Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

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Published on Sunday, July 3, 2016

Where sleep becomes a commodity

Now and then odd little stories intrigue me. One such story appeared in the Delhi Journal of the New York Times. Writers Ellen Barry and Ravi Mishra described the free market that simultaneously serves and exploits Delhi’s homeless. So what, you may respond. We have homeless of our own to worry about. I admit a bias. I was born in India. I spent my first ten years in that country. Whether I love India or loathe it -- sometimes both at once -- I cannot ignore the connection to the country of my birth, just as others feel indissolubly linked to the prairies, the Rockies, or the seacoast. I also think that what happens in Delhi may have relevance in Kelowna or Kalamazoo. Daytime temperatures in Delhi can soar to lethal levels. But in winter, night temperatures plunge. Freezing fogs can be brutal for those who have nothing. The Delhi police report collecting more than 3,000 unidentifiable bodies from the streets every year. Many more deaths go unreported. Indeed, the volume of “pavement dweller” deaths pushed India’s Supreme Court to rule in 2010 that urban centres like Delhi must provide shelter for at least 0.1 per cent of the population. Last winter, Delhi’s shelter system expanded to accommodate more than 18,000 -- still only a fraction of the total homeless population.

Desperate situations

An estimated 100,000 people, mostly men, have “no place to lay their heads,” to use biblical language. Unlike North American homeless, they don’t have grocery carts in which to wheel their possessions. And nowhere to hide a blanket from thieves. Even if they could afford one. So a thriving business has sprung up in the maze of Old Delhi’s sprawling bazaars. As the lanes and alleys empty late at night, the quilt wallahs, the mafia of sleep, stake out their territories. Like many other Delhi businesses, the sleep sellers are both well organized and officially invisible. At one intersection in the rabbit’s warren of lanes, Barry wrote, “Four quilt vendors have divided the sidewalks and public spaces into quadrants, and when night falls, their customers arrange themselves into colonies of lumpy forms. Some have returned to the same spot every night for years.” A homeless man hands over 20 rupees (about 40 cents Canadian) to rent a blanket. Before long, the pavement is covered with bodies rolled up in rented blankets and quilts. The very poorest may have to share a quilt. Barry describes two men who had lost their jobs: “Every day their store of money dwindled: 2 rupees to use public toilets, 5 rupees to bathe at a public tap, 5 rupees for a half-cup of tea, 10 rupees for half a quilt…”


Different approaches

Some of the quilt wallahs see their business as a mission, serving those whom governments ignore. “It’s hard,” one vendor said, “but what would happen if I was not here? More people would die.” He added, “I have the feeling that I am doing charity.” Others see their customers simply as an opportunity for profit. In Cities of Sleep, a documentary about Delhi’s sleep vendors, “a hard-nosed businessman called Jamaal increases his price to 50 rupees from 30, when the temperature drops. When a man pleads, ‘Sir, I am a poor man, I’ll die,’ Jamaal chuckles and replies: ‘You’re not allowed to die. Even that will cost 1,250 rupees.’ “Sleep is the most demanding master there is; no one can stop it when it has chosen to arrive,” says Jamaal. “We were the first to recognize the sheer economic might of sleep.”

Interpreting a parable

So, is this a news story? A plea for launching a new charity? An opportunity for us to feel superior? To me, it feels like a parable -- with a little more detail than the stories Jesus told, 20 centuries ago. Like most parables, it leaves its interpretation to you. Is it a condemnation of government inaction? Or of entrepreneurs for exploiting the weak and powerless? Does it praise those free market forces for actually doing something? Is it about the indomitable spirit of humans to survive misery and suffering? Or is it a moral tale -- better to share a blanket than to battle over one? You could even read it as a criticism of the poor for failing to improve their own lot. If they organized themselves, you might say, they could overwhelm the quilt wallahs, seize their blankets, control their own sleeping spaces. Your reaction says more about you than about the homeless in far-away Delhi. ********************************************************
Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Laurna Tallman endorsed my comments about the Canada Pension Plan: “[But] you didn't start low enough on present pension benefits. As self-employed, under-employed, underpaid editors working through two severe recessions in an industry under duress from unhelpful technical changes (i.e., texts are not better as a result of computerizing the publication process so our intellectual skills are under-used and under-valued) our combined pension benefits are $912.11 each. Obviously, we have needed to keep working, but then Canada Revenue claws back a high percentage of those meager earnings. Add to that children underprivileged in a wretched economic situation, their unrecognized disabilities, and bitterly low disability benefits, and you have a prescription for either astonishing faith or tragic despair. Or both. Our circumstances are far from unique. Any and all of your suggested reforms would alleviate some of the distress. More power to the ‘left-wing bleeding-heart pinko socialist’!”

