India
The lack of finances caused due to lifestyle choices to appear 'trendy' cannot compare to the actual poverty that millions of Indians are born into.
Updated : May 06, 2016, 07:48 PM IST
The Buzzfeed article on ‘Urban Poverty’ has gone viral, with 3,23,973 views at the time of writing, and keeps popping up on my social media feed. Titled The Urban Poor You Haven’t Noticed: Millennials Who Are Broke, Hungry, But On Trend, the article by Gayatri Jayaraman has everyone talking (and by everyone, I mean people with access to social media which is a minuscule number in this country).
The article speaks about a new generation of urban Indians whose need to appear cool is more important than basic needs like food and shelter. While a lot of people on my timeline shared the article saying that they’d felt the exact same thing, many felt that calling them the urban poor was wrong, since we’re literally surrounded by people who are actually living hand-to-mouth.
The article has lots of anecdotal examples. There’s a former national-level beauty pageant contestant who started performing in a dance bar, the young marketing executive who slept in her car, the junior journalist who would go to a posh sandwich joint after they offered a discount because she couldn’t be seen eating in the office canteen. Then there are the expensive office outings, clothes, food and a host of other expenses, associated with peer and work pressure, which are considered non-negotiable (night-outs, Ubers etc).
Sadly, none of the above mentioned are non-negotiables. The notion that you have to be seen eating at a trendy restaurant is preposterous as is going hungry in a metropolis like Mumbai which has thousands of cheap eating options. From vada pavs to dosas to chilli cheese sandwiches to thalis in restaurants, there are scores of options for anyone who earns a bare minimum to eat for Rs 100 a day (two meals at least).
While one can understand the desire to put up appearances, here’s a little advice for any trendy twentysomething reading this article from a not-so-trendy twentysomething who is going to turn 30 soon. Your identity is not based on your caste or religion. It’s also not based on your purchasing power or what you can consume. Your workplace may demand that you put up a certain appearance but beyond a point, they are far more bothered about your work. At the end of the day, if you work at a decent company, they will check their bottom-line not the clothes on your back.
As for feeling the need to fit in with your ‘friends’, if your friendship is based on what restaurant or pub you can eat at, then you might not be making the right choices when it comes to picking friends. A beer at your apartment is just as enjoyable as a beer at the poshest club in town, as long as the company is enjoyable (maybe, even with no beer at all). True friends or proper colleagues (who are not judgemental jerks) shouldn’t be bothered by your lifestyle choices. You don’t have to fit in, you do not have to appear to be anything you’re not.
Just like the scores of advertisements telling you that you can only be happy if you are fairer or if you lose that much amount of weight, the need to fit in is a social construct created by a consumerist society which says you are as good as the last product you purchased.
Don Draper sums up advertising best in the very first of episode of Mad Men with this quote: “Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay."
Don was an adman who needed to sell this story, but that is not happiness by any stretch of the imagination. At best it’s temporary joy, which will last till the next model hits the market. Perhaps it’s an indictment of our education system that even those who have received top-of-the-line education can’t handle even basic finances.
To be fair, it’s not rocket science. Buy food before you buy an iPhone, pay your rent before you get a car and so forth. And if you think something is too expensive, say NO. There’s a fine distinction between being broke, which is due to lifestyle choices, and being poor, which is the grim reality in which most people in our country is born.
I chanced upon the ideas behind the article when I saw Twitter user Anupam Gupta share compare Jayaraman’s tweets about the ‘urban poor’ with Bharath's, who was looking to hire a person as a Junior Python (the computer language, not the snake) Developer.
A: Kids living beyond means: https://t.co/sxOJ51YSZE
— Anupam Gupta (@b50) April 22, 2016
B: Kid struggling for a job: https://t.co/RaSVcZHd2t
Where are your sympathies?
Gayatri's tweets about Urban Poverty:
Have wanted to do this story for a very long time - urban poverty. So many millennialis deeply in debt & broke despite flashy lifestyles
— Gayatri Jayaraman (@Gayatri__J) April 19, 2016
Met someone who barely had money to eat one meal a day after paying rent in fancy address and partying. So she'd buy one sandwich and ration
— Gayatri Jayaraman (@Gayatri__J) April 19, 2016
Young people want Bandra addresses too caught up in image to stay at sensible rents farther, clothes trapped, drinks culture.. terrible sitn
— Gayatri Jayaraman (@Gayatri__J) April 19, 2016
Many young people don't have the courage to tell a senior 'I can't afford it' and worse want to look like they can. So don't encourage it
— Gayatri Jayaraman (@Gayatri__J) April 19, 2016
Bharath's tweets about a coder:
Heartbreaking & illuminating conversation with a kid who applied for this position And this isn't the first time I've talked about all this.
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
"No, let us continue in English", he said. After a couple min, he started stammering. I told him to take it easy and I'll call back.
