Human dignity

How can you talk about human dignity when your restroom is just next to your bed and your bed is just next to your kitchen and all these is actually placed on the street, where thousands of people are driving their cars every day, traveling with rikshaws, walking by. How can you talk about having basic privacy when you brush your teeth, comb your hair, eat your dinner, sleep, feed your babies being watched by random pedestrians or travelers, when “your bed” is just there, just on the street but you only lie down after 9 pm, when the traffic is less and you will have to collect your stuff before 7 am when it starts getting crowded again.

Coming to India I was told I should expect poverty and a gap between the rich and the poor. I was thinking, I am not from the richest country in the world either, so shouldn’t be that shocked. However, things you can see here are really scary and you can’t by any chance prepare yourself for what you will see here. No one can really say how many people are living on the streets (especially in Mumbai this number will be huuuuge!) because no one is even able to track how many people are there in the country. Not everyone was born in hospital, not everyone is officially registered, not everyone officially works. Therefore if Indian government gives statistics about the size of the population they can never be accurate… neither they are able to say how many people are homeless. Most of the Indians I was discussing economic situation with said that the biggest issue hindering this country from growing even faster is its population. No matter how much effort you put into providing social services you can’t really feed everyone, educate everyone, and give work to everyone.