Wilbur Sargunaraj (1) on what is poverty

INDIA: Wilbur Sargunaraj, India's first You tube star, takes us on an enlightening and often irreverent journey into poverty and the lives of India's poor. For more on this and teaching resources linked to the film, go to Why Poverty?

Along the way, Wilbur asks his fellow countrymen what they think poverty is: what do people need to be without for them to be deemed impoverished? And he speaks to some of India's poor so we can see what they have and what they can show us. Episode 1 of "Wilbur Goes Poor" focuses on what poverty is.

I love Sargunaraj's sense of humor cum pathos about the poor of India.  His point about how we, perhaps media outlets, want to sweep abject poverty out of view, is quite well taken.

But this is what it is.

In keeping with The Core Algorithm, Sargunaraj does well in asking village people directly how they define poor: no food, no house, no water, and no sleeping.  Their definition is far from scientific or scholarly, but it speaks to an authentic experience that we can appreciate and understand.