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An extreme poverty manifesto
Joe Devine
IN 19961 was carrying out research for my PhD on NGOs and poverty reduction in rural Bangladesh. One evening, after a long day trekking round aimlessly trying to find people to interview. I was sitting on the office veranda of a local NGO that had kindly offered me hospitality. It was a beautiful evening with one of those Bangladeshi sunsets that leave you breathless, even inspired. As usual, a number of people had gathered at the front of the NGO office hoping to be able to speak to the NGO leader or his senior staff. From among the crowd, an elderly woman slowly made her way towards me and asked if I could help her by talking to the NGO leader on her behalf. This was not an unusual request and I had become quite used to telling people that I neither worked for the NGO nor had the gravitas to influence its leaders. This time however the elderly woman ignored my response as she persisted in trying to get my attention. Those next to me on the veranda tried to gently move her away by asking hertojointhequeueof people at the front of the NGO office where 'she might be attended to'. Again unconvinced, she stubbornly held her ground. There was something admirable about her persistence and 1 began to chat with her.
Not surprisingly, like many of the others
congregating outside the office, she had travelled some distance to ask the NGO for help. Like many others, she was at pains to show how vulnerable and poor she was and how the weight of constantly having to face severe hardships was overburdening her. There was no need of course for her to explain this, her poverty' was obvious; written on her face and carved probably forever into her flesh. But what was surprising about this woman was the way she talked of her poverty.
As she recounted the list of things that were going wrong in her life and tried to convince everyone of her need for help, she continued to utter the phrase amar keu ney a phrase that was to radically alter the way I came to think about poverty in Bangladesh.
I quickly noticed that the phrase also struck a chord among my Bangladeshi colleagues sitting beside me that evening. It felt as if this woman could no longer be simply ushered to the back of the queue (which had grown considerably longer as our discussion evolved); the condition of amar keu ney meant that she somehow deserved to be treated in a different way from the others.
In my company that evening were a number of NGO workers who were extremely dedicated and hardworking. I asked them to explain what amar keu ney meant and what, if anything, it told us differently about the lives of poor people.
In the end, it was the elderly lady herself who came up with the clearest answer. In her view, most of the people in the queue were genuinely poor and she went on to explain how all poor people have little money and are probably in debt;1 have restricted employment opportunities and work for very low wages and in poor condi -tions; possess few assets of any value; suffer from long term health problems; sometimes experience real hunger; cannot afford to send their children to school. But, she argued, her poverty was different.
While the poor are constantly exposed to different hazards, shocks and crises, they somehow manage a basic level of security in life. In other words, despite many setbacks, they survive. Her poverty was very different. Her ability to reach a basic level of welfare was fundamentally undermined by the fact that she could no longer count on anyone to help her out nor was she important enough to still count in the political calculations of others. To all extents and purposes, she was abandoned and excluded, and this rendered her poverty so much more severe and life threatening.
For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on November 2. Joe Devine is a lecturer in International Development and Head of the International Development Group at the Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath. His main research interests lie in wellbeing, poverty and inequality.