
Madhya Pradesh man cycles 105km to ferry son to Class X exam centre - throw93
https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/08/19/madhya-pradesh-man-cycles-105km-to-ferry-son-to-class-x-exam-centre.html
======
njsubedi
Many people in India are so poor they barely survive, and dream of having
their children in some kind of desk job so they can earn money. Any money. But
not all parents love their children as much as this dad did; the reason most
families stay poor forever is the guardian (usually the father) of the family
is indulged in cigarette, tobacco or alcohol consumption. What they earn goes
to fulfill the most basic needs of the family, and on intoxication.

Hundred of thousands of families stay that way for years until the kid grows
up, and either gets a job, or continues like the guardian. It’s sad, but true
story that I lived through. Not really an Indian, but from a similar kind of
community in its neighboring country. I’m telling all this because this kind
of kind gesture from a father is rare, that's why it became a news.

Many people ride bicycles everyday for work - my father rode 30kms a day for
probably 12-13 years because that was the only vehicle we had. He’d have rode
105 any day for me. Kudos to all the dads who put their children before
anything else!

~~~
xfer
> the reason most families stay poor forever is the guardian (usually the
> father) of the family is indulged in cigarette, tobacco or alcohol
> consumption.

Any studies or citation or is this your personal experience extrapolated? I
have seen many bad/uncaring poor parents without any addiction(unless you can
call drinking tea addiction). Good parents in poverty is a blessing though and
definitely a major part of their children's success.

~~~
srean
This common knowledge enough that this does not need a citation. Its not just
the addiction part, votes get caste on whether the candidate will hand out
some free alcohol, a color TV and some cash as a one time incentive to get
their vote. The thing is that this works in many states of India. Since
getting the votes is so easy (although there is some arms race among the
candidates) it should not be a surprise that after being elected these
candidates are after their own interest (wealth grab) than do their job of
representing the people.

The problem is much more deep-rooted than addiction. There is a large class of
people who have not benefitted from the democracy in the ~60 odd years of
independence. The way they think is, "I am not going to get anything out of
this anyway, neither did my earlier generation. This way I will at least get a
TV and some free booze"

~~~
xfer
> The problem is much more deep-rooted than addiction.

Yes, that's my point. There are more severe problems in india than addiction
to alcohol and tobacco ruining kid's life. Handing out free things during
election to people who are below poverty line has nothing to do with
addiction. I was born in a state where handing out rice was very effective.

------
surds
There seems to be a slight misunderstanding regarding the ‘exam’ and ‘testing’
context in this article. I don’t know if it is translated or was just poorly
written.

Just to be clear, this awesome dad was taking his son to another town to
appear for the 10th grade Math examination so that he does not fail the paper.
Off-topic, but I am surprised that these exams are still being conducted. Most
academic examinations are suspended as of now and may resume next month.

Anyways, though the situation was like this because most public transportation
has been shut down, it is still a sad state of affairs - and I don’t know what
to do about it nor what can be a solution.

Respect for this father who is striving to push his son at least a level up
the economic ladder via education.

Decades ago, my father used to walk several miles a day to attend school. His
dedication and hard work has probably pushed my family through 2 generations-
worth of growth. I’d say we are upper middle-class in India right now. And I
am eternally grateful to my family for their efforts.

Kudos to this father, and others who strive through utter misery to rise above
the hand life has dealt them.

~~~
Thorrez
The link is to Google Translate. Google Translate is known for having
translation errors (but it's still good for a machine translation).

------
tawaycyc01
Context:

========

>> Due to the closure of buses (Public Transport closure) due to Corona
epidemic , Shobharam took his son off his bicycle at 12 o'clock on Monday
night.

There are many stories like this where in one mother drove 1400 km in her
motorcycle/scooter to get her son from a place where he was stuck.

[https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/a-mothers-p...](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/a-mothers-
protective-instinct-makes-her-drive-to-get-her-stranded-son-
back/article31307458.ece)

In normal times, these people would have traveled by buses or trains.

