Look Who’s Not Poor

If the idea of the Poverty Line is to make India look less miserable, the government may as well pull numbers out of a hat

The Food Commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court has recommended that the Poverty Line in urban areas be pegged at an income of Rs 1,000 per month per person. Those who earn below this are officially poor. This is the highest poverty bar ever in India. Yet, it is a pointless definition of poverty, as will be evident through the life of a girl who lives on the streets of Mumbai and earns much more than Rs 1,000 a month.

Soni is an orphan who begs on the streets of Marine Drive. Soni never saw her mother, except in photographs. “She wasn’t beautiful, she looked just like me.” All her life she begged to support herself and her ailing father who eventually died. But the 13-year-old is suddenly ashamed to do so. She is selective about her patrons—only Caucasians and Arabs who are known for their emotional response to poverty. She is Hindu but wears a black chunni to cover her head and impress Arab women in burkhas, or ‘Mariams’ as she calls them.

She earns more than Rs 1,000 a month. She does not want to reveal her income though. Ask her if a thousand rupees is enough to sustain her, and she looks at you like you’re a lost cause. “In thousand rupees, one can’t even watch films,” she says. Movies are important for street children. They would rather skip meals than give up films. Soni’s favourite is Vivah because the heroine is an orphan like her. She’s seen it at least five times.

She takes you through her daily expenditure. “For breakfast, I buy one cup chai that costs two rupees along with idli or pav, costing up to seven rupees. For lunch and dinner I buy a rice plate that costs 20 rupees. That is 50 rupees per day.” A taxi driver overhearing the conversation laughs. “No one can eat in 50 rupees a day,” he says.

Even if one survives on a bare minimum like she has grown accustomed to, just the food expense comes to Rs 1,500 a month. Add to that the Rs 5 she pays to the Sulabh Shauchalaya every day for bathing and washing clothes. Although it costs Rs 2 to use the toilet, Soni gets that facility free because she has good contacts. Along with Lifebuoy soap (Rs 6), toothpaste (Rs 6), washing soap (Rs 7), Clinic Plus shampoo (Rs 2 per sachet), the newfound expenditure on sanitary napkins (Rs 22 per packet), her monthly expenditure on essentials exceeds Rs 300. Ironically, homeless people end up spending more on essentials than those with homes. They aren’t allowed to cook on the street, and must buy even a cup of tea. Soni uses one Lifebuoy each week as the wet wrapping she stores it in melts the soap away. She shampoos her hair every day. The harsh sun, infection-ridden pavements and traffic-exhaust pollution make good hygiene as vital as nutrition.

With the rains arriving, Soni now needs footwear, undergarments and a raincoat. A blanket given by a friendly Arab tourist make her nights cosy. But there is nothing money can buy to make nights on the streets safer. Soni sleeps beside other street-dwelling families, but no one she can call her own. Roughly Rs 100 to Rs 200 gets stolen from her every month. She has no savings. And poor people are people without savings, she says. She has a mobile phone, though, gifted again by benevolent Arabs. So, although Soni never has a balance to make a call, she has a number on which she can be reached. A sweeper allows her to charge the phone in her employer’s shop.

Like most families living on her street, Soni too has a home somewhere in some village. But one can sit at home and eat only if one has money. “Without that, how can you speak of returning?” she asks. Soni is aware of ration cards as many street families have one. “It helps you buy wheat and rice at a cheaper price, but you still have to pay. It also helps you get a passport.” What is a passport? “I don’t know.”

What Soni mistakes for the ration card is the red coloured Below Poverty Line (BPL) card street families cling on to. The Kale family that lives ten minutes away possesses two such BPL cards. It allows them to buy a kilo of rice for Rs 3 and wheat for Rs 2, says their head of the family, Sawant Kale. With five children to fend for, and five others married off, the Kale family is starving despite two BPL cards. “The police regularly round up all our belongings, including our vessels. We can’t cook,” says his wife Lakshmi Kale, who is forced to buy a cup of tea every time she is thirsty. Shops offer her water only when she purchases something. Lakshmi has fallen ill with what seems to be malaria. And her husband has already spent the Rs 200 kept aside for daily food on doctor’s fees. “You can see for yourself now, we are eating only pav for lunch.” In Sawant Kale’s opinion, it takes around Rs 200 each day to feed his family of seven. When you tell him that his income and expenditure could potentially take him above the Poverty Line, he doesn’t know how to respond. “We have two BPL cards among us, a homeless peoples’ ration card, and you can see the way we live. We live on the pavement. In the rains, we don’t even have hinges we can tie plastic sheets to. Our children play on busy roads. The world can see how we live, what we eat. What makes the Government think we are not poor?”

The Kale family has had most of its belongings confiscated by the police, as living on the streets is a crime. Soni figured a strategy to keep her belongings safe years ago. She stores her knick-knacks in a plastic bag hidden on a tree branch. This may protect her things from the police, but not the Mumbai monsoon.

Life goes on this way on the streets of Mumbai. Somewhere else, statisticians pore over datasheets to calculate how much money a person needs every month to escape official poverty. And that figure, they say, is Rs 1,000 a month.

It is true. The poor do laugh.

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