Poor Indian People Looking Happy

When I first encountered the term “decolonization” last month during a short course I did called “Exploring Ways of Knowing”, I didn’t resonate with it much. Was decolonization a concept that was relevant to me given my social, economic and cultural status in society?

But the word started seemingly coming up more often in conversations and readings and followed me into my work and life spaces. It inadvertently became part of my lens and led me to notice a category of image I (and probably you too) encounter often: Poor Indian People Looking Happy.

As a sustainability consultant, I essentially spend a lot of time looking up sources of grant funding, mainly large global foundations. I also build collaborations with other organisations like ours — non-profits, social entrepreneurs and others doing development work on ground. So, much of my time on the internet is spent looking up credible organisations working on issues like gender inclusion, microfinance, worker empowerment, and other such wicked problems the world needs solving. So you get why I encounter a LOT of images of Poor Indian People Looking Happy.

Google the term “Poor Indian People Looking Happy” right now, please do. And share a screenshot of your results in the comments below. Above is my screenshot from India — what does yours look like where you are?

Most of the results from my search are stock image websites that have obviously found a large enough audience for this imagery to make it a part of their search result taxonomy.

I started by clicking into image search results to see where these stock images are being used. Many of them were news articles but most were the kind of pro-social organisations I described above, who use these images to signal the kind of work they do and who their “beneficiaries” are. (Sidenote: I’m putting beneficiaries in quotes because it’s a term the social sector uses a lot but I now wonder if it smacks of colonial hierarchy and needs reframing.)

Sometimes, the images were of actual beneficiaries from actual programs run by the organisation. But often, they were stock images being used to communicate a general sense of the organisation’s intent and values with no further contextualization of the specific Poor Happy Indian People in these images.

When looking at how these images are being used, a few themes immediately emerged:

Theme #1 Poverty as Aesthetic: When used as general stock, the images usually depict Indian people who are poor but in an aesthetic and pleasing way so it is not off-putting—for example, tight portraits of beautiful faces edit out bylanes choked with sewage and plastic bags and therefore the context in which they live.

Theme #2 Cheerful Poverty: The people usually work in informal and unregulated sectors like waste management, construction, agriculture, or other forms of physical labour where they are routinely exploited and underpaid. But they look pretty happy about this.

Theme #3 Poverty as an Amorphous Whole: The organisations that use these images typically do not work with the informal or unorganised sector and these happy people are not even their beneficiaries. They are used simply as broad strokes to refer to poverty in general, rather than specific communities in specific contexts. In doing so, the people in the images are stripped of their particularity, and the social issue they are meant to reference is stripped of nuance.

Next, I looked at the tags or keywords embedded in these image files that allow them to be easily discoverable by their users. Here are just a few examples.

The presence of these key words implies that these are the words being used to find such images. What the web designer or communications manager is really looking for is, People from Marginialized Communities who Lack Access to Basic Social Protection Mechanisms and are Depicted in an Appealing Aesthetic Way that Conveys How Woke We Are.

While this is no where close to being an objective, scientific analysis, how easily these trends emerge suggests the need for further research on how social designers and content creators use imagery for the development sector. For now, I want to establish that we should all keep our eyes open for where, how and why these stock images are used — adopt a decolonization lens, in other words—to this form of communication to which we may have developed a blind spot simply because we encounter it so often.

Please share an example or two of Poor Indian People Looking Happy from your experience, so we may develop an informed shared understanding of what we are encountering. Simply as an exercise — a small way to start adopting a decolonization lens, which I think is basically a lens of analytical empathy. Some questions to ask might be, Who are these people? Are they happy? What is ‘happy’? Happy according to whom?

Maybe this is how empathy is developed? Notice a blind spot in your mind and give it some attention? I’m going to give it a shot.