Poverty tourism

Chapter 3 explains a dilemma travel journalists face when exploring stories about poverty. Can the journalists contribute to the impoverished or are they gazing at subjects as in a zoo? CNN.com writer Moni Basu explains a recent trip to India and her thoughts on poverty travel.

Others in the group also tell me that this is an India they might not have otherwise seen. And maybe they were wiser for it, sensitized to problems that can be unimaginable back home.

How can that be bad? There’s no better way to learn about a place, after all, than to experience it.

Still, as the foreigners turn in their donations for Salaam Baalak Trust, I can’t help but think about the day for what it was: a tour of poverty. And hasty, I think. In all of less than two hours, our look at others’ lives is over. The only people I have spoken to are connected to Salaam Baalak Trust and provide a very positive outlook on things. What might Paharganj residents have told us?

We all head back to where we first met Iqbal and scatter in our taxis and auto rickshaws. We escape the slums and return to comfort, leaving Iqbal and thousands of other baalaks on the streets.

I think about Iqbal’s parting words. He feels lucky most of the time, though sometimes, he can’t shed the melancholy that blankets him. That’s something that visitors cannot see on the tour.