The Povertydog

Jug Suraiya writes in the TOI “Poverty, like AIDS, is not shameful. What is shameful is that more than 60 years after independence poverty continues to exist in our midst, in the midst of India Shining, and India Winning, and India Rising, like a curable, or least preventable, but chronically neglected disease. The reaction against Slumdog Millionaire and other works of its kind that have shown us the face of our disowned poverty is rooted in a misplaced sense of shame. What we are or ought to be ashamed of is not our poverty but of our attempts to wish it away, to sweep it under the carpet, to decry all depictions of it as commercial exploitation and social and cultural voyeurism”.