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
I did and reiterated my offer to do the interview in either Kannada or Hindi. He chose Hindi. And it went well for 10 min.
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
...just that no one has gone to this length to interview me before. Everyone else cuts call after hearing my English.”
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
He then rattled off an incident where he was humiliated in front of panel because his English was “rural”.
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
At the end of the call, "Thank you for talking. Even if I don't get this job, I've gotten further in the process than ever before...
— Bharath (@purisubzi) April 21, 2016
While Gayatri’s tweet was about the ‘urban kids’ who were apparently starving themselves to fit in, Bharath’s was about the huge class barrier that exists in India between people who can afford an English-medium education and speak the language comfortably and those that can’t.
Perhaps the former deserve our sympathy, but it’s very hard to feel sorry for a privileged lot starving themselves to fit in when you have an entire group of have-nots who are alienated simply for not being able to speak in a manner considered ‘proper’.
It’s remarkable how India has become a modern-day version of Victorian England where we judge someone based on how they speak English. And then there’s the real poverty on the streets that many of us have blocked out. The little girl begging for money at the traffic signal, the slum kids playing cricket on the streets, the beggar lying on the station floor. If you open your eyes you will see urban poverty all around you.
Twitter reacts to the 'Urban Poor' trend:
Planning to write an article on Urban Malnutrition, prevalent among poor kids who don't get to eat McD, KFC, and Domino Pizzas.
— Anupam Gupta (@b50) May 6, 2016
@awryaditi Ah. It's the headline. It's in "these are the urban poor". At which point you have to say, no, these are definitely not!
— Nilanjana Roy (@nilanjanaroy) May 6, 2016
I'm the urban wannabe hipster posh poor single mom you can't touch this toooodooo stop hammertime
— WolfMomma (@wolfmiaow) May 6, 2016
If you blow all your money on drinking, clubbing, and gadgets before the month is through, you're not poor. You're just a dumbass.
— Madhu Menon (@madmanweb) May 6, 2016
There are no 'secret' urban poor. You're in India. You're literally surrounded by actual poverty. In your cities with huge wealth inequality
— dorku (@Dorkstar) May 5, 2016
Meanwhile, at Sequoia Capital's office:
— Anuradha (@anuradha_kush) May 6, 2016
What is this 'Urban Poor' everyone's talking about? A new startup? Why haven't we funded it yet?
Finally beginning to hit me that the urban poor article is not, in fact, satire. Such people do apparently exist. Who would've thunk?
— King of The Cool (@karanator6) May 6, 2016
Have to say though, the use of a term like 'urban poor' in this context makes me rather queasy. This is just a bunch of misguided kids.
— JSB. (@jahanbakshi) May 6, 2016
@veenavenugopal every generation has its own consumption pressure. Calling this 'poverty' is an insult to the actual poor
— Veena Venugopal (@veenavenugopal) May 6, 2016
You ARE stupid if you are starving yourself to get that coffee at starbucks or sleeping in your 'car'. You are not poor, urban/rural, ffs!
— Lola Kuttiamma (@Priya_Menon) May 6, 2016
The urban poverty no one notices is... ACTUAL URBAN POOR. 'No one' - policymakers.
— Amba (@MumbaiCentral) May 6, 2016
Seeing "Urban Poor" trend, I feel #facepalm and #headdesk are not enough, so now beating self with chappals.
— Alok ಪ್ರಸನ್ನ कुमार (@alokpi) May 6, 2016
When Slumdog Millionaire hit Indian theatres in 2009, urban Indians were aghast at the West’s portrayal of our country, many claiming that they made India look bad. Well sorry to break it to you but that’s the real India, the one that we refuse to acknowledge. The slums of Mumbai aren’t Danny Boyle’s creation.
This is what makes the entire situation rather sad, that there continues to exist a huge chunk of the population which doesn’t even have basic amenities like food, education, water and healthcare that most of us take for granted. That their plight isn’t more talked about is a collective failure of our entire nation.
In The Country of First Boys, Amartya Sen writes: “It is certainly remarkable that India has more hungry people – including hungry children – than any other country in the world, but what is most astonishing is how little attention this phenomenon has received, how very reluctant the more prosperous – and more influential – parts of the population have been to allocate resources for the eradication of the disadvantages of the deprived.”
The same problem applies to good elementary education and basic healthcare, and as Sen notes, ‘in a democracy these abysmal failures should receive massive political attention’. That they don’t is a collective failure of the media, in which we are shaped by our need to cater to our regular subscribers, AKA the relatively affluent.
To quote Sen again: “It is the overarching division between the privileged and the rest that provides a backdrop to the contrast between the people whose lives get much attention in the media and public discussion, and the rest whose deprivations and despair are largely invisible in the communicational sphere.”
As long as there exist people who don't get the basic necessities, we as a nation have failed.