How do the poor see life? Uneducated, not stupid | Rajen Makhijani | TEDxNTU

so what if I said that this man here is actually the top contender for the best hedge fund manager of the Year award what if I said that the building that you see here is actually not the most expensive place in this photograph but actually the slum is what if I said that if you're a poor person and vulnerable to disease and the choice that was offered to you was to either go for a cup of tea or for the same price buy health insurance going for the cup of tea would actually be the rational choice what if I said to you that the higher the GDP per capita the lower the meaning of life what if I said that everything you see is conditioned by the socio-economic class you come from what you see how you make meaning and the choices that you make let me take that a step further in fact if that socio-economic class was to be stripped away that is if you were to take out the glasses of the class that you come from you might find that the other is just like you in fact it's another you and what would you get by discovering that other you well for once the cool facts that I just shared with you well the other you already knows that but there's a lot more and we'd get there but let's start here what do you see in this picture as you see this picture I suppose a lot of you see somebody working really hard and earning their success and what do you call it you call it meritocracy now what is the other you from this side see for starters they see electricity light film free light to study in the night this is actually studying without a steamer because of kerosene fumes that's cool what else do they see they see space comfortable space space which is not shared with eight people who all have different agendas for the night I'm afraid you see money to pay the fees you see time to study not to work not to do household chores but actually to study so that's what the other you sees and how does the other you describe the same thing as luck boy that girl's lucky merit and luck which one is it what do the statistics say well the Hampton Institute says that legacy applicants that is those who have one parent at least in an elite school have forty-five percent more chances of being accepted into a it eight school what is that statistic mean to you your interpretation your choice its evenly split but the point here is that you see differently okay got it we see differently so what so we make different choices and let's go to the choice again of T versus health insurance if both of them are available at absolutely the same price and if you knew that you are actually well Nura built is ease which one would you pick which one insurance yeah rational choice yeah alright and the other you sitting on this side of the class wall what would they pick as it turns out they pick the cup of tea that's why in Africa the penetration of health insurance or general insurance is just 0.7 three percent and that's not because there are no providers there are actually no takers irrational and we'll hang on let's go to the other side and let's just see what's going on here so what's going on here well there's risk there's lots and lots of risk income risk so farm incomes in India our farm rages in India are 21 times more fluctuating than in the u.s. there is the medical risk health risk one out of three households in the poor neighborhoods of Oded boar were found to be indebted one out of three because of medical expenses what else there is riots they can happen and you know who dies when riots happen it's these guys it's this other you what else famine and even if just the District Collector changes and nice-guy changes who gets affected it's the other you so there's a lot of risk if there are risks then buys insurance you stupid la well hang on uneducated yes stupid no because it doesn't actually cover the risks right now this other you has met the woman next door who actually had a stomach infection and got it treated at the hospital and the other one in the other village whose husband was so sick she spent so much money on doctors and medicines and yet he died but neither got a dime from the insurer and the insurance had come packaged together with a microloan and yet neither got a dime out of it why well because neither had spent a night at the hospital ah so technically the insurer is right I mean you should have spent a night at the hospital look the thing is you don't understand insurance I actually do and that is why I don't buy you see but I'm not sure you understand what goes on here a hospital how far is a hospital from where I stay do you know that then I have to ensure that the hospital is actually accredited to your system then I have to reach there find a doctor well that would be great if I can find some qualified staff at least and then pay the non-reimbursable bribe in order to get a bed to stay the night and then get these guys to give me the paperwork that will support my claim and then you have all your exclusions now when you look at all of that which one do you think is actually the rational choice the cup of tea yeah but you say look the thing is I mean I understand but but the company has they need to have some proof I know they need to and that's why they designed this as but they need not mine but it's not easy of course it's not easy but it wasn't easy to go to the moon was it but you did you did when enough of you bright people out there put your minds and energy to it you did but till then don't worry I've got my cup of tea it gives me an immediate kick a sugar high guaranteed right now right here it's a clean deal yeah would you like to have some and by the way thank you for asking it's rare that someone has asked me what a cup of tea means in my life and so this man is actually a barefoot hedge fund manager if optimizing the experience of your life is the function that they are solving for which by the way you two are solving for then the rational choice over a lifetime is actually a bunch of cup of teas rather than an insurance that covers only one of the multitude of that they face and with all their ifs and buts it is the rational choice this person actually does equally good or better than the hedge fund managers that brought you the crisis in fact this is the same thing that also explains why they have in their portfolio these noisy festivals that some of us just can't understand a study found that two months worth of annual earnings are spent by the poor by the extreme poor as the World Bank defines it in festivities well if you know what you're optimizing for and if you understand the world on this side you would know that's the most rational thing to do the point is that the poor are uneducated but not stupid that's the point the point is that you don't understand them and they understand that you don't understand them and at times when you say that you want to understand them too because they are the emerging markets they know who you turn to you turn to the investment