Postcard from India: Third World

[whipchick]

I think I have a new definition for “Third World”: it’s where it’s cheaper to hire a person than buy, rent or build a machine.

In Varanasi, I do my laundry in the shower bucket and then hire the woman on the corner to iron it. Ten rupees per item-about twenty cents. At my hotel, a thirteen-year-old boy starts on the third floor and sweeps the dirt

Comments

[frecklestars]

I may borrow that definition for future classes. It's an excellent one! (If a slightly depressing commentary on the world economy...)

[blythe025]

That makes sense.

Also, "...not only a privilege but a responsibility..." Very interesting. It also makes sense, too.

I always enjoy reading about India on your blog. Your insights are great.

[revelgrove]

Interestingly, Austria thinks of recycling the exact opposite way. If everybody takes care of their own crap, nobody has to have the job of sorting through it and the bottom tier of work starts higher up. I suspect either extreme is a better solution than the middle-ground we have here.

[anonymous]

Unfortunately, if you raise the bottom tier in the third world (like India and South Africa) with its huge unemployment percentages, you don't raise people's incomes, you just cut a large sector of the population out of the income loop and take away their oppurtunity to make a living for themselves. In the third world (and South Africa specifically) people still take a lot of pride in working and earning their own living and no job is seen as inferior or not good enough. So it does become part of the social contract to employ other people if you can in any small way afford it. In the third world, taking care of your own crap literally means a child goes to bed hungry.

The same was true in the US

[drwex]

My grandparents were well employed through the Depression. They acquired a couple of house-servants during that time because it was simply expected that if one could afford it, one hired another person during those tough times.

One of them turned into a lifelong friend of my grandmom's, helping raise my father and his brother, then making my grandparents godparents to her own daughter.