What Gap?

WHAT GAP?

At a large Oxfam gathering a couple of years ago, one of the speakers raved and ranted about how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. During the dinner table discussion at the end of the day, a friend strongly disagreed with this statement. He argued that while poverty was still widespread, there was enough evidence to show that people’s income levels were rising. He even threw my own figures, about the progress in Gudalur, back at me. When we began work in 1986, we found that the average income of an adivasi family was around Rs.300-600 per month. 20 years later it was around 2500 – 3000 rupees per month. Even allowing for inflation this was a significant rise in incomes. Well above the $1 a day (debatable) benchmark of absolute poverty. So how can we claim that the poor are getting poorer?

I had and continue to have issues with this argument. First, which many people have argued, income poverty is a very narrow understanding of poverty. Increase in income need not necessarily mean an increase in power, and most certainly we cannot assume that income increase results in social change, freedom from exploitation, or the end of discrimination. Caste, gender, and other forms of social discrimination and exploitation invariably override class distinctions. So middle class dalits may continue to be discriminated against even though they have moved up the income ladder. Poverty is not a number – it is a lived experience. And to talk of poverty lines – people living below the poverty line, people living on less than $1 a day or $2 a day – has no meaning for the person who experiences, on a daily basis, the humiliation and gross injustice of being poor.

Taking our Gudalur experience, I would like to raise another issue. Indeed our peoples’ incomes have risen. Indeed their standard of living has improved and they are better off than they were 20 years ago. And indeed we can tick the boxes that indicate they have “developed”.

• Infant mortality down, maternal mortality down,
• All children enrolled in schools, staying in school
• Indebtedness down, savings up

….the list goes on.

The problem with this measurement is that we are comparing their current status against their own status of 20 years ago. This does not give us a true picture of what is happening, of what is wrong with our society. A more correct picture would emerge if we were to look at it from the perspective of their share of the available wealth of the area. While their income ( or wealth if you want to define it so) has increased ten fold, the wealth of society around them has increased even more. I am no researcher, but I am willing to stick my neck out and bet that if somebody were to study the adivasis’ share of wealth as a percentage of the total wealth available, you will find that their share has actually decreased. And what has happened in Gudalur is not the norm. The norm is that even compared to themselves the poor have become poorer. I am told by people who know more about these things that

• between 1965 and 1980 200 million people saw a drop in their incomes
• between 1980 and 1993 more than 1 billion saw a drop in their income

….this list too goes on.

This is what is unjust. Unacceptable. This is why I would support the claim that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. What makes it even more unacceptable is the fact we are seeing a concentration of wealth that we have never seen before in human history. According to UNDP statistics (1998) the combined wealth of 225 of the richest individuals (not companies, corporations or firms) equals the combined annual income of 2.5 billion of the worlds poorest. Or if you want to cut it another way – the wealth of the 3 richest individuals exceeds the combined GDP of 48 least developed countries.

But this gap – this widening gap is well hidden. We need to dig much deeper to find it. And more importantly we need to do something about it if we are to call ourselves civilised.

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~ by Stan on April 20, 2010.