Ep 21: Do we care about poverty? | Usha Ramanathan on the law, the state, and people in poverty

Usha Ramanathan believes that we have failed people in poverty. The state has systematically constructed them as illegal: encroachers, beggars, vagrants and defaulters, and we, the citizens, have looked away.But should we trade liberty for the sake of the poor? Haven't liberalized markets lifted more Indians out of poverty than any welfare program ever has? And if the state is the enemy, then how can we also enlist it to protect the poor?Usha is one of India's most respected legal scholars. She holds a PhD in law from Delhi University, is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and teaches environmental, labour, and consumer law at the Indian Law Institute. She has worked on the Bhopal gas survivors, the Narmada valley displacements, and the criminalisation of beggary, and has been the most persistent critic of India's Aadhaar programme since 2009.