Headline, January 04 2025/ OPINION : ''' POVERTY * STUDENTS PORTRAIT '''

OPINION : 

''' POVERTY * STUDENTS 

PORTRAIT '''

INDIA : '' WHY THE POOR DON'T KILL US.'' : !WOW! was heartened to see H.E. the Indian Foreign Minister walk up to his H.E. Pakistan's National Assembly speaker and offer a warm handshake and enquire all wellbeing.

A GREAT gesture like this creates new realities. And the great credit for this goes to no other than The World Students Society - who set the tone, and the tenor, and the love and service of humanity and for the people of India and Pakistan.

FOR THIS brilliant book, '' Why the poor don't kill us'', The Word Students Society rises to give the Indian columnist Manu Joseph a standing ovation. He poses a question that sounds fictional but truly cuts very deep.

Manu Joseph is curious to understand why the poor in India, after decades of utter humiliation and deprivation, do not rise against those who hoard privilege. His answer is not economic but psychological.

INEQUALITY - he argues, survives not through coercion or law but through habits of the mind. People learn to live with injustice by dressing it as aspiration or fate.

Joseph's perspective is challenging because it shifts the debate from corrupt institutions to the silent complicity of everyday life.

The poor endure because they are offered crumbs of hope. They are given just enough visibility and rhetoric of inclusion to sustain belief in the system that rarely delivers.

The rich, meanwhile, are protected not only by their guards and gated colonies but also by the poor's faith that the existing order, however unfair, is natural.

His focus differs from what economists describe as elite capture. It also differs from what in Africa is known as ' necropolitics ' - the use of power to decide whose lives are protected and whose are expendable.

The standard development view explains how powerful groups manipulate institutions to divert public goods, avoid taxes and preserve wealth. It is about policy design and access.

Joseph, on the contrary, is less interested in how the rich rig the system and more in how the poor come to accept it. He finds the answers in small rituals.

Servants eat from separate utensils. Guards greet their employers with practised deference. Token welfare schemes generate gratitude instead of resentment.

Indian society remains stable, he argues, because the poor are conditioned to see indignity as normal. The elites, in turn, have learned to disguise privilege as merit.

To me, there is also a deeper sociological layer beyond conditioning. Individuals carry insecurities about dignity, recognition and  opportunity. Alone, these may remain private wounds. But when many feel similarly vulnerable, they seek collective belonging to soothe that fear.

I have repeatedly argued, especially in my work. '' Social Dimensions of Food Insecurity '', that insecurity breeds insecurities.

My view is that when individual security interacts with a collective identity crisis - whether ethnic, sectarian, provincial or class-based - it gradually turns into a clash between the 'haves' and the 'havenots'.

Personal anxiety becomes a shared grievance. The poor may not revolt as class, but they contest inequality through collective identity.

This brings us back to Joseph's question. If so many people carry this shared sense of grievance, why does society not erupt in revolt?

The answer lies in the intersection between psychology and power. This is where his ' moral psychology ' meets political economy.

A person's sense of humiliation merges into a group narrative of Victimhood. That narrative legitimises antagonism toward others perceived, rightly or wrongly, as privileged.

The result is a society where emotions of injustice are genuine but misdirected. Anger flows sideways instead of upward.

The poor turn on one another while power remains intact.

This Master Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks and honours esteemed Manu Joseph, and Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri.

With most respectful dedication to H.E. President Donald Trump, H.E, Prime Minister Narandra Modi, H.E. Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif, the Leaders of the entire world, and then !WOW!, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers.

See You all prepare for the Great '' Democratic Constitutional Convention '' on wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless