Experiences of poverty

By Godaya

For those of you out there who know me personally and know my financial status of being constantly broke, this is not about my personal level of poverty. Rather, this is a reflection of "poverty" as experienced by the masses. One of my dreams came true last week, as I had the chance to attend a workshop on Photo Journalism. And as a part of it, we had to go out on the field for an assignment, which was to document poverty around us in a photo essay form.

I (who’s a wannabe-photographer), along with two other guys (who are senior photographers), went out of the place where the training was held, and started walking in the direction of Narahenpita. The suggestion which came from one of the other guys was to take a walk along the railway track, saying there will be plenty of photo ops.

This is not the first time that I've seen two different worlds exist, separated only by a wall. I've seen it in several places in Colombo, and I've seen it in various parts of India. One neighborhood would consist of the crème de la crème of the upper class, and the other would be made up of the poorest of the poor. The same was pretty much true for this neighborhood. Since we told those people that we would not reveal information which was gathered for the workshop's purposes, I wouldn't elaborate on the experiences, or the people's views.

Rather, I was hoping on moving away from the humorous, usual Godaya format, and to reflect upon life around us. Sometimes, we are oblivious to this, and sometimes we tend to ignore what we see.

Poverty has two main definitions. One is called absolute poverty, where there is a threshold to measure poverty against. This is the term most people use, and right now the threshold US$ 1 per day in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). This is not equal to a person earning US$ 1 per day, but it's a slightly more complex calculation which takes into account what a person can purchase with the local currency equivalent of US$ 1.

The other definition of poverty is called relative poverty, and this is where a person's economic status is measured relative to the community a person is living in. For example, in a rich country where the average income per person, per annum is half a million US dollars, a person owning a "mere" 50,000 would be considered poor.

And poverty, contradictory to what we believe in, is not something we can totally eliminate, because as long as someone is richer than the other, the "poor" will continue to exist.

Does this mean that we are helpless, and that we can't make a change? Not necessarily. Next time you think about upgrading that mobile phone, or buying that fifth watch, take that cash and give it to someone who will spend it on a child's education, or use it to buy books for the local school library. It's not something which is uber-expensive, and it's something all of us can do. And you can then have the satisfaction of knowing that you did your little bit to make the world a better place.