Culture of poverty and the street urchins and dogs

It is not that Nepal did not develop over these years. Certainly, development is a process that continues for long. Instances are galore that massive development could also be achieved even under repressive or military regimes. In a democracy, it is widely believed that the process of development is smooth and the fruits of development approaches to each and every single individual.

This is an assumption that holds true, generally speaking. However, the fact is also that in transitional democracies, the fruits of development might not reach to the targeted groups or even if there is an allocation, it might not be what it should have been. This means that democracy doesn’t promise judicious distribution even if it were for that. At least this is our fresh experience with the word development.

However, the fact is that it is a system that tries to take care of all in a manner that is a judicious one but then it could also leave some individuals or for that matter some groups in the cold forever.

It is also supposed that when inequalities expand in between the people, when fruits of development are snatched by a selected few, and when the system as such becomes unable to address to such anomalies, discontent breeds. It is this discontent that the State should be afraid of for such discontent become the source of tensions and at its climax is the emergence of insurgency.

What this inequality means and how it can become a source of tension for the State has been best illustrated by Editors Edward N.Muller and Mitchell A. Selligson in their book “Development and Underdevelopment"-Inequality and Insurgency which reads in part: (sic) What are the consequences of the widespread domestic income inequality? When income inequality is high, the probability of domestic political violence increases substantially. This suggests that income inequality can lead to uprisings, guerilla movements, and civil wars, as have occurred in Vietnam, Central America and elsewhere. Since the violence invariably causes considerable destruction of property, not to speak of the lives lost, economic growth is adversely affected. Thus, in addition to creating normative problems, income inequality also seems to be responsible for violence and, in turn, slowed economic growth. The inescapable conclusion is that income inequality matters a great deal, for when it is high, a vicious circle of violence and slowed growth is the result". (Book courtesy: The Asia Foundation-ed).

Those who have been watching our own insurgency, read the Tarai armed groups, from very close quarters would do well if they studied the two editors have to speak on the causes of insurgencies. To me, the incredible growth of the Maoists insurgency in the past and the armed groups in Tarai appear to have some thing to do with the prevalence of high-income inequality in between Nepal’s affluent class and abject poor. The arson and loot factor is an added advantage for the armed groups.

Though the Nepali leaders dismiss this theory for their own political comforts, however, the fact is that the gap in between the rich and the poor is not only unimaginably high but unfortunately it is growing at a very fast rate.

The deprived and the neglected Western region houses, I suppose, higher numbers of poor to what we might have in the rest parts of the regions. Gross neglect by the state over decades and decades could have also prompted them to join the rebellions in the past and the likelihood remains yet, which is only but very natural. The poverty in this region is in such a massive scale that I too wish to call it what Oscar Lewis rightly says "culture of poverty".

Look what he says in his article, The Culture of Poverty", (sic) "The culture of poverty is passed down from one generation to the next as a set of adaptive mechanisms to provide solutions to problems not resolved by the existing institutions of society".

Look for instance, the KAMAIYAS-the bonded laborers. Loan burdened Father Kamaiya dies to be replaced by his own son and the latter has to fill in the job where his father worked and the process continued and continued. This is what apparently Oscar Lewis calls poverty of culture. The Kamaiyas were though made free by the Sher Bahadur Government but the pains of the Kamaiyas continue.

What is poverty? Who else better knows than the Nepalese population, more so belonging to the remote areas of the country.

The Nepali leaders disagree. However, I wish to ask as to how a civilized person or for that matter the world would feel when he or she is made to se a nepali urchin boy or girl sharing the same rejected meal with a street dog? Man and animal meet in the mounds of garbage. What could be more illustrative and inhumane scene than this?

I think the donors impending meeting in Kathmandu would do well in catching the very spirit of the culture of poverty prevalent in Nepal.

Posted on : 2009-04-08 15:12:33

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