No point in criminalising poverty, says expert

Usha Ramanathan, expert on law and poverty, said poverty is not a crime and must be centrally addressed. She pointed out examples of language used in various Acts which had significant implications. She highlighted displacement due to projects like the Sardar Sarovar and the need for Direct Benefit Transfer schemes to benefit people beyond keeping them in poverty. The lecture was instituted in memory of journalist T.G. Narayanan.

CHENNAI

There is no point in criminalising poverty and the issue must be centrally addressed and completely broken down, Usha Ramanathan, expert on law and poverty, said on Saturday.

Delivering the ‘T.G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture on Social Deprivation’ under the auspices of the Media Development Foundation and the Asian College of Journalism here, she said poverty is neither a crime for the judiciary to intervene nor a law and order issue for police to step in. Ms. Ramanathan was speaking on the topic “A vocabulary to be dismantled: Poverty, prejudice and the harshness of inverted euphemisms”.

She pointed out examples under various Acts, where the language used had significant implications. For instance, she said under the Prevention of Begging Act, there is a provision that if someone is picked up for begging and if the person gives an undertaking that within one month he would be gainfully employed, then they would let him go. “What is the guarantee that the person will get gainful employment? It makes it sound like being unemployed is my problem and I created the problem,” Ms. Ramanathan said.

In the Land Acquisition Act, even people who do not have any land get affected. Mass displacement is an issue; for instance in the Sardar Sarovar project, 243 villages got submerged, she added.

Talking about the Direct Benefit Transfer schemes, Ms. Ramanathan added that they should be benefitting the person beyond keeping them where they are forever and ever. If multiple generations continue to be in poverty, there is something flawed in the system.

T.G. Narayanan was a journalist at The Hindu and reported on the Great Bengal Famine and was also a war correspondent in Southeast Asia, T.G. Ranga Narayanan, who instituted the lecture as a permanent series in memory of his father, recalled.