Do Poor lack Values?

Valuable or less valuable, anything goes missing in an average household, the first and the usual suspect is the housemaid. ‘She must have stolen it’ – this is what most residents of that household say with utmost confidence. To add more credence to their theory they also add – ‘I saw her lurking suspiciously for no reason yesterday. She must be contemplating the same.’ At times the maid is even quizzed or indirectly made to feel that she is the suspect, much to her embarrassment.

Parallel search for that object continues and one would agree that 95% of the times that object is found in the house itself, that someone kept carelessly or too carefully, and then blissfully forgot about the same.

The missing has been found and everyone is happy in the house, but the poor maid? Her self-respect has been crushed once more by her suspecting rich employers. No one feels any need to even say sorry to the poor soul who stays with the blemish and lives with the stigma ever after that she was called a thief, when she was innocent.

Ditto happens in many offices and the suspects more often than not are the petty workers. 

Does being poor means being less honest?

Do most of us somewhere deep down feel that less privileged people lack values and cannot be trusted?

Few days back, I encountered an acclaimed academician's piece of advice for his alma mater from where he graduated 5 decades back. His advice startled me. His alma mater known for being very sophisticated and traditionally open to kids of the elite, after decades of exclusivity was opening doors to less privileged students coming from lower economic strata.

He wrote...

“Traditionally our institution has been known for the kind of values that our students are endowed with. However now that we have decided to open our doors for the less-privileged we have to more careful. These students coming from poor families may not have that kind of access and hence may not have the kind of values that our students generally have. It is philanthropic that we have decided to open our doors for the poor boys and girls but we must do extra diligence to ensure that the values are instilled in them.”

Clearly the assumption is that boys and girls who come from poor families do not have good values and they need to be educated on the same as well. This reflects the same mindset?

How far is this true?

Recent disclosures by Swiss authorities show how some India’s rich industrialists are stashing away millions in foreign banks to evade tax.  The size of India’s black money market is enough to make you feel a bit dizzy. A World Bank report puts India’s shadow economy at close to one-fifth of economic output. Obviously poor people did not stash away these millions in foreign banks; and those rich people who did surely will not score very high on values.

A survey conducted by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) shows that an average urban household in India pays around Rs 4,400 annually as bribe, while rural households have to shell out Rs 2,900. How can people laden with values pay and accept bribes?

All this cannot be the product of high values; and all those people are not poor.

Government defines BPL (below poverty line) as those whose average monthly per capita expenditure is not more than Rs. 816/- in rural areas and Rs. 1000/- in urban areas. That is much lower than the bribe being paid.

Wait! We must not give rise to another stereotyped perception here that all rich people lack values. As much as this is not true, can then it be conclusively decided that those devoid of riches are devoid of values as well?

Think…