One more:

A five-year old flies alone to be with his parents:

[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-
style/parenting/tod...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-
style/parenting/toddler-year-and-beyond/5-year-old-travels-all-alone-during-
the-lockdown-to-reunite-with-his-parents-wins-the-internets-
hearts/articleshow/76005200.cms)

------
spanhandler
I know it's an idea that would kind of... eat itself, were it reality. And
maybe this is some shitty first-world take and I'm an asshole for thinking it
or whatever. It's even a pretty unfair idea, really. But every time I read
these sorts of human interest stories I wish there were a "send them some
money" button. Again, an idea that would ruin itself immediately. I know. But
failing that I'd rather not have them reported at all. This case is different,
sure, because it's not targeted at an English-speaking audience at all, but we
get them in our media, too.

Some of those Yazidis in northern Iraq a few years back? Some of the people
trying to get into Greece who got interviewed? Man I wished, as soon as they
were someone halfway stable, I could have dropped them some cash. An amount I
wouldn't have missed that much would have made a difference. This is an
utterly dumb "take", I know, for so very many reasons not least of which is
that I could be doing more locally and that's something I _actually could do_
, but it's still all I can think about when I see these kinds of stories. How
much help even $100 would be some of these places, if only it could get there.
And then my next though is how dumb that is. And that I wish these stories
would just go away if I can't do anything about them.

~~~
actuator
Life is really hard in most parts of the world and being born in a middle
class family is itself a blessing for most when you realize the cruel economic
cycles that keep kids of poor people poor.

There was a lot of coverage from India when they imposed their lockdown and
the worst affected were the poor again. The crisis itself has a Wikipedia page
for it.[1] Quoting from it:

> With factories and workplaces shut down due to the lockdown imposed in the
> country, millions of migrant workers had to deal with the loss of income,
> food shortages and uncertainty about their future. Following this, many of
> them and their families went hungry. Thousands of them then began walking
> back home, with no means of transport due to the lockdown. More than 300
> migrant workers died due to the lockdown, with reasons ranging from
> starvation, suicides, exhaustion, road and rail accidents, police brutality
> and denial of timely medical care.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_migrant_workers_during_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_migrant_workers_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic)

~~~
econcon
According to reports, 1crore 70lakh jobs in organized sectors have been lost.

Middle-class is in no way lucky, they are overburdened by toll taxes, income
tax officers harassing them, local goons not letting them carry on business,
politicians and public servants asking for money.

------
jerrygoyal
One of many such stories of indomitable courage and persistence is that of
Jyoti Kumari, a 15-year-old native of Bihar's Darbhanga (Indian village), who
travelled on a bicycle for 7 days carrying her wounded father and covered more
than 1,200 km from Gurgaon in Haryana to her village because public transport
was shut due to Covid.

[https://www.livemint.com/news/india/bihar-girl-who-
cycled-1-...](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/bihar-girl-who-
cycled-1-200km-carrying-injured-father-offered-trial-by-cycling-
federation-11590083089347.html)

