Disposable people: Poverty, power, and the architecture of moral neglect

In contemporary urban landscapes, particularly across the Global South, the presence of poverty on the streets has become as ubiquitous as it is invisible. Hawkers, street children, beggars, and informal workers form a persistent backdrop to daily life. Yet their presence often elicits indifference, discomfort, or even hostility, rather than solidarity or empathy, from the urban middle class. 

Bite-Sized: Why do middle classes turn away from street poverty?

This paradox—of visible suffering that remains socially unseen—finds a compelling theoretical explanation in Zygmunt Bauman's notion of moral distancing, particularly as articulated in his seminal work Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (2004). In Bauman's analysis, the condition of the urban poor in consumerist societies is not merely one of material deprivation but of symbolic exclusion. They are treated not as fellow citizens with unmet needs, but as superfluous and disposable waste generated by systemic failure rather than participants in a shared moral community.

The phenomenon of moral distancing in urban contexts does not emerge in a vacuum. It is deeply embedded in the economic, political, and cultural restructuring that neoliberal globalisation has intensified over recent decades. The middle class, as a sociological category, has undergone profound transformations in identity, consumption patterns, and political outlooks. Within global cities, the aspirations of this group are increasingly shaped by individualism, privatisation, and status mobility. 

The public sphere—once envisioned as a site of democratic participation and social interaction—has been eroded by gated communities, privatised services, and commercialised spaces. In this context, street-level poverty becomes not only inconvenient but a disruption to the aesthetic and moral order that the middle class seeks to inhabit. Low-income individuals are often perceived as out of place—a breach in the sanitised narrative of urban success.

Bauman's metaphor of "wasted lives" captures this condition with brutal clarity. In his view, modernity's drive towards order and efficiency inevitably produces human waste: populations that cannot be integrated into the functional mechanisms of the economy or state. These are not merely the unemployed or underemployed, but those whose very existence is seen as surplus. Global capitalism, with its relentless emphasis on productivity, competition, and innovation, creates spaces of redundancy where millions are condemned to structural invisibility. 

For Bauman, moral distancing becomes the psychological and cultural mechanism by which societies rationalise this exclusion. It allows individuals and groups to disassociate from the suffering around them without guilt or responsibility. Low-income individuals are no longer "our poor", but anonymous others whose fate lies outside the circle of ethical concern.

In many South Asian cities, including Dhaka, Mumbai, and Karachi, this moral distancing is evident in everyday interactions. The sight of a beggar knocking on a car window, a child selling flowers at a traffic intersection, or an elderly woman sleeping on the pavement elicits less compassion than irritation. These encounters often end with rolled-up windows, averted gazes, or even verbal abuse. Rather than prompting reflection on systemic injustice or state failure, the presence of poverty is framed as a nuisance, moral deficiency, or personal failure. 

This interpretive framing absolves the middle class of engagement or accountability. Charity, when it does occur, often takes the form of tokenistic alms rather than sustained civic solidarity or political advocacy. The architecture of moral distancing is upheld not only through physical segregation but through ideological constructs that deny low-income individuals a shared moral universe.

Consumer culture plays a vital role in this process. The middle class is increasingly defined not by its relation to production, but by its consumption patterns. Shopping malls, luxury housing, imported goods, and digital services shape a lifestyle that is aspirational, exclusionary, and globalised. Within this framework, street-level poverty appears as an anachronism—a rupture in the sleek narrative of modern progress. 

The hawker selling pirated books on a flyover is not merely participating in the informal economy, but is perceived as a contaminant within the clean lines of urban development. Informality, in this sense, is aestheticised as backwardness rather than recognised as a resilient coping mechanism. The street vendor, the beggar, the daily wager—these individuals are not simply lacking material wealth; they lack symbolic capital. They are positioned as the abject "other" of middle-class respectability.

Bauman's insights reveal that this symbolic exclusion is not only moral but profoundly political. When low-income individuals are perceived as waste, they are no longer seen as citizens with rights, but as problems to be managed, removed, or rendered invisible. Urban development policies often reflect this logic. Evictions of informal settlements, anti-begging laws, and the criminalisation of street vending are not isolated administrative actions, but manifestations of a deeper social pathology. 

These measures are frequently justified in the language of "cleaning up the city", improving "public order", or attracting foreign investment. Behind these euphemisms lies the desire to curate urban space according to middle-class sensibilities and global capitalist aesthetics. The poor are not only removed from the streets, but from the imagination of urban citizenship.

Moral distancing also thrives on emotional anaesthetisation. In media, popular culture, and everyday discourse, narratives of poverty are often filtered through stereotypes that flatten complexity. The beggar becomes a fraud, the hawker a nuisance, the street child a future criminal. 

These representations pre-empt empathy by constructing emotional distance. The poor are not subjects with hopes, histories, and dignity, but objects of pity, suspicion, or contempt. Bauman observes that in consumer societies, moral responsibility is outsourced to systems—charities, NGOs, or the state—allowing individuals to maintain personal purity while remaining complicit in systemic injustice. The ethical imperative to "do something" is replaced by the managerial impulse to "deal with" the problem. This shift marks the death of political empathy and the rise of technocratic indifference.

Yet despite the grip of moral distancing, cracks in its edifice remain visible. During crises—such as natural disasters, pandemics, or political upheavals—the artificial boundaries between the middle class and the poor begin to dissolve. 

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, for example, the precarity of informal workers was laid bare. The sight of thousands of migrant labourers walking back to their villages across South Asia shocked even the most insulated urban citizens. In these moments, the myth of autonomy is revealed as a fallacy, exposing the interdependence that underpins all social life. But such moments are fleeting. Without structural changes in how poverty is perceived and addressed, the middle class retreats swiftly into its moral comfort zones. Empathy flickers—then fades.

What would it mean to resist moral distancing in urban life? It requires more than charitable giving or occasional volunteering. It demands a reimagining of the city as a space of shared belonging rather than fragmented privilege. It calls for recognising that the poor are not residual categories, but co-constitutors of urban life—workers, creators, neighbours, and citizens. 

This perceptual shift must be underpinned by political action that challenges exclusionary development, secures housing and labour rights, and democratises access to urban resources. It involves confronting not only income inequality but also hierarchies of recognition and respect.

Bauman's critique is not a moralistic indictment of individuals, but a systemic diagnosis of the cultural logic that dehumanises surplus populations. He writes with bleak honesty about the commodification of ethics and the normalisation of indifference. Yet embedded in his analysis is also a call for moral imagination—a capacity to see in the "other" not waste, but worth. In a world where people are rendered disposable by design, restoring moral proximity becomes a radical act of defiance.

Ultimately, the challenge is not only to redistribute wealth but to reconstruct the moral architecture of urban life. This entails dismantling the barriers—physical, symbolic, and emotional—that allow the middle class to inhabit cities cleansed of conscience. 

It means cultivating a civic ethic that does not look away, does not flinch from discomfort, and refuses to accept invisibility as inevitability. People with low incomes do not require pity, nor do they demand sanctification. What they need is recognition as full members of a moral and political community. Anything less is not merely apathy—it is complicity.

Dr Matiur Rahman is a researcher and development worker.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard