Rich vs Poor

Rich vs Poor: Promoting Mutual Understanding

by Michael V. Reynold 

(Saline Michigan)

Following the course of major social problems such as poverty, drug abuse, violence, and oppression, it often seems that nothing works. Government programs come and go as political parties swing us back and forth between stock answers whose only effect seems to be who gets elected. If standing cause of chronic suffering there is.

I Live in a big colony, and the building has 30 floors. There's a beautiful sea view from my house, 15th floor. But between my building and the highway before the sea, there is a huge slum.

I really feel bad, as for them living in front of rich people must be really sad. Looking at us they must be feeling really bad as they don't even have basic amenities.

I have a maid who lives in that slum. She comes two times a day in my house but she works very hard so that she can provide an education to her 2 sons and daughter and above all feed them. Her husband is an auto driver but doesn't give her a penny. My parents too make sure that she and her kids get the basic needs of life. Through her savings she shifted to a rented house of 1 BHK.

Now after 4 years of work in my house, she is like a member of our family. She is well-respected too. She is a role model for that whole slum area and even for people like me as she taught us that "handwork and perseverance is the key to any problem".

People just see and feel disgusted about the mess created by slums. But the first step to tackle this issue - reduction of poverty - must be to promote the mutual understanding of both worlds. And we need to spread awareness about an economically well-developed nation. If a nation is developed or even just a particular region, it makes a lot of difference in reducing poverty. 

As a society, then, we are stuck, and we’ve been stuck for a long time. One reason we’re stuck is that the problems are huge and complex. But on a deeper level, we tend to think about them in ways that keep us from getting at their complexity in the first place. It is a basic tenet of sociological practice that to solve a social problem we have to begin by seeing it as social. Without this, we look in the wrong place for explanations and in the wrong direction for visions of change.