This is going to sound bad
February 20th, 2008 | by Paul |
(Public domain image. Source: Imageafter.com)
OK, so I’m just putting it out there - when I was a kid, I thought everyone on the entire planet was poor except for in the US and western Europe.
Seriously, I thought the world was a bunch of tempest-tossed, starving refugees, some British guys and then, well, us. I knew there were poor people in the US, but the concept of, say, a rich person in India was a little beyond my ken. I’m not a bad person. I just had a poor conception of international relations as a child.
And I never would have believed that the well-off in India would be wrestling with the same moral issues as those of us well-off here.
This is a posting by Indian blogger Melody about her issues dealing with inequality in her own country. She and other rich Mumbaikars are paying 600 rupees for a Jack Daniels while, in Bihar, there is a 10-year-old girl who wants to return to slavery because the food is better.
Holy crap.
Melody’s posting was at Desicritics.org, but her normal site is The Voice In My Head.
As a kid, you only hear of a lot of countries from Sally Struthers commercials and when your folks say to eat your spinach because there are people starving in Africa (or India, or China. My parents always said China.) Occassionally, one will pop up on the news, but only when something horrible happened there. It gives people a pretty skewed view of the world.
Either way, consumption is out of whack around the world. Check out this 1998 United Nations Development Programme report if you don’t believe me. Granted, it’s a decade old, but it’s still some pretty scary stuff.
One Response to “This is going to sound bad”
By Melody on Feb 21, 2008 | Reply
Hey Paul, don’t feel so bad, you’re definetely not the only one who thought India was a poor country all through. As you said, it’s probably the media that gives people outside India this skewed version.
Sadly though, the truth is possibly worse. The inequality between rich & poor is so wide in India, it’s unbelievable.
This line though gives me hope: “the well-off in India would be wrestling with the same moral issues as those of us well-off here” - at least we’re not ignoring the issues and hoping they’d go away. It’s in wrestling that some giants are tamed.
PS: Nice blog, will be back