photo credit: baurazi on flickr
The most harrowing aspect of my childhood trips to India — other than learning how to squat on the “Indian-style” toilets in my grandfather’s Old Delhi compound — was coming face to face with poverty. Riding around Delhi in the backseat of my uncle’s Fiat, I would dread long stops at the crowded traffic lights, turning my face the other way and pretending not to hear the rap-tap-tap on the window or see the glistening brown eyes of that little girl with her hand outstretched. The adults never seemed to notice much, and the few persistent beggars that managed to incite a response would hear the familiar admonishing refrain of “chall. hatt yahan se. kuch kaam kyun nahi karta?” There’s little sympathy for beggars in a family of hard-nosed baniyas who have toiled for generations to amass the wealth they enjoy today. It is difficult for them to understand why beggars don’t get off the streets and find steady work instead. From our perspective, beggars seem like misguided, lazy people who haven’t tried hard enough to make something of themselves. Science would, however, suggest otherwise.
Neuroscience research conducted on children who have been raised in poverty has shown that the stress of a poor childhood has permanent affects on the brain. More specifically, scientists are learning that the working memories of poorer children, especially those brought up in dense urban populations, have smaller capacities than those of their middle- and upper-class counterparts. What this means is that these children will have a harder time remembering things like long numbers or names of state capitals in school, be less equipped to “mug up” for the brutal exams and, as a result, fair poorer in job interviews, even if they are able to actually go to school and get job interviews in the first place.
The implications are obvious — there are explanations beyond laziness for why the poor stay poor for generations. It’s perhaps not fair to blame them for their plight. So, next time you tell a young begger to go get a job, give him a rupee or two along with your advice to take the edge off the stress and make it a little more likely that the kid will have a chance to leave the slums.
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To use some of the words above like “hate” and “lazy” as a generic label to slap on to anyone suffering abject poverty is ignorance. We are talking about people who are struggling for survival on a day to day, hour to hour basis. Are they possibly part of organized rings? Sure. They probably are exploited every which way and perhaps even continue that cycle. But it is difficult to sit here comfortably and type into a computer logged in to the internet, and pretend to know exactly what kind of effect that level of poverty would have on a person’s mind and psyche. But I think devastating is a pretty good guess. Even when they eventually claw their way into passably subhuman existence (the slums), and can begin to be connected with the rest of humanity on a somewhat normal basis, it is difficult for people to lose the insecurity that came with the levels of poverty they experienced in the past. Kshama (one of the reply posters above) made some pretty good points. Neeshoo also. There are many factors to persistent poverty. Charity is like the cure – important but to me it doesn’t seem like a longterm solution. What we really need is forms of prevention – provide better livelihood in rural areas, stem migration to cities, better education, birth control. When the situation becomes a bit simpler with such steps at the root levels, effective law enforcement and low tolerance for perpetrators of criminal activities would probably help too – weed out the nasty crits who probably indulge in criminal behaviour anyway. Sounds easy but probably not.
Hi prerna…
Thanks for bringing up this very interesting article to my notice..
You are spot on, on your analysis of the implications of poverty on childhood…but I beg to differ on your suggested mode of approach to this complex problem.
I do understand that no child takes to begging as a choice and its not something they do out of their laziness..having said that, how far is it reasonable to positively reinforce this behaviour by rewarding them? By rewarding them the money, you are doing nothing but encouraging these kids to go on doing the same the rest of their lives…
If you were so concerned about your role in the kids’ upliftment, please let me make a friendly suggestion… everytime, a beggar asks you for money, ignore him, dont encourage him, but contribute whatever you wanted to give to him to a fund that you manage all by yourself.. it might be one rupee or a ten rupee..use that fund to finance the vocational training of one of these kids when you amass sufficient magnitude.. Iam not talking about conventional education, which would not guarentee a livelihood even after 15 years of education but plain old fashioned vocational training which would provide livelihood to a family in a matter of months to years..
when one thinks about it, the number of these beggars is far less than the concerned population…why not we uplift our society rather than washing off the guilt off us??