Prosperity is Poverty
- Madhukar Dama
- 1 day ago
- 11 min read
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Prologue
Words are dangerous. They carry the weight of centuries, and they shape how we see the world. Two of the most dangerous words are poverty and prosperity.
Poverty is usually defined as lack — lack of money, lack of food, lack of comfort, lack of choice. It is seen as emptiness, a hole in life that must be filled. The poor are the faceless mass at the bottom of every society, spoken of in pity, studied in statistics, and forgotten in daily life.
Prosperity, in contrast, is defined as abundance — wealth, success, growth, comfort, luxury. It is celebrated as the goal of nations, the achievement of individuals, the promise of politics. Prosperity is decorated in festivals, advertised on billboards, and measured in rising GDP numbers.
From childhood, we are taught to escape poverty and reach prosperity, as if one were a pit and the other a mountain peak. The entire machinery of education, government, and economy is structured around this chase.
But here is the secret rarely admitted: these two words are not opposites. They are not separate. They are not enemies on different sides of the battlefield. They are bound together like shadow and light. Prosperity is not possible without poverty. Prosperity feeds on poverty. Prosperity is shaped, measured, and defined only by the existence of poverty.
To understand this truth is to tear apart the mask of modern civilization. To deny it is to live in a dream. This essay does not bring comfort, nor solutions, nor false promises of upliftment. It only brings clarity — a ruthless clarity that strips the language of hypocrisy.
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Poverty is Prosperity
Prosperity is a shining word. It drips with promise. It decorates political speeches, sells advertisements, and crowns every new government budget. Prosperity is the dream every parent wants for their child, the slogan every leader chants, the horizon every nation points toward.
But prosperity is not free.
It is never free.
It has a price.
That price is poverty.
Prosperity does not exist in isolation, like a glowing sun in a clear sky. It exists only by casting a shadow. That shadow is poverty. Every skyscraper rises on the bent backs of those who will never enter it. Every banquet plate shines only because someone else’s plate is empty. Every coin that clinks in one man’s pocket is an echo of silence in another’s.
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The Soil of Labor
Prosperity must be built. And what builds it? Labor.
But not labor that is dignified, well-fed, and fairly paid. That would be too costly.
Prosperity demands cheap labor. It thrives on the sweat of the poor, because only the poor can be persuaded — or forced — to work for less than their work is worth.
In India, the booming cities glow with prosperity. Look closer. The glow is fed by the darkness of migrant workers. Men who leave villages in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha, to carry bricks, dig trenches, and sleep in plastic tents at construction sites. They are the scaffolding of prosperity, living lives that never cross the threshold of the buildings they erect. The glass towers shine only because the tin shacks remain.
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Scarcity as Currency
Prosperity also requires contrast. A rich man is rich only when another is poor. Gold glitters only when millions cannot afford even brass. Prosperity’s meaning comes not from abundance, but from scarcity. Without poverty, prosperity loses its flavor.
A luxury car has value because most travel on two-wheelers or crowded buses. A billionaire’s wedding is grand only because millions of families cannot pay for a simple marriage hall. The prosperity of a few depends on the poverty of the many to mark it as “prosperity.”
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The Unequal Feast
Resources are finite. Yet prosperity demands infinite growth. How is that possible? By extracting from those with the least power.
In the villages, rivers are dammed, forests are mined, fields are swallowed by industry. Cities drink bottled water while villages thirst. The prosperous dine on packaged food while farmers who grew it cannot afford to buy what they harvest.
India’s tribal belts, rich in minerals, are stripped bare so that cities can light up. Prosperity for one is always poverty for another. The feast is unequal by design.
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Displacement as Development
Every road, every dam, every special economic zone tells the same story: prosperity displaces.
The farmer’s fertile land becomes an industrial corridor. The fisherman’s coast becomes a tourist resort. The villager’s house becomes a landfill for the city’s waste.
The Narmada dam gave electricity to cities but drowned hundreds of villages. Highways in Uttar Pradesh ate up the soil of farmers who were handed a few rupees in return. Prosperity, written in bold headlines, is displacement written in small print.
