Who is Poor?

How do you define word “Poor”?

Several people might define several different criteria, which if not fulfilled will make a person poor.

For example, a person who owns a car might define a person owning a Bicycle as poor. A person with huge amount of land might define a landless person as poor. A person living in city with good sanitation, transport, communication, food, clothing and shelter might define a person living in rural with no means of transportation, communication and sanitation as poor. A person with bicycle may call a person without cycle as poor.

Therefore, different people can set different conditions for poverty. Sometimes people determine the poverty based on the standard of living or per capita income. A developed nation like USA might find the countries like Namibia poor because of lower standard of living and per capita income.

I once had a chance to visit a tribal village, which was very much isolated from the modern world and hence had no idea about how poverty is defined. When I asked them that do you think you are poor. Do you think your life is having any kind of problem? Do you think that you need any kind of external support for making your life better? Are you satisfied with your life?

They only mentioned the problem like less amount of water but as such, they think that they are self-sufficient and are very much satisfied with their life. They would like us to provide only water nothing else. This is the village where people do not have electricity, bicycle, cell phones, etc but still they are very happy and contend with their life.

They think like this because they have not seen such things and hence they do not aspire to have those things. For them the only thing they aspire is water. In a way, their isolation to the modern world has been a blessing to them, as they do not have to worry about standard of living, per capita income, global recession, etc. I believe that they might continue to live like this forever if they are left untouched and not taught the definitions of poverty, which we define today.