Chennai at the Crossroads

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My happiness meter when I visit Chennai includes a simple metric – how many beggars come up to me during my (typically one-week) visit. Low scores are good. This time I registered the all-time low on this measure – 2. The first time was when I was with my mother and my mother-in-law shopping in the famous Pondy Bazaar. A young woman with a baby in her arms came up to us and asked for help. The other occasion was also nearby, around the corner near the major jewelry and sari stores. Until about a decade ago, I never used to give alms except in the most abject of cases – the practice of begging was just too ubiquitous and forced one to choose whom to give to. In recent years, it has become rare enough that I always give. I reason that India’s poverty reduction programs have been so effective that anyone still begging must surely be in dire straits.

Poverty

I spoke earlier of rags to riches – let us now speak of those still in rags. Based on 2005 data, the World bank estimates India’s poverty rate to be 29%. These are broadly in agreement with National Survey Statistics (28%) and Delhi School of Economics estimates from a few years back. But poverty statistics are notorious for being misleading, as Amrtya Sen has long argued. But the country is also pulling ahead on a number of other key developmental yardsticks, such as per capita GDP ( growing now at 7.7% vs. 3.4% in the mid-1980s), infant mortality ( down 25% from 2000 to 2005), and secondary education levels ( up from 38% to 57% in two decades).  

By the same token, famines have been entirely eliminated in India thanks to the green revolution. To catch people below the poverty line, a ration program allows poor people in Tamil Nadu with an annual income of under Rs 15000/- ($400) to obtain food at subsidized prices. For example, they can buy rice for Rs. 2 per kilo ($0.05). People can also buy kerosene and sugar at these so-called fair-price shops.

There is a major distinction between urban and rural poor – their problems, the infrastructure required to provide services for them, the social mechanisms for support are all quite different. Tamil Nadu is the most urbanized (43%) of Indian states, and Chennai is its biggest city. And while, as I pointed out above, there are far fewer destitutes, homeless people and beggars, there is no shortage of poor people.

Living Example

So what is the life of a poor person in Chennai like? Let us take as a living example our ex-housemaid Vijaya. A short, pleasant woman of about 55, Vijaya has worked as a housemaid in our neighborhood for the past several decades. She and her husband live in a microscopic and ancient rented apartment nestled in the insterstices between the larger houses on our street. I had occasion to visit her on this occasion as we wanted her help in cleaning up my mother’s apartment. Ecstatic to see me (she had worked for my parents from the time that I was a youngster), Vijaya happily introduced her young daughter-inlaw and her new grandson, a cute little waif less than a year old.

Vijaya works at  three or  four different middle-class households, earning approximately Rs. 300/- per month in each. The work typically includes washing clothes, hanging them out to dry, washing dishes, sweeping and wet-wiping floors, and a few other odd chores. Vijaya spends between 30 and 60 minutes at each of the houses she cleans twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening. This totals up to an 8 hour day. Other maidservants work even longer hours. Her income adds up to Rs 15,000 per year, and although her husband earns as well, her family income would qualify her to be at or at least close to the official definition of poverty  -- $1 per day. (Picture shows poor rural migrant women in Chennai with their children)

I note several aspects of Vijaya’s life that could put her in danger of slipping through the cracks. The  first is her income, which at current levels is truly marginal in a place where food and land inflation are quite high. It is questionable whether, given the constant in-migration of cheap labor, her income can keep pace with the cost of living, especially housing. Second, as a member of the informal economy, Vijaya gets no benefits, and her old age is not provided for. She will surely have to live with her children, if they would have her. Vijaya has two sons. While the elder one, whose wife and baby I met on this trip, lives in the flat above Vijaya’s, and seems to have a steady job, she is evasive and despondent about the younger one, who seems to have disappeared from the area.

Considering the future, Vijaya lives what I can only label a precarious existence. Any illness can wipe out her income and simultaneously hit her with large costs. She does not have savings of any substance, and had her children been girls, she would be worrying about how to pay for their weddings. As it is, she has nothing to retire on. She continues to rent in a time of skyrocketing land costs; I suspect it is only a matter of time before she will have to move out of even her microscopic current perch. Unlike Gopalan, there is no hope whatsoever that she could afford real estate in Chennai.

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