Why People Become Poor?

My son asked me this simple question recently. I answered that uneducated are poor. But I’m not convinced about that answer myself. It triggered a bit more thought.

There is enough in this world for everyone to live happily. But when we grab others livelihood they become poor. For that governance is needed to protect independence of livelihood of everyone.

People become poor because they lose their livelihood. Why they lose their livelihood? Because of two reasons: 1. Other people exploit their livelihood. 2. They don’t fight to retain their livelihood.

I had a good friend as my roommate during my college days. I used to try ending our heated argument saying, ‘ದೇವರು ನಿನ್ನ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಇಟ್ಟಿರಲಿ’ meaning ‘Let god keep you well’. He used to quip, God always keeps me well but it is you guys who make me miserable!

So the point is people only make people poor. Not the situation or god! Thats the simple truth. 

What is Livelihood?

But do all people in the world have livelihood? Yes. Human civilization developed everywhere across the globe in all continents and places. They developed indigenous way of living. They developed societies. Social life begets diverse profession making one depend upon another. For example, farmer produces grains by tilling land. For tilling the land cow, cart and tools are required. Blacksmith produces tools from metal. Miner produces metal. Herdsman grows cows. Carpenter produces cart from wood & metal. Wood cutter cuts wood. So the cycle goes on like these making professions to develop. And for each profession, unique natural resource is required. That is what their livelihood is. When they lose their livelihood they become poor.

Gandhiji famously said the world is sufficient to meet every man’s needs; But not sufficient to meet his greed.

So as the society develops through professions depending upon each other the conflicts for natural resources also arise. So to resolve conflicts, society develops rules. For governing rules, a governor is established. That is what government is.

The government should ideally balance the needs of all people of different professions and ensure livelihood is maintained for all. That is what Raja Dharma is. 

What is Poor?

This is a more fundamental question. Is poor means, one who has no money? Yes in the urban sense. Yes in the modern way of life and civilization. Money buys the people water, food, shelter, electricity, entertainment, medicine etc., which are basic survival needs. 

But in the rural parlance the money exchange is very less. They eat what they grow. Drink fresh water off streams, ponds. Their transportation is on legs or by bullock cart which are very cheap. There are several tribes which live in deep woods, atop mountains and in Andaman Islands which are untouched by modern civilization. In most cases they are even untouched by diseases and ailments. Or even if they come across diseases they have indigenous natural therapy from rich resources surrounding them. They are living happily. They are not really poor. They are rich with natural resources.

If they lose their natural resources upon which their livelihood is dependent, then they become poor. Poor means those who are deprived of food, water, shelter & security.

Are there really poor even today? Yes there are plenty. We need to look a bit on recent history then look at modern day to assess the reason behind why people are continuously becoming poor.

Why do they lose their livelihood? History:

The people lose their livelihood when people in power over exploit their natural resources depriving the people’s livelihood. Raja Dharma fails to produce security to these people & their livelihood.

In Ancient India, Raja always had a Dharma guru for advising him for social harmony. In many cases, Dharma Guru used to be of different religion than Raja. But still they followed Sarva Dharma Samanvaya. That’s how the livelihood of every profession was maintained. The conflict that arouse from over exploitation of natural resources by one profession affected another profession. And that is where Dharma preached self-control, contentment for social harmony. The self-rule was there at the village level. The Grama Swarajya was the Rama Rajya.

India was a rich country even till the Moghul period. There was independence and freedom at the grass root level. The period of over exploitation started with the British. They started governing at grass root level. They governed what farmer produced. They sanctioned farmer to produce cotton & indigo in large scale. They needed raw material for cloth industries in Manchester.

Similarly large scale mono cropping of Poppy seeds, tea, coffee, rubber was imposed. The government would procure only those. Village henchmen became their slaves and were made corrupt. Bringing in Zamindari they imposed restrictions on village independence. 

Further weavers lost their livelihood as industry produced cheap cloth got dumped on the market. Metal tool makers lost livelihood. Artisans lost their livelihood as their benefactors the Rajahs lost their kingdoms. The cycle of losing livelihood continued.

The natural need for large scale production and distribution necessitated massive transportation. It needed further iron, steel, and aluminum. For the first time India saw intruding onto the destruction of large scale mountains and forests. The tribal life was disturbed and large scale livelihood loss was ensued.

The British along with other European imperialists were on a spree during 1800s & 1900s to exploit the whole of earth. The gun point diplomacy ensured large scale amassing of wealth in arms and ammunitions. This sparked 2 world wars on large scale destruction. All the material wealth looted from India & elsewhere was drained off thus. During this time India was made to starve. Not one but 3 great famines India had to endure under the Queen’s ruling. The Plague, Bengal famine and famine across the Deccan killed more people than the world wars directly did.

The Exploitation Continues: Present day:

The era of foreign rule and foreign exploitation is ended now. But do we have self-rule? The era of foreign rule has ended, but not the exploitation. Why? Because, someone took up central ruling at India level by negotiating with the leaving foreigners and the self-rule is not transferred to the grass root level. There is no Grama Swarajya. Large scale mono cropping is still encouraged. Procurement of produce, storage, transportation and distribution is still being done by central and state governments. So the people are the mercy of the governments for basic necessities like food, clothing.

The urban clusters have become parasites on the rural environs. The metro transportation, electricity consumption, packaged food culture, bottled water, piped water, luxury & lazy life in urban culture demands very high natural resource exploitation. Tons of plastic waste produced by cities is becoming battleground in the outskirts where it is dumping ground.

Rapid and rampant migrations from rural are joining the apartments and slums in cities. The packed population has lost the sense of space. There is existential struggle in the urban space. The hygiene, water & space are necessities which have become luxury for them, making them very poor. Food somehow they do get. There is lot of wastage which gets spilled over in cities from rich to the poor.

Where Lies The Solution?

The Solution lies in governance shifting prominence from meeting urban luxury demands to rural sustenance demands. Grama Swarajya is the only solution for sustenance and poverty elevation. Yes there will be some hit on the urban living luxuries. The basic necessities like Electricity, transportation itself will become costly once the rural demands for decent living are met. So it has to be taken slowly and gradually.It will become costly but not inaccessible. 

The first and foremost is to begin protecting rural environment. For example if a River (Ganga or Thunga) is polluted, ship out the polluting factories to china or elsewhere. Or implement stringent pollution controls. Then simple products like plastic bottle, tetra pack, bulb, wire, paper, pencil will start becoming costly. Fertilizers, pesticides production will be out of the country. Consumption will become costly and will come down. Cars, bikes will become luxury only available for rich and government officials. So the reverse migration to rural for livelihood will start. The country and earth will be able to take that easily, as earth can provide plenty to man in the nature.

But we need to protect our boarders and India. Else China & Pakistan again attack and we loose our independence again. So defense equipment, nuclear technology, road, railways need to be there. The sacrifice for that will again come from rural environment. And people need to be compensated by the government. But since the human capital will be rich & independent, the government will be rich and they’ll afford to do that. Like we say in previous blogs on how Shivaji, Rana Pratap built formidable forts from the tribals and rurals.