Tag: poverty

The tough streets of …

May 5, 2010

When I studied in Toronto, I volunteered with a homeless youth outreach team for a couple of years and several summers. What Light Patrol does is go out onto the streets and expressways of the city weekday nights in a giant red mobile home (they also have a small camper van) and visit homeless and poor people, letting them come onboard and serving them food, hot drinks as well as clothes and minor medical and cosmetic supplies. It was a really eye-opening and humbling experience, seeing the destitution and bleakness involving young people in one of Canada’s and the world’s most prosperous cities. It was also a rewarding experience, not trying to be vain or anything, in serving with the staff and other volunteers to interact with those people and help them in various ways. This is a fine piece about Light Patrol, showing how it came about and describing what it does.

I know I said young people above, but our street friends as we referred to them, were actually a mix of ages, backgrounds and circumstances, though the majority were usually less than 25. There were teenagers, 20 and 30-somethings, seniors and people aged in between. You had youngsters who had run away from home or had been on the streets for less than a year, the odd number of older teens or 20-somethings who were just drifting around the country for the summer playing at being homeless, the street vets, from 20-something to 50-something, some of whom had spent decades homeless or living in shelters, and then there were those who lived in cheap subsidised housing and were jobless and struggling to pay for food and other necessities (needless to say many of them had  addictions to alcohol or drugs or the like). The thing about Light Patrol is that in “prowling” the streets and expressways and parks at night, the type of people they helped weren’t mostly the kinds of people who lived in shelters. Whether young or middle-aged or even old (living on the streets really ages you so people look and have health similar to those much older than they really are), many folks simply hated being confined inside a building, not to mention harboring a strong dislike and suspicion towards authority and rules and regulations. Not exactly a practical attitude to life, I know, but it’s a little more understandable if you knew the circumstances and experiences of some of these guys.

The reasons for these people being on the streets aren’t really surprising. There was a small minority of people who were on the streets due to a kind of recklessness and daredevil attitude, but for the vast majority, there was a lot of horror stories and tragedies involved. Whether it was being abused or neglected by alcoholic step-parents or growing up bouncing around from foster home to foster home or being sexually harassed by a parent or growing up on reservations surrounded by alcoholism, suicides and physical abuse, our street friends certainly had some terrible circumstances that they wanted to escape from.

March 8, 2010

A thoughtful piece on the shortcomings of Jeffrey Sachs in dealing with African poverty. The writer’s main point is that instead of mere aid objectives such as rich countries  increasing the amount of foreign aid funding and research to African nations, what is really needed are fairer global economic and trade arrangements for these poorer nations: “The problem is not that Africans cannot reach the first rung of the development ladder themselves; the problem is that they are actively prevented from doing so. For more than a century Africa has been and continues to be purposefully underdeveloped.”  There may be some semblance the sort of leftist hyperbolic pipe-dreams that most of us heard a lot in university in North America, but the guy gives some decent points and examples such as: “Take the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canadian negotiators recently convinced the DRC government to barter away mineral concessions worth about $120-billion to China in exchange for a paltry $6-billion of infrastructural development. Why are the Congolese people so desperately poor when they’re literally sitting on a goldmine?” Some of the writer’s suggestions such as forgiving debt without economic conditions and democratizing international trade are direct, and not difficult to understand though it is hard for rich nations to actually have the political nerve or will and desire and “moral courage” to implement them. These aren’t exactly surprising or groundbreaking assertions but overall I’d have to say the writer is right about his criticism. Again, it’s not as if his arguments are really that new, but he sums them up quite well and the piece is a good read.

The India connection-Slumdog and White Tiger

January 28, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire has been collecting a lot of awards and gathering much attention lately, with some likelihood that it might win an Oscar for best picture as well as for several other categories. Somewhat surprising has been the movie’s quick rise to fame, which is fitting given the movie itself is about an underdog succeeding in life against improbable odds and circumstances. I’m really interested in seeing it from what I’ve seen and read of it.

Anyways what strikes me about Slumdog Millionaire is the similarities of its fortunes with the success of  The White Tiger, an Indian novel which won the Booker Prize in 2008. Obviously the starting point is that they’re both Indian works, based in India and about India (their cities do differ but that is negligible).

The other thing is both their storylines are about underdog characters from miserable backgrounds and childhoods rising in an unlikely manner to achieve success in life.

The main thing is that both feature an India in which injustice, suffering and poverty are significant and abundant in society, which sharply contrasts with the view by some of a rising India becoming a future global power.

This display of visible poverty has disturbed some people, with some alleging that Slumdog stereotypes India or that it’s a type of poverty pornography, making an exotic spectacle of poverty. Others however say that the movie showcases reality for many Indians and that the negative situations portrayed are indeed issues that need to be displayed as opposed to downplayed. Personally, I agree with the latter viewpoint, because social problems like poverty or crime shouldn’t be covered up or ignored, assuming the way it’s portrayed isn’t too gratuitious and made to seem like entertainment or pointless. The mere portrayal of these in Slumdog and White Tiger, doesn’t mean that they can be solved right away but at the least they show something realistic about life.  Of course, the main plot focus between the two differs markedly in that with White Tiger, the portrayal of social problems is a main theme while Slumdog has a romantic element as its central part of its storyline with poverty and crime as significant but accompanying.

I do think that there was probably a hint of exoticism in terms of seeing poverty on a vivid and apparent scale in an attractive foreign locale which helped sway the various prize judges and critics for Slumdog. But again, the poverty and other social problems are a vital part of India and the more attention that the movie gets, the more people will see it.  Not to mention, the storyline of the movie seems to be quite fascinating and appealing, with its themes of  love, hardship, perseverance and chance all happening in unique circumstances.

The movie has attracted a heap of controversy over other issues ranging from being pejorative to poor people to exploitation. In a very extreme reaction, a protest broke out in Mumbai when some slum dwellers objected to being referred to as dogs from the movie’s english name. Incidentally the name was coined by the screenwriter and was not a part of the original novel’s name (Q and A) that the movie is based on.

Whatever the possible drawbacks or injustices committed by Slumdog regarding the above accusations, it has shined a good amount of international attention on India and its chaotic, vivid, bustling and yes, exotic, and tragic natures. Just like White Tiger, Slumdog has achieved a lot of success for its gritty portrayal of social problems which strongly add to the enjoyment and fascination of viewing it.

I haven’t seen the movie yet but I hope and trust that if I do, I won’t find that what I wrote here is bs.

One more link: this article from India’s Economic Times talks about Slumdog’s success and then introduces its cynical and interesting “Golden garbagecan” concept about developing metropolises who catch the West’s attention because of their mix of tragedies, culture and progress.