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The Price of Cheapness
Prosperity loves cheap things: cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap services. But cheapness is never free. Behind every low price is a low-paid worker.
That shirt in the mall for ₹2000? Stitched by a woman in Tiruppur earning ₹150 a day. The gleaming metro in Delhi? Built by migrants who sleep in tin huts beside open drains. The restaurant meal delivered to your door? Carried by a rider who risks his life in traffic for ₹30 a trip.
Prosperity’s comfort is padded by poverty’s sacrifice.
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Inequality as an Engine
When prosperity grows, poverty does not shrink. Both rise together, hand in hand. The more billionaires a country produces, the more beggars it must create. Inequality is not a mistake; it is the very engine of prosperity.
India today has over 180 billionaires. At the same time, 800 million people survive on free rations. This is not contradiction. It is structure. Prosperity for the few expands only by ensuring poverty for the many. The line is direct, not accidental.
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The Disposability of the Poor
Prosperity consumes not just resources, but dignity. The poor are made invisible, nameless, interchangeable.
Gated communities in Gurugram stand tall, with guards at the gate. Inside, prosperity sparkles. Outside, drivers, maids, and vendors wait, their poverty treated as a threat, even though it is their labor that sustains the gates. Prosperity builds walls not to protect itself from poverty, but to hide the sight of it.
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The Endless Cycle
Prosperity is hungry. It is never satisfied. Each demand for more prosperity requires more labor, more land, more resources, more sacrifices. And so poverty is not solved, it is reproduced — passed down generations like a family curse.
A farmer’s son becomes a construction worker. The worker’s son becomes a rag-picker. The rag-picker’s daughter becomes a maid. Poverty mutates, but it never disappears. It feeds prosperity like an eternal fuel.
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Global Poverty Factories
This truth is not only Indian. It is global. Prosperity in one country is often built on poverty in another.
The clothes hanging in Western malls are stitched in South Asian sweatshops. The smartphones in Europe are assembled by Chinese workers laboring for twelve hours a day. The chocolate eaten in America comes from cocoa harvested by children in Africa.
Developed nations outsource poverty to developing nations. Their prosperity is not clean; it is stained with the hidden sweat of the global poor. For every smiling mall in London, there is a sweatshop in Dhaka. For every shining street in New York, there is a mine in Congo where children dig for cobalt.
Prosperity has no nationality. Poverty pays for it everywhere.
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The Mask
Nations love to boast of prosperity. India celebrates Chandrayaan reaching the moon. America boasts of its GDP. Europe celebrates its standards of living. But behind every mask of prosperity lies the face of poverty.
A country that sends rockets into space still has millions of hungry children. A nation that invents new medicines lets the poor die untreated. Prosperity wears a mask — but the mask is only possible because poverty remains hidden behind it.
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The Timeless Truth
Prosperity is not the opposite of poverty.
Prosperity is the shadow of poverty.
It cannot exist without it.
Every demand for prosperity is a demand for more poverty. Every skyscraper is a slum in disguise. Every banquet is a hunger postponed. Every billionaire is a million poor compressed into one body of wealth.
This is not an accident. This is not a mistake. This is the law of prosperity.
Poverty is not an obstacle to prosperity.
Poverty is prosperity.
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Epilogue
In the end, nothing remains hidden. Every skyscraper has a slum stitched into its foundation. Every rich man’s feast has hunger baked into its bread. Every nation’s prosperity is nothing but poverty rearranged, repackaged, and hidden behind bright lights.
You can rename poverty as “underdevelopment,” “backwardness,” or “temporary hardship.” You can call prosperity “progress,” “growth,” or “success.” But language does not change reality. Poverty and prosperity are not separate states. They are two faces of the same coin. Flip it as you like, it will always land on both.
There is no escape from this structure. To demand prosperity is to demand more poverty. To celebrate prosperity is to celebrate poverty’s existence. To dream of universal prosperity is to dream of a sky without darkness — impossible, because light itself needs shadow to be seen.
