Anand (Locana) has a post announcing that the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill is now in place. He also refers to a discussion about levels of poverty, where several people are arguing over just what various numbers mean.
I think it is possible to wrangle endlessly over the numbers. I think you can use statistics to support whatever view of the world you have or want to believe. Not that figures don't have value -- I have great use for them all the time. But I wonder how many people who wrangle over them actually go out and try to find the people (the anecdotes!) behind the numbers.
Me, I always wish I could do more of that than I manage. Because that exercise works the other way for me. Rather than finding the figures that will support my hypotheses about the world, I see realities that I didn't know about, that tell me things about the world, that I have to believe.
An example of sorts. A few years ago, a doctor I know wrote me a letter from rural Orissa. It spoke of the deaths of ten children from diarrhoea and measles, suddenly epidemic in the area. The doctor also mentioned that they needed Rs 500 a month to buy one egg each week for about one hundred malnourished tribal schoolchildren in the district. That egg, added to their lunch, would make the difference between hunger and health; perhaps even life and death.
One egg per kid per week, that's all.
Absent that much, measles and diarrhoea were killing children there.
I wrote an article about this in a Bombay paper. The evening it appeared, I got a call from an unknown reader who asked me for the doctor's address, sent a cheque for Rs 6000 there for a year's supply of eggs, and returned to anonymity. Neither the doctor nor I have heard from him again; and he has never returned calls. But about a hundred Oriya kids live today because of his generosity.
This little story tells me a few things. You?
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9 comments:
Nice post, Dilip, and yes, very topical story.. I agree with you, it means little to say "the poor are better off, by on average six eggs a year" [link]when some people's daily reality is so harsh..
This tells me that man will help his fellow man in need voluntarily - we don't need to use force through the state (taxation) to achieve this.
Sriram, of course it would be nice to not have a situation which requires philanthropy in the first place.
As for myself, I rather prefer those few luxuries in life that taxation brings to us liberal elite. Like roads and railways, garbage collection, law and order, national defense.
Dilip -- You never cease to amaze me with your excellent posts based on your experience with ground realities.
"One egg per week". Don't know if we can be happy about just "six extra eggs a year"!
Sriram -- I am not the first guy in the world to find income tax inexplicable. It is good to be in the company of Einstein.
I thought Einstein's greatness is attributed to other things that he could explain!
I would feel good to be in the company of great people by achieving something similar to what they could achieve. Not by not achieving something that they too could not achieve.
Well, please do not take this comment very seriously. I understand that you didn't mean it seriously as well.
Suvendra, you liberal elitist, you! You want gargabe collection?!
Thanks Anand and Lod. I don't mean at all to pour cold water on the people who analyse the figures. I do mean to say that those figures come from the real experiences of real people, and sometimes it's good to understand that.
Finally, Sriram, when you say: Me and my neighbours should help them out, I'm tempted to ask, what's that "should"? Why "should" you help?
Also, did Einstein know about the tragedy of the commons?
Thanks for yet another nice post, Dilip. We have too many people who say we should convert our country into one that offers equality of opportunity. Sometimes I wonder what opportunity these people are talking about, when (as your post shows) 'opportunity to live' still eludes so many people.
Now, if only philanthropy worked as well as Sriram says it 'should' ...
>>Why "should" you help?
How many eggs could that one lakh 'donated' to to Tehelka could have bought? Or 2 lakhs if you add another one lakh by J B D'Souza.
Choice was easy in D'Souza household I guess.
Hey....why is this poor Sriram at the receiving end of some stick??
Anyway....this was a nice post. And this does bring up the question of the role of charity/volunteer contributions. What is it in society?
Sunil, I guess I made it clear, I don't like the idea of looking to charity to solve problems. I know too many people who are into charity to think it is a good thing. Voluteering on the other hand is totally different and enormously valuable. It gives an opportunity to people to use their skills in meaningful ways in an entirely different context. This can only be good. Indians have been at it for a long time. People volunteer their time routinely to perform tasks for the extended family and friends without even thinking of it as "volunteering". And because the family could be the entire neighbourhood (or village or town), you ended up very aware of a large swathe of the society, poor, rich, young, old. Because you sometimes were at the recieving end you didn't get any delusions of grandure from volunteering. And you learnt things about yourself and others that is impossible in any other way. When I was 12-14 I'd go around fixing electrical equipment for my older relatives. My entire relationship with my older aunts and uncles is colored by this sweet memory where they'd sit and watch while I fixed their fan, lecturing them about electricity and how it worked.
Dilip, sorry for the length of the comment. But its your fault for provoking too many discussions.
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