No, poverty does not make people violent criminals

Among the worst analyses of human nature is the notion that poverty creates criminal behaviour. Yet, this is a popular perception. As a result, every time an agitation of the poor turns violent, the rich think they know what is going on. Days ago in Noida, factory protestors demanding higher wages and better work conditions turned violent, pelting stones and setting cars on fire. As if inspired by this, housemaids in Noida pelted stones at a residential building demanding better pay and holidays.
In reaction, some of the rich wondered once again, though not in any genuine fear, why the poor do not go all the way and kill them all. It does not occur to them that one of the things that keeps them safe is extreme inequality.
The poor are usually not enraged by the luxuries of those far above them as much as the sudden fortunes of their own equals. Very often what creates disenchantment among the poor is not the power of capital, but that people like them living just down the road earn more. That was precisely the trigger in Noida. Workers in Haryana, citing rising living costs, had protested earlier and managed to secure better wages. As a result, workers in Faridabad and Gurugram earned more. The same thing may have enraged the housemaids. They earned ₹3,000-4,000 a month for part-time housework—about half of what similar workers earn in my Gurugram colony. Workers have a theoretical dislike for factory owners, but what evokes real anger is the realization that their equals earn twice as much. Maybe what Karl Marx and other wealthy intellectuals did not realize perhaps is that people like them tend to hate industrialists more than factory workers do.

Even though the anger in Noida seems directed at capital, or the sort of people who read this column, it is easy to quell. For peace does not require the hard work of equality but merely equality among the poor. People can endure a great deal of misfortune as long as it is equally distributed among their own.

So even a violent agitation of a factory worker mob is not a war against wealth as such. Still, you may argue, there was violence. The poor put others in danger. Surely then, the condition of being poor is enough for people to turn violent?
I try to imagine a man in the mob who has never burnt a car, who now in sudden rage, does just that. I try to imagine a househelp who has never pelted a stone, picking up a stone and flinging it at the building where she works. This is possible, especially as the shroud of a mob gives people the courage to do things they would normally never do. But, considering the fact that thousands participated in the agitation of factory workers and hundreds of househelps raised slogans against a colony, the actual acts of violence were mild. In fact, what the episode shows is the extraordinary restraint of the poor. It reveals how unlikely violent or criminal behaviour is for a large number of people who outnumber the middle class. It points to a familiar mechanism.

In such situations as what happened in Noida, it takes very few people to perform violence, and those who do are usually seasoned hands at this.
People, irrespective of economic class, have varying capacities for crime. Poverty, then, is just an excuse for those who are predisposed to crime. Most of the poor, like most people, are innately incapable of serious crime.

The entire luxury service industry rests on this fact. For instance, if poverty is a motive for people to steal, whole industries would collapse. The fear of law and perhaps even the absence of human rights for the poor do explain a bit of the peace, but not entirely. The only factor that can explain why organized luxury coexists with the poverty of its service staff is that most of the poor do not wish to indulge in mayhem or even theft, irrespective of the bad hand life has dealt them.
So why does it appear as though the poor are overrepresented in certain crimes, like muggings in advanced countries or their emerging equivalents in Indian cities? It is like asking why most people who wear wigs are bald. Given the risk, you must both have the disposition and be in a situation where the reward is worth it. That does not mean poverty creates criminals. Muggings are more visible, sophisticated theft is not.
There may well be top executives in corporations with a capacity to steal who have not found an opportunity worth the risk. Among the poor, stealing is a survival talent. So it only appears as though the condition of poverty tempts people to flout the law.
I am not saying poverty induces no transgressions at all. I suspect most people are capable of petty theft and poverty can create a moral basis to take the risk. This is why leaving petty cash in a car just to check if the driver or cleaner is honest is indecent. Anyone in misery can be lured to commit petty theft. Even in this indecent test, the poor fare well. Maybe they have figured it is a trick. An Indian saheb is more likely leave his Aadhaar in the city square than ₹10 in the car.
Instead of expecting the poor to be flawless, I feel that the right way to be is to allow ourselves to be exploited. Not burgled, just exploited, which is a better way to help the poor than through charity, with all this flared-nostril goodness about it. This was how I cured my rage at annoying Chennai autorickshaw drivers who invented surge pricing long before Uber. In my 20s, like many middle-class Indians I fought with them. I even told one guy, “If you love money so much why didn’t you become an engineer?” hurting him so much that he said, “My time will come.” Then I got a chance to visit Tokyo. A taxi ride from Narita airport to the city cost me what was, at the time, my monthly rent. That was when I understood what we term fleecing by the poor is only compensation for a laughably low cost of living subsidized by them.

(Manu Joseph is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His latest book is, ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’.)