This is not a problem to be solved. Not a crisis to be managed. Not a gap to be closed. This is the architecture of human civilization itself — prosperity standing tall, poverty lying crushed, yet both bound together in an embrace that has lasted across empires, religions, economies, and ages.
And so the circle closes:
Poverty is not the enemy of prosperity. Poverty is prosperity.
No hope, no cure, no end. Only truth.
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Poverty is Prosperity: A morning dialogue with Madhukar
Characters
Madhukar – Lives off-grid in North Karnataka with his family. Mud house, goats, firewood. Speaks plainly, with uncompromising clarity. Receives visitors only at dawn.
Adhya – Madhukar’s elder daughter. Unschooled, listens closely. Drops short, piercing one-liners.
Anju – Madhukar’s younger daughter. Restless, playful, her sudden questions cut like riddles.
The Proponent – A polished corporate worker from Bangalore. Believes prosperity equals progress.
The Opponent – A displaced farmer’s son. Bitter at being crushed by prosperity, but secretly envies it.
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Scene
Early morning. Mist hangs over the fields. Smoke rises from the chulha. Savitri moves silently between hearth and water pots.
Madhukar sits on a low stool, sharpening a sickle. The sound of stone on steel sets the rhythm.
The Proponent and Opponent arrive on the dusty path. Both have read Poverty is Prosperity. They come seeking judgment.
Madhukar gestures to the charpoy. They sit.
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Round One: Growth
Proponent:
“Madhukar, your essay twists the truth. India is rising — highways, hospitals, industries. Prosperity lifts millions. Poverty is shrinking.”
Opponent:
“Shrinking? My family lost land to your highway. My brother carries cement for your hospitals but cannot afford treatment inside. My son left school to earn. Your prosperity devours us.”
Proponent:
“You exaggerate. Without growth we’d still be stuck in darkness — bullock carts, oil lamps, starvation.”
Opponent:
“At least bullock carts gave dignity. Your cities give only slums.”
Madhukar:
“Prosperity hasn’t ended poverty. It has only moved it — from huts to slums, from fields to camps. The mask changes. The wound remains.”
Adhya (passing by, calm):
“Shifted hunger is still hunger.”
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Round Two: Charity
Proponent:
“But what about charity? Donations, CSR, scholarships. The rich are giving back.”
Madhukar:
“Charity is theft returning crumbs. Without poverty, charity has no meaning. Without charity, prosperity looks obscene. They survive together.”
Anju (dragging a stick in the dust):
“If you broke my pot and gave me one shard, should I thank you?”
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Round Three: Welfare
Opponent:
“And the government? Rations, subsidies, MGNREGA. Aren’t these meant to break the chain?”
Madhukar:
“They keep the chain unbroken. Welfare feeds the poor just enough to work another day, never enough to be free. Poverty is preserved, not ended.”
Adhya (leaning against the doorframe):
“A chain with sugar is still a chain.”
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Round Four: Revolution
Opponent (heated):
“Then revolution! Take wealth, share it equally. Socialism, justice!”
Proponent (mocking):
“Chaos. Revolutions fail. They kill growth.”
Madhukar:
“Revolutions repaint the cage. Kings replaced by parties, parties replaced by corporations. Poverty remained. Faces changed, structure same. Every revolution promised freedom, every revolution created new poverty to feed new prosperity.”
Anju (squatting by the goats):
“Why fight for a cage in a new color?”
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Round Five: Morality
Proponent:
“Prosperity gives ambition, goals, hope.”
Opponent:
“Poverty is truth. It strips illusions.”
Madhukar:
“Neither noble. Prosperity is addiction — endless hunger for more. Poverty is humiliation — endless reminder of less. One cage plated with gold, the other rusted iron. But both cages.”
Adhya (watching both men):
“Do you love your cages more than yourselves?”
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Round Six: Global
Proponent (last defense):
“Look at developed nations — America, Europe, Japan. They prospered without poverty.”
