Poverty

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty


Once in an after-lecture interaction I was asked how I defined poverty: My impromptu answer was- I define a richman as one who can fulfill the needs of his imagination. What I imagine is also within the parameters of my total reality. Someone prompted ‘for instance’- I smiled and said, for instance if I can’t pluck out the stars to distribute as toffees to you I am poor indeed. The audience laughed, a young girl said- in that case we all are poor. But what is poverty in human experience? Why do governments all over the world take up poverty alleviation programmes? Is it for the rag pickers or star pluckers? Again there was a roll of laughter. Without the slightest hint of embarrassment I said: If you have the World Bank prescription of two Dollars a day in mind we have to go by statistics. In India we have about 36% of the population below poverty line. But when you think of a place to live in, some clothes to wear and two square (or triangular) meals a day, I don’t know whether the WB has any specificities to prescribe.

In the beginning all humans were born poor. None had any other inheritance except bland nature, hostile forests and pathless futures. What was the meaning of poverty or prosperity then? Yes, there was pain of hunger, fear of predators and death perhaps was an incomprehensible, mystic beyond their ken. How could the naked Homo Sapiens come to the present level over the long arduous centuries? They fought hunger, sickness and poverty, overcame them and launched empires of their own, more organised and even powerful than nature. Those who begged of fruit trees, later of the gods, then from kings and ministers – this word poverty relates to their state which they could not change or improve. Poor are those who give up half way through the struggle and depend on divine or human mercy. Also when people are rendered helpless by famine, flood, earthquake, tsunami or a bomb attack, they often lose the fight as the opposing forces are too strong to overcome. But the human mind is such that it will find out alternative ways of survival although in penury. But even in such circumstances man refuses to yield, for his ego will never admit defeat. Poor are those who surrender their pride at the slightest hint of adversity. The welfare state, however caring and benevolent, ought to rejuvenate the calamity –struck defeatism in destitutes instead of treating them as venerable burdens on the resources. Give them doles but never make their dolorous lives  accept their state as the inalienable  fate imposed by God or reality. Teach them to rise, raise their self respect, give them work and create environs for their self fulfilment. If you give them rations (or rice at Rs. 2 a kg) they will be shameless slaves of the state or the votebanks of political parties: their human qualities will be enslaved by the senses. Their moral being will perpetually submit to authority; they can never fight to emancipate themselves.

In India farmers commit suicide which is definitely sad. But why should a loan burden or a crop failure lead a person to suicide? We must remember – those who kill themselves are afraid of life. They are cowards who refuse to go through the vicissitudes to prove their human worth. Government instead of giving compensation for such people should condemn their cowardice. The society too should encourage such distressed people to keep on fighting and not to leave the stage altogether like bad actors.

Poverty, as has been said, is a state of mind. Physical poverty apart, we have emotional, intellectual and moral poverty to contend with. Most human beings suffer from moral poverty. The leaders who loot in the name of service, the traders who hoard things to create artificial scarcity and the teachers who believe they have nothing more to learn and many such other professionals who treat the others as their potential victims are poor indeed. A man sitting in a Mercedes is not necessarily rich if he plots to exploit innocent people. Gandhiji believed in the moral lessons given in primary schools that God loves the poor: it is a consolatory precept. God loves those who love themselves and strive hard to advance in life. Monarchies killed this instinct in man. Tyrants forcibly suppressed free play of the human will. But in a modern democracy man is free to endeavour to change his conditions. Loans are available to start enterprises. He who is proud of displaying his poverty today and claims sympathy-charity-doles, in my view, is morally poor which makes his physical poverty ugly. Poverty should be transcended by the dignity of pride, for, that is what man is made of.