------
ponker
Few people on this website will ever be able to understand what it is to be
poor like this. I cannot even grasp one corner of the idea.

~~~
hansvs
don't you have some degree of poverty where you live, or have you never
interacted with someone who earns less then you?

------
rajekas
So much subtext about the undeserving poor. Except that it's not even wrong.

To give just one example, rates of alcoholism are higher in South India - both
in TN and Kerala [1] - where endemic poverty of the Madhya Pradesh kind
doesn't exist.

We can agree that addiction is widespread and there's been a world wide shift
in the spending habits of people who earn less than a dollar a day.
Banerjee/Duflo's Nobel Prize is based on that work [2]. Some relevant quotes:

> Yet the average person living at under $1 per day does not seem to put every
> available penny into buying more calories. Among our 13 countries, food
> typically represents from 56 to 78 percent of consumption among rural
> households, and 56 to 74 percent in urban areas. For the rural poor in
> Mexico, slightly less than half the budget (49.6 percent) is allocated to
> food.2

> Of course, these people could be spending the rest of their money on other
> commodities they greatly need. Yet among the nonfood items that the poor
> spend significant amounts of money on, alcohol and tobacco show up
> prominently. The extremely poor in rural areas spent 4.1 percent of their
> budget on tobacco and alcohol in Papua New Guinea; 5.0 percent in Udaipur,
> India; 6.0 percent in Indonesia; and 8.1 percent in Mexico.

> Perhaps more surprisingly, spending on festivals is an important part of the
> budget for many extremely poor households. In Udaipur, over the course of
> the previous year, more than 99 percent of the extremely poor households
> spent money on a wedding, a funeral, or a religious festival. The median
> household spent 10 percent of its annual budget on festivals.

5% is a lot on alcohol, but cannot be the major cause of poverty, festivals
being an even bigger outlay. We also know that in India those spending habits
are gendered, which is why prohibition campaigns have been very popular among
women voters.

Nevertheless, the idea that the poor are poor because of their 'poor values'
is one of the oldest tropes in the book. Please don't spread stereotypes that
are neither grounded in data nor in actual lived experience.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014857/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014857/)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638067/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638067/)

------
known
Higher Education is the best way to escape from Poverty; Return on Investment
in Education is 8.8% [https://archive.is/uaLy6](https://archive.is/uaLy6)

------
sabujp
next time you complain that about virtual school...

------
actuator
Searching the story title on Google throws up some English language coverage
as well. Adding an alternative to translated page:
[https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/08/19/madhya-
pradesh-...](https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/08/19/madhya-pradesh-man-
cycles-105km-to-ferry-son-to-class-x-exam-centre.html)

~~~
dang
Changed to that from
[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&pto=aue&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.industryadda.com/%25E0%25A4%25AE%25E0%25A4%259C%25E0%25A4%25A6%25E0%25A5%2582%25E0%25A4%25B0-%25E0%25A4%25AA%25E0%25A4%25BF%25E0%25A4%25A4%25E0%25A4%25BE-%25E0%25A4%25A8%25E0%25A5%2587-%25E0%25A4%25AC%25E0%25A5%2587%25E0%25A4%259F%25E0%25A5%2587-%25E0%25A4%2595%25E0%25A5%258B-%25E0%25A4%25AA%25E0%25A4%25B0%25E0%25A5%2580%25E0%25A4%2595/&usg=ALkJrhhxisFA_C6guT_SODZrTr-
RrfhB6w). Thanks!

------
crooked-v
Huh, so Indian media has misery-porn-framed-as-supposedly-uplifting-news stuff
too.

~~~
econcon
The system is actually very insensitive towards such people and guess what?
When these people struggle hard, clear all test - they go for robbing the
nation with corruption and their justification for that has always been "when
I was struggling and poor, no one came to my rescue now it's my turn and I
deserve all the money accured through corruption" and it creates more poverty.

Poor people don't study to join Google or Facebook in India. They study for
government jobs like customs officer, railway officer, Indian adminstrative
service, Indian Police Service etc... all jobs where you can accure vast sums
of money.

The amount of money these officers make offrecord is going to eyewater even
westerners. In some cases, the wealth they posses rival even high end
executives at Google and Facebook.

Most people understand and acknowledge this system. They know the only way to
out is through it, they stay in system - stay hard, make connections then
proceed to benefit from corrupt system.

~~~
rudiv
Do you know a lot of civil service officers? Because you seem to think that
the ranks of the Union public services are mostly filled with highly corrupt
officers who were born into poverty. Whereas the truth is that although I know
some officers who were the first to get a degree or a high school certificate
in their family, I also know of many more officers who come from the upper
class, and even some who've been in colonial administration for generations.

~~~
econcon
>Do you know a lot of civil service officers?

Not saying most are corrupt but my experience with customs department, tax
department etc... made me realize how corrupt they are.

Which does not refute the point I am making because a few corrupt people are
enough to take down the system.