Madhukar (cutting):
“They exported it. Their malls are filled with clothes stitched in Dhaka. Their phones run on cobalt dug by African children. Their chocolates are sweet because of bitter labor in Ivory Coast. They pushed poverty outside their borders.
Prosperity never exists without poverty. It only hides its poor.”
Anju (serious, almost whispering):
“Hiding dust under a mat doesn’t make it clean.”
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The Verdict
The sun climbs higher. The sickle gleams.
Madhukar:
“You came for judgment. Both of you are wrong.
You, Proponent, defend prosperity but refuse to see its roots in poverty. You, Opponent, condemn prosperity but secretly crave it. Neither escapes hypocrisy.
Prosperity is not salvation. Poverty is not accident. They are twins, bound together. Every skyscraper rests on a slum. Every billionaire is a thousand beggars compressed into one. Every feast demands hunger elsewhere.
There is no solution. No hope. No end.
This is the skeleton of civilization.
Poverty is Prosperity.”
The Proponent stares at his polished shoes, dulled by dust.
The Opponent looks at his cracked slippers, knowing they will never carry him out of the circle.
Adhya stands still, silent.
Anju mutters to the goats: “Truth has no door.”
Madhukar sharpens the sickle once more.
The sound of stone on steel fills the silence.
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Poverty is Prosperity
poverty is the spine of the world.
it bends so prosperity can stand tall.
a highway glitters in the morning sun,
but the mud hut it swallowed
still coughs in the dust.
a hospital rises in glass and steel,
but the mason who carried its bricks
dies outside its gates.
a wedding in Mumbai
burns fifty crores in flowers and fire,
and a girl in Tiruppur
stitches her fingers bloody
for the blouse no one will notice.
this is how the scales are built.
prosperity weighs nothing
without poverty to counter it.
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you can rename it.
call it progress,
call it development,
call it the nation rising,
but it still tastes the same.
rice grown cheap,
tea sold for ten rupees
because the farmer was paid nothing,
the milk in your chai
coming from a cow thinner
than the child who herds it.
prosperity is the light.
poverty is the shadow.
one cannot walk without the other.
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the rich man says,
“we give back,
we build schools,
we fund hospitals.”
but the poor built them first.
they gave their land,
their sweat,
their silence.
charity is nothing but
the thief leaving a coin
after stealing your house.
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governments feed the poor
to keep them alive,
but not enough to set them free.
welfare is ration rice
measured by the fist.
a chain with sugar
is still a chain.
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revolutions come,
flags change,
faces change,
but the machine runs the same.
the poor stay poor.
the rich find new names.
a cage painted red
is still a cage.
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america shines at night.
tokyo hums with neon.
europe drinks wine.
but their malls
are stitched in dhaka,
their phones run on
african children’s hands,
their chocolate is bitter
in ivory coast mouths.
they did not kill poverty.
they exported it.
they outsourced hunger.
prosperity has no nationality.
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in india,
the city swallows the village whole.
migrants sleep under flyovers
they themselves built.
the maid cleans a floor
she cannot sit on.
the guard protects a house
he will never enter.
the driver waits in heat
while his master eats in air conditioning.
every skyscraper has a slum
stitched to its feet.
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prosperity is an addiction.
poverty is humiliation.
one cage gold-plated,
the other rusted iron.
both cages.
the rich live in fear of falling.
the poor live in hope of rising.
the fear and the hope
are the same chain
pulling both.
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there is no solution.
there is no end.
prosperity demands poverty.
poverty sustains prosperity.
they are twins
bound at birth,
and death does not part them.
a billionaires’ banquet
is the hunger of millions
compressed into one body of wealth.
a temple of progress
is the grave of forgotten villages.
this is not tragedy.
this is not accident.
this is the architecture
of civilization.
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the goats graze,
the sickle sharpens,
the girls laugh in the dust.
the morning sun
spills across fields,
and the truth stands bare,
cleaner than any slogan,
colder than any promise:
poverty is prosperity.
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