Berkley Center

Many people expressed they reached a place where it became easy to brush off those begging on the streets—to not make eye contact with the women as they point to their mouths miming for food, to ignore the children as they approach your rickshaw and repeatedly tap on your knee, and to carry on with your life without much thought to the blatant poverty that surrounds you. From our discussion, I could tell my peers were deeply saddened by this fact: that they had become “immune” to the sight of poverty and felt like they had done nothing to help.

Ben, another student on the program, explained that he hadn’t realized how much he tried to ignore the poverty that surrounds him until he had to edit a photograph he took. The picture is of an elderly lady asking two young men on a motorcycle for money while they wait at a traffic light. He’d captured the moment when the woman was tapping one of the men on the knee and the two men looked away in the opposite direction. Ben described that every time he worked on the picture, he couldn’t bring himself to look at it for too long. He explained how he chooses to ignore the poverty he encounters on a daily basis as a coping mechanism to combat his feelings of uselessness against such a huge social issue. An encounter with a begging woman is only temporary and brief, but a photograph of that woman is permanent and inescapable.

The discussion opened up to how others also felt useless and didn’t know where to start in helping India’s poor, so instead they just do nothing. Some spoke of giving food rather than money. Others, including the assistant program coordinator, Abhishek, talked about why directly giving money may not be useful in the long-term and suggested supporting organizations that work to help those in need. The discussion then related back to the issue of poverty and homelessness in America, as people spoke of how they would normally react to seeing a homeless person. Many made the comparison that poverty in India appears more dire as children begging and living on the streets are more visible. Others talked about the juxtaposition between the few privileged, such as the students and professors that we regularly interact with, and the majority of the population that has had neither the access nor the opportunities that they have had.

It was at this point that Thomas, a fellow Georgetown student, made a statement that resonated with me. He highlighted that for him, the issue of poverty and visibility emphasizes how in the United States, although poverty is very much present, if you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. In Pune, if a wealthy businessman wishes to get from his house to the office, he will most likely pass countless beggars, and possibly a slum. In the United States, it is much easier for those of a higher socioeconomic status to navigate around areas of poverty; it’s much easier to not feel guilty about something you don’t see.

I can’t say that one situation is better than the other. Although seeing people in dire situations on a regular basis can be frustrating and upsetting, their constant visibility makes it impossible to deny the severity of poverty within Indian society. I would love to say that I am fully aware and educated on what poverty is in America, but the truth is because I don’t have to see it, I'm not, and I’m sure that many of my peers feel the same way. Being in India, however, has opened my eyes to how easily a society can put an issue out of sight and therefore out of mind.