[jimbob21]

Did you actually read that comment about Toronto? He immediately prefaces it by saying it isn't in the same realm, but can relate because he's poor in his area as well.

I don't think that YOU realize that it is okay to relate to common feelings without being the most of that thing. The guy from Toronto doesn't have to be the most poor person in the most poor area in order to understand their feelings and talk about his.

You're gatekeeping being poor. What a weird thing to be elitist about.

[chinchilla2020]

He is not gatekeeping being poor. He is pointing out that being poor in Toronto is not the same as being poor in Delhi.

You are trying to lump two things together into a category that are not even remotely comparable.

[derefr]

There are two distinct experiences being discussed here: the experience of living in absolute poverty; and the experience of being down-and-out in a city you can't afford the cost-of-living of (i.e. "relative" poverty — the kind you could in theory get away from by "moving somewhere cheaper", but where for various reasons people don't tend to do that.)

Both the poor person in Toronto and the poor person in Delhi are in relative poverty, and have the lived experiences of relative poverty in common.

And also, the lived experiences of relative poverty are usually what someone means when they talk about "being poor." If you live in Dubai and make $50k/yr, but that doesn't even get you a crappy apartment two hours away from work, so you have to sleep in your car; and all your money is going to paying for groceries in a city that has to import all its food, and for car insurance that costs more than your car, so you don't have any savings — then you're poor, by most people's definition!

But of course, only the homeless person in Delhi experiences absolute poverty. They have two problems: relative poverty, and absolute poverty.

But the homeless person in Delhi will still commisserate with the homeless person in Toronto over the lived experiences and troubles that come from relative poverty — a problem they both share — even if the homeless person in Toronto doesn't know anything about what living with absolute poverty is like. They both still get their meagre possessions stolen if they stop watching them for a few minutes. They both sleep rough and have to actively think about how to not die when there's a heat wave or a cold spell. They both probably have a fungal infection somewhere on their bodies from their clothes being damp all the dang time. Etc.

[sombremesa]

> But the homeless person in Delhi will still commisserate with the homeless person in Toronto

Perhaps, but it's worth pointing out that these experiences are qualitatively different.

In India, being poor (especially if you're a certain caste) is tantamount to being non-human. You can be jailed, raped, mistreated, killed without consequence. Even the middle class is afforded little human dignity, the underclass have no real hope. The homeless in Toronto can still get some government services without bribery.

On top of that, there's the whole matter of caste which won't go away even if you win the lottery.

Someone else here is saying that dating poor in Switzerland is the same as in Delhi...that comes across as unbelievably tone deaf. Perhaps they missed the part in TFA where this couple has to date far away from the home. You can get beaten up or killed for being seen with the "wrong person" (in this case same gotra), and it does happen - quite often.

So it's not as simple as absolute and relative poverty in my opinion (though that is a good thought and is definitely part of it).

Risking another bad analogy, I would perhaps compare it to being the lowest class of worker in a Walmart versus being at the bottom of the org chart in Netflix. You can both commiserate on how bad your managers are, but your lived experiences are not remotely the same.

[derefr]

I feel like that's conflating yet a third kind of poverty: having no societal respectability. Having no social "credit." No https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Whuffie .

Being in poverty but of a high caste in India, is pretty-standard "absolute poverty."

Meanwhile, being well-off but of a low caste in India, is more like being a recently-freed black slave in the ante-bellum southern US.

That experience is really nothing like absolute or relative poverty. It's its own kind of horrible. (It's an orthogonal poverty, one could say.)

It does lead to a vicious cycle that connects it to absolute/relative poverty, though, since having no societal respectability means people aren't willing to offer you any opportunities to better your situation, because they think badly of you and expect you to squander them.

But I would say it is nevertheless best to think of a low-caste homeless person in Delhi as having three distinct problems: relative poverty, absolute poverty, and poverty of societal-respectability.

I would note that, while a regular homeless person in Toronto might not know anything about the sheer inhumanity of being of a low caste in India, a drug-addicted homeless person working as a prostitute to feed their addiction would actually understand it somewhat. In both cases, for example, if someone in these groups gets murdered or otherwise wronged, the police don't even bother to investigate — so they have no access to justice. The low-caste homeless in Delhi and the crack-addicted streetwalker in Toronto would see the same looks on people's faces, and understand them to mean the same thing.

[sombremesa]

I agree that the caste issues are orthogonal to the others and that these three kinds of poverty come close to encompassing the problem being discussed.

And if this were to be the complete picture, why can't it express the sheer inhumanity of being of a low caste in India?

