POVERTY AND CRIME

Every time I attend a symposium or a conference on planning or development related issues, I end up loosing friends and contacts. This time too, Conference in in Tokyo was another fresh example. Everything was going well, Veteran speaker were delivering their lectures in a progressive sequence. As always, I was filling up my thick note book with the inspiring sentences and quotes from the learned peoples’ speeches. All of a sudden, breaking the decorum of the ceremony I was standing, red face, ready to quarrel, without chairpersons’ permission. As per the rule read out in the beginning of this session, by the chairperson, four speakers would speak in turn and questions were allowed after all four speakers wind up their talks. Finding my behavior awkward, every eye was on me, and the chair person gestured me to sit down, many participants spoke in low voices to urge me to sit now and ask questions later. The veteran speaker realizing that he was controversial some where asked me to speak if I had anything related to him.

I wasn’t prepared for this moment. So my words must be crude and harsh. I don’t want to go to formalities as I am standing without following one. But I like to raise my concern on the words, sentences and their implication, you just raised. You mentioned that poverty is the root cause of crimes. Besides you said it with much emphasis. Do you mean people living under poverty are criminals? Do you mean poor people resort to crimes? Dear speaker sir, please collect your information from fact, unless you want to write a fiction. Look at the crime statistics. Do poor people resort to kidnapping, abduction, hijacking, theft, burglary etc.? If you have said poor people steal bread and rice, it would have given a sense of respect to the poor people. Look at the police report on crime of any state. The crimes are committed using means, bullets, knives and law. The poor people or people living under poverty are those who would buy bread instead of knives. My second concern is how can poor people involve in crimes when crimes involves a lot of money? Were the accused of 9/11 poor? Were Saddham and Hitler criminals when they were poor?
Dear speaker sir, the most rampant crime these days is corruption. How can people living under “no bread plight” get access to the place to corruption? If you are still convinced that poor people are criminals, those who live with less than $1 per day are criminals, either you or I must change the philosophy or change the place. If your further slides are to prove that poverty is the cause of crime, just tell me to get out of the hall now.

Later in the reception party organized to welcome the participants of the Tokyo international conference on Gender and development, I was avoided by the majority of the participants. A few who did speak with me had their attention focused elsewhere than our discussion. The people who claimed to be vocal for the empowerment of the un-represented choose to side with the higher authority who had lesser limitations that I had.