Karen Krout agreed: “You are absolutely right. The changes in CPP don't address the problem. If people have no money, they can't save. It's not right to build an economy on the backs of the poor. If our low minimum wage is the reason we have a strong economy, then shame on us. “Like you, I'm happy to pay taxes for services. Government is no more corrupt than big business, and can deliver these services fairly.”

Dale Perkins: “You are exactly aiming at the right 'windmill' -- the way that corporate capitalism has control over our economy is nowhere more evident around income disparity (of every shape and size) than with this item about pension incomes, orchestrated by current government operatives both at most provincial and federal governments. And it comes out sounding so noble and laudable, as though ‘they’ were actually making it fairer and more equitable. And even those modest, inconsequential changes won't come into effect for another 3 years or more -- RIDICULOUS! “So keep on sounding like a "left-wing, bleeding-heart, socialist, pinko" -- better that than an apologist for the Trump-league capitalists all around us.”

James Russell wanted to know more: “I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if the 1% joined the rest of us. That is, if the wealth and income of the few were shared with the many and the very top layer reduced to no more than ‘just’ the 99% level. Without other measures, would pumping that wealth and income down to the ‘average’ guy change the world for the better?”

Steve Roney, however, disagreed with my comments on government services: “Yes, profits are an issue. But a free market automatically keeps profits low: if anyone else is willing to provide the same service for a lower profit, you go out of business. There is, on the other hand, little or no check on waste or taking profits (through high pay or lavish pension schemes) in the public sector, because there is no competition. In other words, profits are always higher in the public sector.” Steve echoed the Fraser Institute’s line on minimum wages: “A minimum wage is a brutal tax on the young and the poor, who then cannot find employment. It protects the ins against the outs. And, of course, it makes us less competitive against other countries, and so probably ends up making us all poorer. Other factors may currently be buoying the BC economy but having a low minimum wage can only help. “Higher minimum wage means fewer jobs. It is impossible to avoid that math. As someone once said, the real minimum wage is always zero.”

Frank Martens was also not in favour of an increase in the minimum wage: “How many working people are 20 years of age or over, working a 40 hour week, and still only making minimum wage? “But we are looking just at employees. How many employers are paying their employees $15 an hour are themselves making less then minimum wage? I happen to know one such person. He's starting a new business, has invested many hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it going, can afford only two employees who are getting $15 an hour PLUS health care contributions matched, PLUS EI contributions matched AND he is slowly going bankrupt so he is definitely not making minimum wage himself, particularly when he is working a 60 to 70 hour week. There's an old rule for employers -- always pay yourself first. Yeh, sure. “As someone who used to have an orchard and whose cost of production was generally higher than his return, I can sympathize with the many small business persons who will definitely not stay in business with a mandatory increase in employee wages.”

Occasional letters are still coming in about the homophobia of the Christian far-right. Robert Caughell wondered, “If Jesus were to return, I wonder what he would say to these people who hate?”
Steve Roney also offered some thoughts about Christian fundamentalism: “One of the big problems with Protestantism, from my Catholic perspective, is that you have no quality control. Jiminez is an independent pastor, running an independent church. He is affiliated with no denomination. He is answerable to no one. In principle, anyone can call themselves a Christian pastor and say anything, and then what they say can be used against all Christians. Jiminez is no more a spokesman for Christianity than Mateen is a spokesman for Islam.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.        If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.        To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedgesunsubscribe@quixotic.ca.        You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.        I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedgessubscribe@quixotic.ca

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Author: Jim Taylor

Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Delhi, sleep, minimum wage

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