Take the case of a "drug-addicted homeless person working as a prostitute to feed their addiction" in Toronto - this person arrived here by their own choices (some amount of agency), but you can be born into that situation (with the awareness that your children will follow the same path) in India. [0]

You can't worry about societal respectability when you have no basic human dignity. Perhaps that is a fourth kind of poverty.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/11/28/the-indian-cas...

[ptr2voidStar]

Very well constructed, logical response - whilst still being respectful.

It is this kind of robust but respectful exchange of viewpoints, that keeps me coming back to HN (and unfortunately, spending hours on the site!)

[RHSeeger]

> You can both commiserate on how bad your managers are

And that's all the person you were replying to was saying. You can have things in common to talk about, and also have things that are so different you can't even comprehend them.

[jacquesm]

Minorities in Toronto definitely risk being jailed and mistreated without consequence.

Killed or raped, probably not.

[beiller]

I do agree with the broader point that they are not comparable, but one interesting caveat with Toronto is that come winter time, you're dead due to extreme cold and being homeless.

[bserge]

Why are these people seemingly just accepting their fate? What would it take for them to riot?

[sombremesa]

I grew up in Delhi (as may or may not be obvious from this thread), and once witnessed the aftermath of a home having been burgled.

The policeman on the scene summoned the watchman of the gated community and physically assaulted him (drawing blood), accusing him of having been negligent.

You can bet there was not a single consequence of this. The watchman was one of the underclass, and this is just what's expected.

I can't claim to know why things are like this, but there's rarely any justice for anyone in India, unless you're one of the elite or ultrarich. The judicial system is in shambles and the poor are just not afforded much humanity.

What do you think these people could do? Here is an example of what happens when the people try to change things in a "democracy" [0].

As a bonus, here are some choice videos of Indian politics (the second one is relevant to the story in footnote):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOUmnSs5VA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5s4quyO2W0

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020–2021_Indian_farmers'_prot...

[bserge]

I'm just wondering, if things are so bad, why are there no riots? Doesn't seem like there's much to lose tbh.

In my home country, they stormed the parliament and burned parts of it because the wrong party gained power (by fraudulent votes). If they were killing low class people, there would be riots, bombings and murders all around.

[strken]

Why was he pointing that out? It wasn't in question: everyone involved in this conversation knows how poor Delhi is on a factual level, since it's literally in the article we all read. Half the Toronto post wasn't even about poverty, it was about how the author would go on dates to far away parts of the city so his family wouldn't find out he was gay.

Why wouldn't they be comparable? They can be compared easily. You're comparing them right now.

[OJFord]

The article isn't even really about absolute squalor though (even if the subjects are destitute it's not about that) - by my reading anyway the focus is more 'trying to do things when you're among the poorest in your city', or, 'dating in Delhi when you're poor'.

I'm not from Delhi nor by any relevant measure poor, so perhaps I'm not allowed an opinion, but having just read the article, and not yet the Toronto comment, I find this thread surprising, and think an anecdote about being in a similar - similarly among the poorest in the city - situation in a different (richer, poorer, no matter) city would gel perfectly with the article.

[ReptileMan]

They are totally comparable when it comes to dating since social status is relative. The poor person in Switzerland has shittier dating life than the middle income in Botswana even if he is making more in absolute terms.

[markdown]

Probably worse in Toronto where you could have food in your hands but die from the cold.

[sombremesa]

> Did you actually read that comment about Toronto?

I did. Now that you have that information, perhaps you can actually read what I wrote.

[jimbob21]

Sure.

> will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA

You want to reduce comments comparing your city's poorness to another city's poorness.

> It's not really enough...you should experience it for yourself

You're saying I can't talk about poor areas I know about because they're not as poor as your city. That's gatekeeping being poor, plain as day. But more than that, it totally shuts down all conversation about why your city might be so poor. What is happening in your advanced poor city that isn't happening in other cities?

[sombremesa]

> You want to reduce comments comparing your city's poorness to another city's poorness.

Not exactly. My bad, perhaps I should've provided an example of the kind of comment I'm talking about. I can't be arsed to go find that comment right now but it's about this video:

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/video-of-man-eating-animal-...

The comment I'm talking about begins with (iirc) "The same thing is happening in LA..."

I don't know what chip you have on your shoulder about this "gatekeeping" but I wish you luck and hope that these things aren't happening in your cities, but of course you have the freedom to say that they are regardless.

I want to add something: I'm just against saying that these things are the same. I'm not saying anything about better or worse or that poverty isn't poverty. Given a choice I might rather be the average homeless person in India as opposed to LA, because at least I wouldn't be as likely to be there due to crippling addictions or mental illness.

That's why I compared it to languages, I don't think one established language is objectively better or worse than another, but direct translations rarely work well.