The Elephant in the Room.

I read today in Hindustan Times a summary of a recent report by the UN – “The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth…the bottom 50% of the world’s adult population owns barely 1% of the wealth. North America, Europe and the high income Asia-Pacific countries hold 90% of the total world wealth. In the US, average wealth (total assets – liabilities) is $144,000 per adult while in India it is $1,400 per adult.” Yes, that’s 1% of the US wealth.

Each morning in Delhi I throw on my jeans, tennis shoes and winter coat and battle traffic for 20km (12 miles) to arrive at the Hope School two hours later. My driver won’t take me all of the way there because he thinks “the people are too dirty and smelly and too many mosquitoes,” the truth is that they are predominantly Muslim and he is Nepalese. I finish my day with the Room to Read teachers, find my driver and battle evening traffic through Delhi, past the foreign embassies to the Taj Palace where I throw on some lip gloss and meet my colleagues and potential partners in the Club Room on the 7th floor to compare notes on our meetings with Indian officials and teaching in the slums.

My flip-flops from the 1% of the population to the 1% of the wealth are totally exhausting me. My brain can rationalize the statistics – however irrational they are. My heart can feel the love and laughter and beauty in both sides and everything in between. My mind can understand how we got here – how everyone who has more fights for more either through addiction to the game or fear of losing, or simply through the law of those who have more, get more. But every single part of me repulses at how completely, totally fucked up it is.