“It is only unfortunate to be born a poor but it is a choice to continue living in poverty.” Knowing someone upholding such a connotation as a major life-lesson derived from a long and hard fight against poverty seems truly insightful. The connotation could be disagreed based on our contemporary understanding, evolved amidst development and poverty alleviation theories and practice. However, such a connotation, which is a lesson of someone’s personal experience of struggling and succeeding in breaking out of the poverty nexus merits due consideration for further discourse. The subject in the discussion here is not just a story of success. What he had embraced in the life to overcome poverty and later what he has returned to the society rather makes quite an insightful story.
An eight-year-old child had to immigrate to Pakistan in 1947 in the aftermath of de-annexation of the subcontinent. He had to embrace this international migration while accompanying a loner widow mother and a younger brother. He never revealed this to his children whatever he and his little family had been through in the times of massacre and other brutalities brewed amidst the partition of India. However, it is not a veiled story anymore. The literature penned by the likes of Manto portrayed the true picture enough of violence and pain that the enfeebled transistors, especially women and children, embraced while travelling and living in refugee camps.
The child had to start his life by collecting trash on the streets and coal droppings on the then steam-based railway system. Later, employed as a child worker by a blacksmith, he embraced severe scars, being beaten by the use of hot iron bars. The story of misery continued, but it couldn’t defeat his determination and perseverance towards a prosperous life.
Later in life, he, that disadvantaged child, became a primary school teacher by pursuing his education aspirations private to and along with other crucial survival and subsistence endeavours. He worked hard with the school children and received a good name within the teaching fraternity. He also pursued his entrepreneurial ambitions and became a successful businessman too. This all enabled him to afford a university education for all of his six children.
He is currently retiring for that being a sizable taxpayer, philanthropist and an all-time motivational speaker. Addressing beggars and motivating people living in poverty to help themselves make out of the woods remains his favourite pastime now. He doesn’t believe in continuing to live in poverty. He cannot believe so since he had overcome the worst of conditions a human life could think of facing in one lifetime. Stories like such are numerous and inspirational.
Poverty, contrary to the usual perception, is not exclusively a state of financial wellbeing
However, what we see every day around us are also stories of choices made in favour of living a life in poverty. Poverty, contrary to the usual perception, is not exclusively a state of financial wellbeing. It is instead a state of mind that could not endeavour to aspire means to earn a prosperous life owing to exogenous and/or endogenous factors. Exogenous factors, however, come as sufficient condition to complement the endogenous factors. Willingness and preparedness to fight poverty, thus, form the necessary conditions required to change the poor state of mind.
People begging on streets, domestic workers serving the affluent and people living unemployed – all and sundry – to home, I found the opportunity to speak to regarding their prospects and preparedness to fight poverty are seldom seen deviating their idol state of mind. Children in employment or begging seldom wish to go to school even if you offer them a monthly stipend. Women, working as domestic workers, are prone to extreme forms of violence and abuse but are not willing to take charge of their earnings that goes to their family deposit without benefitting them anyway. Girls who do not exist on our national database are not willing to get an identity card. Electric, construction and plumbing workers, etc. are not willing to appreciate the use of personal protective equipment or having a complete toolbox for efficient service delivery and remain underemployed most of the times.
Almost no one amongst the unemployed is interested in learning employable skills. In a nutshell, it remains a comfort zone where most of the poverty-stricken folks prefer to reside without considering the prospects of employing their potential.
It may be a form of cultural distortion too that gradually the poor state of mind has become a more acceptable cultural disposition. It used to be a usual sight a couple of decades ago that people would find it shameful to expose their meagre economic conditions. People instead would prefer to paint their financial outlay quite positively. Now, however, it has become rather a popular cultural attire amongst the people living around the poverty line that their economic depression should be seen more severe than it is in actual.
The relationship between human appeal and perseverance to fight poverty merits further deliberations. It calls for a deeper understanding of what remains crucial to the process of ending poverty. As a student of development literature and practice, I appreciate the criticality of exogenous factors and means required to end poverty. Government’s employment and social policies are no doubt important in paving ways for ending poverty. Such means, however, become more useful once the poverty-stricken mindset appreciates the willingness and preparedness to fighting poverty. How could such a mind-set be best-invoked remains a million-dollar question, however?
The writer is a development professional