bankers who've never gotten off their SUVs you turn to politicians the gimmicky ones that get off of helicopters and then vanish away again you try to learn about them through these people they know this and they don't even trust you actually that is the unfortunate truth because they know that some of you and I want to also get into those same SUVs and helicopters they know that the rest of us will allow them to they know that the rest of us will allow a corrupt system to flourish even call it convenient because guess what from this side of the world it actually is but on this side of the world it hurts it hurts where it really really does hurt okay got it so where do we start what do we do well I say this start here fluor go explore and do it do it having fun not out of a sense of duty or guilt so let me share some quick fun facts with you here are some of the benefits of exploring the side it seems that the poor have higher ability to read emotions accurately because they have to depend on the mood of others they they need to always make the judgement of can I trust this man or not and so as the study shows they read emotions better they're also more generous it seems the other you actually both in terms of how much they think should be given and actually give as a percentage of their income is higher than the you and it seems that the other youth reports a higher meaning of life score and a lower suicide rate in fact when researchers aggregated that at the country level here's what they found that the meaning of life on the y-axis is actually inversely related to the GDP per capita so the richer the country the lower the meaning in life and it seems religiosity and the number of kids actually are positively correlated to meaning of life scores education interestingly as we know it as is prevalent today is inversely related to the meaning of life well so am i advocating that let's actually work towards lowering the GDP per capita and education no that's not my point my point is each one of these things from insurance t GDP per capita each of these things religiosity kids each of these had a particular meaning in your life I'm saying take off the glasses of class go explore there are more meanings to explore now some of you sitting there say listen that's that's that's really cute really sort of Ted worthy I suppose I'll clap for you but you want me to go and find another you when just the Mimi has so much running around to do well consider this all the running around that you do is actually to find a more meaningful engaged effective empowered you and maybe maybe this process of trying to go and look for the other you is nothing but the process of finding that meaningful empowered you you never know all I can share with you is some of my very very rudimentary work in progress attempt in my life for this and I shared three attempts the very first I became a screenwriter at one point left my MBA job and became a screenwriter to be able to look at the lives of others and this is a still from one of the four movies that actually got produced I then wanted to go beyond living the life on paper and so I stepped out of just a paper living and I took an impulse flight to India to Delhi to fast with a Gandhian and that's where through that platform I got the opportunity to go into the slums of of Delhi to to drive and run the anti-alcohol campaign don't sell your word for alcohol that's where I got the opportunity to learn and meet parallel who I discovered is the highest percentage taxpayer probably in the world not Warren Buffet or Bill Gates because he pays seventy percent of his earnings daily earnings to extortionist authorities every single day that to in advance and they don't say thank you to him that's where I learned that when you put together the money that the slum dweller pays for the authorities to look away the amount of money that they pay every monsoon to avert a threatened demolition the amount of money that they pay per month for the illegal electricity point per bulk connection the amount of money that they pay per bucket of water actually the slum is the most expensive place to live and the poor are paying it today but we still call them illegitimate because it is we from this side of the world that find what legitimate is and of course we define it in a particular way regardless of what the side is actually paying but this was not just the learnings with these learnings I and thousands of volunteers like myself went around and lived a shared dream a dream of a better world based on dignity justice and equality and it wasn't a pipe dream something unprecedented happened when enough of us got together and lived that tree in February this year the same people with whom I was running the anti-alcohol campaign CEOs educationist social activists and so on with zero political experience just got elected into power and are now running a state having won 67 out of 70 seats an unprecedented event probably in the history of democracy on this planet that was the power of living that shared dream my third experience I took a train to go 9,000 kilometers across India to learn from social entrepreneurs about models of scale change well at least that's what I told my wife and here's what I did I'm now I've changed my careers I work for a firm that only takes up projects that combine social good as well as business profit and what do I do for work these days well launching the first development impact bond in the world where the returns for the investor go up not with the interbank lending rate but actually go up when more girls get educated and enrolled into schools in Rajasthan looking at private sector approaches to reducing deforestation to reduce the haze looking at youth and employment opportunities in Hong Kong and Cambodia toilet loans in India as a village to boardroom consultant that is now the privilege that I have I feel inspired I feel inspired by the work that others are doing in this field I feel empowered I can be a agent of change I feel humbled I feel engaged because these problems are far more complex than anything I encounter before this and that means my lifelong learning will be a reality not just a phase not just a phrase and this is what this has given me I was I also feel privileged because I do know that this privilege of exploring is not available to everybody but I do know this that it is available to many in this room I too was hesitant to unlock and take that privilege it got unlocked the day I took that flight to go fast with the Gandhian when I stepped into that slum when I took that train yours might look very different from mine but when are you taking your journey when are you going and taking a peek behind the glass wall of class thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 181,251

Rating: 4.8289552 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Singapore, Social Science, Policy, Poverty, Social Entrepreneurship

Id: p4JPFr8g3yQ

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016