There is so much suffering here, whether physical or emotional, and so many seemingly intractable systems that perpetuate suffering, or at least don't prevent it. I could point to inadequate health care, corruption, religious caste systems, etc. But it seems to me that a significant cause of this suffering is the lack of value for human life (certainly this lack of value is not limited to just India). In a city of 16 million people, what's one less life? Or ten, or a hundred? And for those who have been deemed less valuable, they simply do what it takes to get through the day. For example, a whole slum is built on top of a public trash dump: the Dhapa Dump provides income, as meager as it is, to its inhabitants. Men, women and children pick through the piles and separate out plastic bottles, foodstuffs, etc. You can't imagine the smells in these Ghettos of the Damned. Yet the people who dwell there go about their days: to us, it is astonishing to see such an existence. To them, it's life. Besides, what other options are there? In America we might draw from our pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality and tell them to get a job. They can flip burgers at McDonalds, we might say. First of all, there are no McDonald's here, and Hindus don't eat meat anyway. Second of all, the poor of India don't wear boots: they wear sandals. Yes, yes, these are smart-ass responses, but they do address the serious, deeper problems for the poor in Calcutta, or most anywhere for that matter. I'll explain.
Working At McDonald's. Unemployment is high because jobs (much less good jobs) are scarce and the population is massive. Jobs require skills, and the only skill at many a poor and homeless person's disposal is the use of their bodies for manual labor. The overwhelming majority of the street people I know cannot read. So, a man can become a rickshaw driver if he's lucky, which during the monsoon season or in the unrelenting heat of summer is a living hell for only rupees a ride. Children could earn their keep, as their little hands are more nimble handling needle and thread in a clothing sweatshop or molding the ends of cigarettes in a factory. No lunch breaks here: kids will work a 12-hour shift in stifling heat and little light, not to mention exposure to hazardous fumes or other less than healthy conditions. I will remember this the next time I find myself about to gripe about my cube or office location at work.
Children can contribute income from begging, and they are effective beggars. They are more street-wise than they should be at their age: they know what techniques work better than others, and lying is no problem. These children do not go to school. Some MC Sisters tried to help a man who begs outside the Mother House by putting his son through school. Shortly thereafter, the father pulled his son out and put him back to begging on the streets, not because he was a mean father but because that source of income was desperately needed by the family.
Most Hindus Don't Eat Meat. In addition to a severe lack of skills, many poor and homeless are ill, whether physically or mentally so. In the book Rich Christians In The Age of Hunger, author Ron Sider concludes, "Poverty means illiteracy, inadequate health care, disease and even brain damage." For example, my friend Protima spends a few weeks begging on Sudder Street, then returns to her village until they need money again. Her husband is suffering from tuberculosis and is too sick to drive his cycle rickshaw. Protima cannot read and has no job skills, so her only option is to beg.
Unfortunately, poverty does often beget disease. Lacking both food and adequate health care, the Third World has high infant mortality rates (hell, Washington, DC has a high infant mortality rate due to lack of food and health care for the poor, too). This is one important cause of population explosions in underdeveloped nations: because many children die in infancy, a large family guarantees support for poor parents as they age. When a poor family runs out of food, the children suffer most. "An inactive child is not as serious a problem as an inactive wage earner," Sider states sadly. Regarding lack of food, death is usually a result of a disease a child's underfed body could not resist. Regarding lack of adequate health care, one need look no farther than the maladies I see daily at Kalighat. For example: less dramatic but perhaps more tragic, millions of people in India die each year from diarrhea. One of Protima's babies died from its body just wearing out from chronic diarrhea. Watching that happen surely nearly crushed Protima. And yet, a person has to move on, continuing the day.
The Poor Don't Wear Boots. Not having boots means that few poor people have educations: the illiteracy rate is high. Education can be a huge leg up by developing childrens' minds and preparing them for jobs . . . better jobs. The Missionaries of Charity started The Gandhi School to educate poor children. My friends Clare and Paul teach English and math to 6-8 year olds each afternoon. My friend Trever is putting three of Protima's children through boarding school. Grassroots, personal involvement efforts are working. Formal education is not a magic bullet, however, if it is not coupled with one-on-one encouragement and fostering a child's desire to want more. Sometimes that "more" is just not going to be there. Sometimes those little girls being educated will be married off at age 14 as is culturally acceptable, and will not have a choice but to take care of all the chores and to have babies. For older girls and women, like the prostitutes on Sonagachie Street with whom the Word Made Flesh team have befriended . . . in the very rare case when a woman is able to leave the brothel, what can she do? There is a severe stigma with their history as prostitutes. Non-profits and NGO's are working slowly in outreach to local factories and businesses to develop programs for prostitutes and poor children. Progress is slow, and for every victory there are dozens of failures. But there is that victory.
The thing is, poverty and its relatively hunger, disease, illiteracy, homelessness and unemployment are not unique to India. Frederic Thomas writes, "Calcutta is a cliché of squalor and despair." It's just that in Calcutta, it's all over the place and in your face. Indians are not uncaring. Bengalis in fact are very kind and delightful people (Calcutta is in the state of West Bengal). So calling Indians out specifically is perhaps unfair. Poverty and suffering happen in every country: in the United States 13% of our population lives below the poverty line. Yet they seem to be sequestered into the "poor areas" where they aren't readily seen. Calcutta has the added benefits of pollution and inadequate infrastructure of public utilities and services, which compound the problems.
