An affluent and squeamish individual, who lives in a skyscraper and eats sumptuous meals, will never bother himself/herself to imagine the vicissitudes of the poor who reside the slum area. The struggle for surviving hunger and cold continues unabated among the itinerant beggars and unlucky narcotic addicts. A coterie of hoboes lacks a roof over their heads or even a soft pillow to repose their heads upon and many of Afghan population live in truncated edifices and hardly make the ends meet through backbreaking chores.
It is a matter of great concern to see that a profligate son of a high-ranking official spends a large amount of money for eating lunch in expensive hotel – which equals one-week expanses of an abstemious vendor. Moreover, the derogatory remarks and disgusting looks at homeless individuals, especially at hapless addicts, compound one’s dismay. To their unmitigated chagrin, the painful suffering of the needy in torrid summers and frigid winters, which is supposed to come to light, is forgotten.
Poverty precipitates violence and conjugal strife among Afghan families. For instance, when a workman can’t afford the demands of his family, he will encounter the fractious attitudes of his family members. Even a phlegmatic spouse will lose her patients to endure the misery of her husband for the whole life. Additionally, Afghan workmen suffer from unemployment and the sporadic employment with nominal remuneration will be no more than a flash on the pan for their households.
It is believed that altruism and a sense of devotion, with few exceptions, are taking their last breath not only in our society but also all around the world. The megalomania of the rich grows more than ever before and their appetite for larger amount of money is insatiable. In other words, the rich bury themselves in the flamboyant world of wealth and comforts turning their backs on their hungry fellows.
“Man’s inhumanity to man” is the lugubrious story of our day. When a man starves to death by the skyscraper of his next-door neighbor is not a story at all, but his daughter is molested or the body of his female child is found after being abducted and raped on the grounds of rivalry or revenge, her family’s reputations are blackened by his neighbors just for the hack of it.
“We have to recognize that a spirit of individualism and confusion has reduced us to an ethic of ‘every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ This ethic … is nothing but the secular ethic of the affluent society, based on the false assumption that if everyone is bent on making money for himself the common good will automatically follows, due to the operation of economic laws.”
Lewis (1961), a famous sociologist, argues that the culture of poverty exists amongst many poor people. According to him, poverty is not the result of one’s disqualification or inability rather it is the result of social and cultural atmosphere in which the poor children get socialized. This passes to the next generation and they will come to know that their expectation of a better life is a dream. Ultimately, they will succumb to poverty and a low morale.
Charles Murray (1984), an American sociologist, extends the hypothesis of culture of poverty. According to him, the case of those who are involved in poverty due to adverse circumstances, such as widows, orphan children or the disabled falls in one category. He talks of a ‘dependency culture’ among the poor who rely on government’s charity rather than going out to work. Murray argues that the affluence of welfare-oriented governments has created a subculture which subdues ambitions and the push towards self-help. Such welfare policies have uprooted the interest in work-ethics from some people.
A feeling of sadness must permeate among the poor who feel no light at the end of the tunnel. The suffering and misery of the poor have been the puissant debates in national and international media, however could not draw the government’s serious attention. The schism between the destitute and government has widened to a large extent. The stentorian diatribes and incisive complains against the officials fall on deaf ears and now there remains no energy for the people to raise their voice. They are expected to grin and bear it.
After all, even though the poor and the unemployed take the brunt of hardships, they hold out hope via resistant strain to survive the hunger and misery. The fate has played a cruel role in their life, and it is they to change it for the better one. As citizens, they are entitled with the right to urge the government to provide them job – especially after the mouth-watering promises of the president in his electoral campaigns regarding the economic crisis.
In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life or contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which has been so laboriously built up.