Stressful Times

I have had a hard day, and its only 11 am. This morning I went to the train station before 8 am so Christine and I could get train tickets to Varanasi for our vacation. We were there yesterday, but there were no tickets available and the attendant at the special "Foreign Tourists and Freedom Fighters" ticket window said that there were special quota tickets available on sale at 8 am. If we wanted to get to Varanasi, this was the only way. We got the tickets to Varanasi fine, but when we were trying to figure out our return trips we got all flustered. We had to run around the train station seeking help and a timetable to figure out how we could get out of Uttar Pradesh. Christine and I finally settled on a train to Delhi that we could take together, and then she will head off to Udaipur on a bus arriving in time to celebrate Holi with her family there.

After the train station, I was starving. I REALLY, REALLY wanted eggs for breakfast, but you have no idea how hard it is to find a non-veg restaurant that sells eggs in India. We were searching and searching, and I was starving. All the cycle and auto drivers wouldn't leave us alone and we were searching. It may not seem like a very stressful time, but it was for me. Anyway, after we ate we came to the internet cafe', so I already feel like I had a long day.

So, Christine is here now. She came in on a bus yesterday morning and she, Tim and I had our Midterm Seminar with Rima. We just basically had to give status presentations and talk about our papers, etc. Christine had some interesting comments about Seva Mandir.

Seva is a big NGO here in India, it has numerous international interns working on various development projects, and receives a great amount of foreign funding to do their work. Apparently, Seva got a significant amount of money from the World Bank to work on a poverty alleviation project. The World Bank wanted to pull a specific number of families up from poverty in--get this--TWO YEARS!!

This got me thinking about the Western perception of poverty. Poverty is created in India by numerous instances. Providing a family funds may help, but when children don't have access to education, when a father can't have a job that provides for his family, when he has to pay all he has saved for months and months to a doctor for care when his child falls unexpectedly ill. All of these things have impacts on the reality of poverty. In America, poverty is largely hidden. People who are struggling to survive paycheck to paycheck still may have a home or a car, but it doesn't mean that they do not have struggles. These are the type of people who may benefit from simple financial backing. They already have an amount of education and an occupation to further them along.

Seva's project has not been successful because the parameters that came with the funds doomed the project. Now, instead of supporting and helping the poorest of the poor, the money is being used to help specific families who do not have such great poverty issues and will be able to produce the types of results that the World Bank wishes to see with their "2 year" poverty alleviation project.