Out to bridge rich-poor divide

That’s what Jimmy Carter has been doing for the Habitat for Humanity for 23 years

Lonavala is supposed to have been discovered as a hill station by Monstuart Elphinstone in 1811, when he was the British Resident in Pune. This week, a village outside this tiny hill station, with its stone houses with sloping roofs and a virtual explosion of chikki shops, has been the holding ground for a former US president.

For the last 23 years, Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn have been volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, a global NGO that builds home for the less privileged around the world.

“For 51 weeks in the year we work at the Carter Centre, looking at issues like world peace, human rights. Only for a week do we volunteer on a Habitat project,” said the former US President in a chat to select Mumbai media. “But all through, we help raise money for them.” The Carters volunteer overseas one year, and the next one in the US.

Although he is no stranger to India, this is the first time he has volunteered at a Habitat project here. “I have a special relationship with this part of India. I wanted to be near where my mother taught as a Peace Corps volunteer in Vikhroli.” His mother, of course, is Lillian Carter, and Vikhroli is en route from Mumbai to Lonaval“.

“Next year we go to Los Angeles. The poor there live under plastic sheets on pavements, like they do in every city across America, even if the standard of living in the US is higher,” he said.

President Carter stated emphatically that poverty existed everywhere— it seemed to fit in with his Christian beliefs.

In fact, a Christian work ethic pervades the atmosphere at the building site outside Lonavala, in the single-minded efficiency of the volunteers and the purposeful strides of the organisers. None of the ‘God is love’ muddle of EM Forster’s Godbole in Passage to India here.”

“India,” Carter said in answer to a question, “is blossoming.” The outsourcing seemed to amuse him. “Sitting in Georgia, I call a helpline for my computer and get an answer from India. My problems are sorted out. The language capabilities of Indians are a strength. People in countries like Japan and Nigeria can be difficult for us to understand. But you can sound like Americans.”

The growing disconnect between the rich and the poor, however, disturbs him. “I was at a dinner here the other night. We were looking down at a mansion below which was a row of shanties. A rich man said, ‘They prefer to live that way.’ They’re labourers, they earn about three dollars a day and need only about two dollars to live, the rest they spend’. I wanted to get out of my chair and throttle him! But of course, I’ve heard my people say in the same things in the South about black people during segregation. That they wanted to live separately, be schooled separately.”

Carter feels that as the rich grow richer and the poor poorer, there will be no way for the two to communicate. “The growing chasm between the rich and the poor is the biggest challenge of the new millennium. I feel blessed when I go to another country and work with less privileged people. They are as intelligent as I am, are hard-working and have the same values.”

At the core of this project is volunteering. This site has about 25,000 volunteers, half of whom are Indians. “I’d like to demonstrate that volunteers are necessary. I’m a comparatively richer man, but I build, sweep, I learn a lot, it’s exciting.”

The former US president also gave Hollywood actor Brad Pitt, currently stationed in Pune, a glowing character certificate. “He worked a day and a half, he is a dedicated worker.”