Poor People Photo Set

For my Politics of International Development class, we write a group blog here. Below is my recent post:



I was quite intrigued by David Bromley's piece that was part of the readings couple of weeks back, which was followed by the discussion in class. Bromley believes that its time we shift our attention away from the poor as “objects and subjects”.



I had read a little while back, how a very smart non-profit in Delhi, offers tourists a tour of the worst living conditions that street children face in the city. In one's trip to India, the itinerary now includes Agra, Goa, a trip down south to Kerala and finally trip to the slums of Delhi. Although, it sounds dehumanizing, to make the suffering of these children a 'tourist attraction', I saw a strange connection to Bromley's ideas.



There could be reasons why we are eager to study the poor, just like the tourists pay money to see the suffering. I'm guessing the below motivations should be true to both scholars and tourists, given that by the end of the day all of us are human:

• Studying the poor enables us to appreciate what we have in our lives. Once these tourists get onto their flights back home, after exploring the painful condition, they can better appreciate their SUVs and the large-screen TVs. It may even help them find some meaning in their lives

• It enables them to sympathize. In many cases sympathy is mistaken for action. Thus, exploring the world of homeless kids in Delhi, taking a few pictures and handing out some candies may make them believe that they have done some good

• It enables us to create artifacts of suffering through pictures and videos. Can you ever imagine a international development site without the pictures of poor, homeless children, usually malnourished and shirtless. This also holds true for presentations, journals, books and funding proposals. Let’s say for a moment, we take Bromley’s advice quite seriously and focus our efforts on studying the elites and the institutions they create, which eventually leads to poverty. That would imply that we would have to replace the pictures of the poor with the boardroom of Goldman Sachs and the poor country elites, with their bungalows and expensive cars.
  
  

Thus, Bromley’s piece also started me thinking about motivations. Do we, the people in the development community have a fetish with studying the poor? How are we any different from the tourists with their cameras?

The good economics behind pirated books

I recently read from Ashutosh's blog that how he bought a not-so original copy of Freakanomics from India (for Rs. 40, list price ~Rs.500) and got it autographed by the author Mr. Levitt himself. He also argues how these books (published originally) in the US are quite overpriced for any normal Indian reader.

I agree, and problem is that there is no economics behind pricing of US published books in India. Most sellers (so called legal), fix the Indian price of US published books by multiplying the US$ price with the exchange rate. This does not take into account Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

The only exception is when they publish Indian version of the book. The other notable exception is the Economist magazine, which ensures that its price, across countries is adjusted for PPP.
While the Economist is sold at 6$ in the US, in India it costs only Rs.100. We can assume that Economist knows what its doing (well, they came up with the Big Mac Index). So, using their prices a rough index can be calculated:

= 100/(6*44) = 0.37

In other words, ideally, taking into account PPP, Freakanomics should be priced at (0.37) *(US$ price)*(the INR exchange rate)

= 0.37*9.00*44 = Rs. 146

(9$ is the lowest price I found on Amazon for a new paperback)

Ashutosh must have done some haggling to reduce the price, before bringing it down to Rs.40. Of course, It does not take into account the margins for the publisher and the author. My argument is that even if those are taken into account, the book should be priced at Rs.146 and not Rs. 500. Obviously, the market participants ensure that such demand supply discrepancies are exploited for profits (obviously there are far more buyers at Rs.146 than at Rs.500).

Actually, it will be great if the book publishers and retailers dont realize this, and keep the prices high. Imagine the number of livelihoods created by people selling books in platforms across the country.

So, Mr Levitt of all the people should not be concerned about fake. Its simple economics and even a little bit of Freakanomics.

Hello Mister, you have to be a little more careful

The little that I understand of the culture in the United States, I have realized that race and ethnicity are contentious issues. While most conversations are exempt from discussions about race, I feel an underlying sense of discomfort for all the external silence that prevails. Also, as a newcomer, its hard for me not to notice the physical disintegration and the divide.

For Instance, I was taking my normal train ride this Saturday morning, from Journal Square (in Jersey City) to the NYU campus in New York City. Journal Square is the last stop in the train network and also traditionally has been one of the most underdeveloped areas (probably next only to Newark). Thus, Journal Square is also home to a large immigrant population. So, as the train starts its journey, the occupants are extremely diverse. I could hear in the background many dialects, whether its Spanish, Russian, an African language (sorry about my ignorance), some Hindi and mostly a lot of broken English. I wanted to create a quantitative measure that can help you the reader understand the ethnic composition of that train compartment. I came up with something called the Cumulative Weighted Skin Color Index (CWSCI).

This is how I would calculate CWSCI:

(Skin color Value)*(No. of Individuals with that Skin Color Value in the Compartment)
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(Total Individuals in the compartment)

Skin Color Value is a number between 0 and 1, based on the shade, where 0.01 corresponds to Black and 0.99 corresponds to White (Please note that I'm not implying that one color is better than other, however, its just a simple mathematical measure).

So, at Journal Square my guess is that the CWSCI would be approximately 0.3 (again this is a intuitive measure, I have not yet devised a means to create a randomized study). As the train heads to Groove Street, CWSCI should increase to 0.4 and then to Newport, it should hit 0.5. I believe that the Index starts to show great increases as the train halts at Hoboken (the last stop before entering New York). As I observed at Hoboken today, most individuals who entered the train had a Skin Color value of 0.9 and above. Thus, the overall CWSCI reaches 0.75, due to the surge of White people (not only does the train become more noisier, a strong American and sparsely European accent takes dominance. Conversations mostly range from "Oh, I wore my number 2 jacket yesterday, when I should have worn my number 3" to "Did you watch the game last night". I realized most of my previous neighbors when I got on the train at Journal Square had probably only one Jacket and did much make much of the sports in America).

Thus, my thesis is that the index would go from 0.3 at Journal Square to 0.75 at Hoboken. An even more glaring example of such distinctions can be seen in a public ice skating rink, which I found out during my trip to Bryant Park at 42nd Street. Let’s assume for the sake of simplicity, that the skating rink is circular. Let us divide the Skating rink in to two co-centric circles (circles which share the same center). My guess is that CWSCI for the outermost circle would be less than 0.3 . The reason being most immigrants have obviously never been on the ice before (like me) and cannot imagine letting go of the railings. In comparison, as we move closer to center the CWSCI should increase drastically, getting closer and closer to one.

The skating rink is also an excellent example of the microcosm of US culture. There are people in the periphery trying to make their way to the mainstream both economically and socially. As I was cursing myself for trying this insane activity of ice-skating, I slipped and fell (although I was holding on to the railing). A little girl comes around extending her tiny little hand to me and says "Hello Mister, you have to be a little more careful"! That’s when I realized, what attracts so many people to this country, immaterial of whether you are a 0.01 or 0.99, you always have a chance to make it to the mainstream and eventually to the center of the skating rink.