COMMENT | Must a leader have been poor to understand poverty?

This is the speculation of Kedah Menteri Besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor when he mocked Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s stated determination to abolish hardcore poverty.

Sanusi’s view finds an echo in Walter Bagehot’s musings. 

The first editor of The Economist, a weekly publication that’s now a byword among journalism’s practitioners, wrote: “To the rich poverty is an anomaly. They don’t understand why those who want dinner don’t ring the bell.”...