The quiet influencers: How the poor have shaped India

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₹20,000 crore to about 100 million farmers. This was probably a way to convey to India’s poor that contrary to what they may have thought, they were his priority. Indian elections are often the revenge of the poor.

In past years, whenever the educated middle-class grew cynical of democracy, India’s poor have shown their faith in it by turning up to vote. They have forced governments at all levels to be compassionate alms-givers. And this year, the poor intervened again and diminished the might of the ruling party.

But this is only the obvious way in which the poor have shaped India. India’s public character comes from its poor. India is the way it is chiefly because of its poor.

Almost every concrete and abstract thing in India is influenced by the poor. India’s elite in every field are deeply influenced, affected and shaped by the poor. India’s poverty gives Indians a clear moral direction.

Every affluent Indian may or may not have a moral compass, but certainly has one for India, and it directs the country to end poverty. How to go about it is at the heart of our economic, social and political debates. Many powerful emotional issues like religion are secondary to the wound of poverty.

People who do not consider this the priority cannot hope for a career in public life. When India wants to invest in technology, it must first make it dreary by invoking the tech’s uses for the poor. This is what India did at the advent of space exploration, the internet and mobile phone—it was all meant for the poor, especially poor farmers, as though India’s poor have no other profession.