The incorrect barometer for measuring poverty.
How some orthodox ideologies are keeping the poverty trap a reality in India, 73 years after its independence.
Three decades after the economic liberalization, the Indian laborer class still lacks the prerogative of work-life balance, decent pay scale, and job security. Poverty is not an unwanted consequence of scarcity but the desired outcome of a plutocratic ideology that assumes that earning enough to eat is the poor’s ultimate yearning
The International Monetary Fund has found that adjusted for GDP and PPP, India ranks 2nd in paying its CEOs and top executives, outperforming the opulent European countries. Perversely, the wage scale of the laborer class is abysmally low, with most workers earning only subsistence income. The perils of the seemingly lucrative advantage of paying less to the worker class are often neglected, but it has trapped the nation in a state of unending poverty that leads to counter development conditions like illiteracy, slum dwelling, and epidemics.
The tradition of paying lower wages to the poor is often vindicated by adjudging it as an outcome of the free market’s supply and demand forces, i.e., low pay because of fewer jobs and more contenders. However, the same explanation is not valid to the public sector jobs where demand per seat is even higher, and still, compensation is decent as it is controlled by law. Some apologists of the low-wage culture even go as far as stating that poor people do not require more money. This thought is germinating from a simplex ingrained mindset that — food is all the poor people need. The belief that the poor need only enough to eat is entrenched in society, just like the concept of patriarchy was rooted in the last century from which we are now emancipating. This belief leads to imbalance wages where we tend to pay lesser remuneration for the jobs which are taken up by the poor and creating a vicious circle.
in some rural parts of the Indian state of Rajasthan, the Mehtar community, who cleans the toilets of zamindars (landlords), is not paid money for their service, but instead, food is directly proffered to them.
Paying only enough to survive is a vestigial tradition deriving from the historical custom of deliberately keeping some factions of a society weak and poor. The “shudra” caste in India and African slaves in the United States of America are examples from the past where a section was not allowed to acquire wealth. Unabating penury leads to constant exploitation in all the hard and dirty kinds of work, like manual mining and scavenging.
The erstwhile laws were written on the premise that if the poor are allowed to prosper, the society will collapse as no one will do their work. This sole convenience that society gains from the helplessness of a destitute are why it took so long to abolish India’s caste-based work system and slavery in the American states. Contrary to the perceived benefits of coercive deprivation and wealth polarization, it is always of lesser value than egalitarianism — which means equality for all. The abolition of slavery did not halt the American economy, as predicted by many traditionalists. Instead, the former slaves got the right to education and health care, which created a better workforce and led to enormous development.
Fortunately, in modern times, laws are less draconian, and everyone is constitutionally allowed to prosper. There are now examples where the poor have risen from privation to affluence, but the number is insignificant compared to those still trapped in poverty. The mere fact that when a child of a rickshaw driver clears a prestigious exam gets in the headlines of newspapers upholds the ideology that to prosper in life is not a norm for the poor; it is an exception.
It is often stated that poverty is on a rapid decline in the world. It is estimated that 271 million people have lifted from poverty in the past ten years in India. This enthusiastic number results from the same old convention that poverty means the unavailability of food, and hence, the government’s guidelines do not recognize a person living on more than 30 rupees a day as poor.
The number of deaths from acute hunger is considerably decreased compared to colonial times, which is often considered a sign of development. Nevertheless, the fact that people are not dying of hunger is not a sign of growth; it is merely a sign of liberation. Real progress happens when there is an improvement in daily nutrition, education infrastructure, health care, and work-life balance. These parameters improved remarkably for the middle and wealthy sections of the society who now have world-class schools and hospitals at their disposal. On the other hand, the primary health and education system still lacks essential facilities, which often leads to deadly hazards like the Gorakhpur Oxygen Tragedy of 2017, which claimed the lives of more than 60 children.
Restricting a community to be only rich enough to feed themselves is pernicious for society in the long run. As poor people do not have access to television, they miss out on health care information, and resultant unawareness often leads to a widespread epidemic. The lack of basic entertainment sources causes frustration and leads to an increase in alcoholism and domestic violence. The extreme poor do not have money to own a toilet, let alone a house; they live and defecate in the open, leading to several health issues for the whole society. Keeping a section of society poor is undoubtedly not benign for the rich as well.
Sadly, the culture of paying lower than justified wage is prevailing in the whole country. The laborer’s payments are not derived based on the effort being put in the work but are minimally calculated as what is enough to stay alive. The unwillingness to accept the poor’s needs is beyond food will naturally never eradicate the swamp of poverty. Only a handful, who are exceptional enough to scramble themselves out, will live a life without deprivation. Next time, when you think that you do not need to increase your maid’s wage as no one in her family is dying of hunger, think if food is the only thing one needs.
“The swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s swaraj — Mahatama Gandhi.”
