Village What Poverty Cause to People

the second part is city. By reading this part the readers will know the situation and the condition of Indian poor people.

4.1.1.3.1. Village

Disaster, the cruelty of mahajans, and a little payment of zamindars are only three factors that make Indian farmers get into the cycle of poverty and this what Prodip Pal and his family have gotten into. The cycle of poverty is an unavoidable process which some are caused by those three problems. One disaster after another that strikes India, has made most of Indian farmers become sharecroppers and laborers. A little payment from zamindars makes them unable to buy enough food for the whole family. Then, mortgaging the lands to mahajans make the farmers lose their land. This is Lapierre’s explanation about the cycle of poverty: “Yet further terrible trials lay in store for Prodip Pal and his family. Just as ten or twelve million other Bengali peasants during this second half of the twentieth century, they were to become the victims of that endemic phenomenon known to economists as the cycle of poverty- that unavoidable process of descending along the social ladder by which the farmer became a sharecropper, then a peasant without land, then an agricultural laborer, then eventually forced into exile.” p.8 Disasters have also left them without food. They do not have foodstuff because of the failure of the harvest. Children cannot drink milk because the cows are dead. Malnutrition causes people and children to get sick. They cannot avoid illness, whereas for them being ill means being curse. Being ill for Indian causes another problem because medicine is a luxurious thing for them. Their income for a month is not enough to pay the doctors’ fee and to buy the medicine. Sometimes, they only come to Brahmin so that the Brahmin can do a puja for someone who gets sick. It is lapierre’s descriptions about this condition: “Two further incidents were to aggravate the Pal’s financial difficulties. Weak ended by the lack of food, Hasari’s youngest brother fell ill. One day he began to cough blood. For such a poor people illness was more of a curse even that death. A doctor’s fee and the cost of medicine could take several months income.” p.10 Nevertheless, these people’s physical condition gets even worse because they must work extremely hard. These people, especially the men, comprehend that as the head of the family, they have responsibility to support their family. No matter how sick they are, they still have to work for the sake of their family. If they do not work, their family is going to die of starvation. When the condition gets worse, these poor peasants realize that they cannot stay in their village any longer. If they insist to stay, they cannot support their family anymore. Dry season has caused shortage of water for agriculture even for drinking. Besides that, foodstuff is also difficult to get. The rate of mortality because of malnutrition in villages is so high that the government has to give free food for those farmers. The difficulties have come into point in which the villagers cannot stay any longer. Thus, most of them make a big decision to go to the cities. These conditions can be seen in chapter 3: “Many of villagers were already left with nothing. The first indication of this harsh reality was the disappearance from the village of the very poorest families- the untouchables. They had realized that this year would be not a single head of rice to be gleaned from the fields. No one actually said anything but people knew that the untouchables had left for the great city of Calcutta, about sixty miles away. Next it was the turn off the fathers and the oldest sons, in homes where the earth ware empty. Then whole families began to take the road that led to the city.” p.18 Peasants, laborers, and their families who stream into Delhi, Calcutta and Bombay have the same purpose which is to search for food. They hope they will get better life in big cities, but these people do not recognize that city life can make their life even worse. Lapierre describes this condition in chapter 1: “You my eldest son take this money and go with your wife and children to Calcutta. In the big city you will send us whatever you can. You are only hope of not dying of starvation” p.20

4.1.1.3.2. City