Perceptions vs poverty in Bihar

Owning mobile phones or consuming eggs, chicken and fish is no more the criterion to measure prosperity. Technological advancement has made cell phones so cheap that it would be wrong to cite their ubiquitousness as a sign of affluence. It is not for nothing that Bihar, among the poorest and least literate of all the states in India, is the top market for several premier mobile phone companies. Be it the sale and revenue generation by the cell-phone firms or Air Time Uses (ATU), Bihar, in proportion to its population, is ahead of most other much developed states. The state, it needs to be mentioned, is home to second highest number of poor in the country.

As Bihar supplies a huge number of human resources, both outside and within India, nothing connects them better to their homes than cheap phone calls. As most poor –– skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled –– migrate alone, they deem it fit to have phones at their homes too.

In contrast, those belonging to the relatively affluent class mostly move and settle with their nuclear families; so they may not have to rely so much on phones to call back home. Unlike the labour class, there is no scope for seasonal migration among the better-off section. Thus cell phones are no more a status symbol, but a yardstick to measure migration, especially of poor. The need of the hour is to change the established perception about poverty. And, this is not confined to the use of mobiles; there is also the matter of changing food habits. The poor are consuming more chicken, fish and eggs than a couple of decades back. The reason is simple. Today eating vegetables has become a luxury, which the poor cannot usually afford. While the prices of fish, eggs and chickens have doubled in the last 20 years or so, the price of most vegetables has increased by five to six times or even more. So a poor cyclerickshaw-puller can now afford to eat rice/roti with a piece of chicken or fish or a fried egg, in a road-side dhaba, while a plate of vegetable or dal may burn a deeper hole in his pocket. 

Similarly, today’s poor may not be facing so much starvation as they had the past. It is somewhat easy to trace the reason: science and technology have made famines and food shortages a thing of the past and our granaries are overflowing with foodgrains. As there is not enough storage capacity, the government has been compelled to introduce various schemes to provide cheap or free foodgrains to the below-poverty-line families. 

But rise in foodgrains production sometimes leads to distress-selling by farmers and they do not get a good price. Many of them, especially in the relatively developed states, are driven to suicide as they are not getting good returns from farming and are not able to pay back their debts. Today, more and more poor are wearing trousers, shirts or salwar-kameez instead of worn-out dhoti, lungi or sari, which their parents used to don. Once again it is easy to fathom the reason: today pants and salwar-suits are not as costly as they used to be earlier. Trousers, in particular, have much longer life and can be worn by those working in tough conditions. More poor today have footwear than in the past as hawai chappals and other kinds of slippers are available at much reasonable prices.

Besides, factory-seconds good quality pants, shirts as well as slippers and shoes are now available at greater discounts even in the small towns and villages. Thus, the easy availability of these items has changed the eating and dressing habits of the poor. This creates a wrong impression about the neo-poor. Many of us end up drawing a wrong conclusion, and anyone who talks about poverty is accused of being a doomsayer.

No doubt, things have somewhat changed. But while improvements are visible, the deteriorations are not. The construction boom and growth in the manufacturing sector have attracted millions of people to the urban centres, where the trouser-wearing and egg and chicken-eating unskilled workers have to lead a hellish life on the pavements or underneath huge flyovers built by them. 

During frequent encroachment drives –– especially at the time of international events like Commonwealth Games or during the visits of foreign dignitaries –– these slums are uprooted and then again allowed to grow because these poor people cater to the needs of the rich. Those who build huge mansions for us have no space to cover their heads during the inclement weather. Then they are reminded of their lives in village hutments.

The rich draw comfort from observing some changes in the poor man's apparel. What they fail to notice is the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. A quarter century back, the son of a farmer possessing 100 acres of land would walk to the village school. So would the one whose father had a mere five acres, or the kids of landless labourers because there weren't enough vehicles and roads. 

But today the sons and daughters of affluent farmers either migrate to cities or towns or go to school in cars as the villages too have good roads –– thanks to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. The children of the poor are going to schools where there are no toilets and drinking water facilities. In some cases the school buildings have improved, but the quality of education hasn't. Yes, one thing has changed. Now they get a mid-day meal as the government has found the best use of abundant foodgrains. Sometimes they get free uniforms, bicycles or scholarship as well but for those they have to grease the palms of local officials.

Once again these children of the poor may seem be slightly better-fed and better dressed but they are certainly learning less than their parents in the same school. These things are happening at a time when the world has become a global village and the aspirations of even the poorest of the poor are increasing. We are not much bothered about the quality of their education. Various literacy-for-all campaigns have made them barely literate –– to the point when they can read and note down telephone numbers. And that is why it is in Bihar –– which is at the bottom of the literacy scale –– that the sale of mobiles is among the highest in the country.

The writer is a senior journalist