are the "Bottom Billion" ?

(12:11) -  What are the structural traps to poverty that Bottom Billion countries have?

(22:13) - How do the Western institutions allocate capital for the development sector?

(26:43) - What role does the World Bank and other financial institutions play to bolster infrastructure building?

(30:26) - How can states manufacture turnarounds?

(38:16) - How do countries like Bangladesh and other developing states continue to grow (autopilot development) despite high number of corruption and poverty?

(42:13) - Are we in the right trajectory in terms of alleviating poverty? What roles do the government and state leaders have to establish strong societies?

(46:16) - Outro

‍