In poor taste!

Raju Korti
Among the key recommendations made by an international panel chaired by British Prime Minister David Cameron recently was the United Nations can and must end extreme poverty by 2030.
In a speech laced with regulation official-speak, Cameron sought commitment from the UN that it does all that it needs to rid the world of "extreme poverty" whatever that means to peoples of  different countries. Well, to be honest, I do not really know what distinguishes extreme poverty from other kinds of poverty, but that of course is not the issue I am labouring over here.
Cameron's rather expansive comment, if one made a liberal concession for its far-fetched nobility, took me back to what journalist Dr Baburao Patel -- his pen always dipped in acid -- once said while answering the question posed to him in his popular magazine Mother India.
The question was "Prime Minister Morarji Desai has promised to eradicate poverty by 2050. Do you think he can do it?" This was sometime between 1977-78 when people had voted the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi out of power post-Emergency excesses. It provoked the acerbic best out of Patel as it was meant to. Always taking potshots and poking ridicule at the stiff man for his experiments in auto urine therapy, Patel replied with his characteristic humour, "What poverty eradication? Morarji himself would be eradicated from this world in the next few years."
Not much was read into Morarji's pompous announcement. For one, though he was heading the Janata government then, he was after all, an old Congress guard. Besides, he was considered senile and his statement, at best, had populist overtones to it.
In 1971, Indira Gandhi used Garibi Hatao as an election slogan in a country where the gap between the rich and poor has always been remarkable. The slogan worked wonders for Indira's electoral fortunes to the extent that her son Rajiv also kept harping the same tune. It also led to a surfeit of anti-poverty programmes designed to give Gandhi an independent national support, based on rural and urban poor. It allowed her to by-pass the dominate rural castes both in and of state and local government; likewise the urban commercial class. And, for their part, the previously voiceless poor would at last gain both political worth and political weight.
The programs, though carried out locally, were funded, developed, supervised, and staffed by New Delhi and the Congress Party. As it turned out, Garibi Hatao did little and accomplished less: only a miniscule 4% of all funds allocated for economic development went to the three main anti-poverty programs. You didn't have to be an expert to know whether they ever reached the 'poorest of the poor', but it did help secure Gandhi's election. The slogan was a smooth bluff that the poor poor of the country couldn't see through.
The entire Garibi Hatao fiasco reminds me of the 1961 film Hum Dono where a middle class Dev Anand approaches heroine Sadhana's father Gajanan Jagirdar to seek her hand in marriage. The rich father tells the protagonist "Jisne kabhi bhook aur garibi nahi dekhi use garibi mein romance nazar aata hai. Tum kyaa jaano ke ye dhan dault paane ke liye maine kya kya nahi kiya." (Those who haven't experienced hunger and poverty are enamoured by it and think its so romantic. You don't know what I have gone through to earn these riches). Needless to say, a slighted Dev Anand walks out of her house and joins the army to get her out of his system. After the politicians, it is only the film fraternity in its affluence that understand how chivalrous the idea of poverty is. The poor are too impoverished to appreciate its aesthetics. If there were no poverty where would the rich stand?
Poverty sounds good in poems, in maxims and in sermons, but very inconvenient in practical life.
It’s as difficult to be rich without bragging as it is to be poor without complaining.