"I am nobody. Think of me as just the voice of the user"
You see, I was talking to the lead of a design team about to start a project for the BoP and something came up about my role in the team. And that's when I found myself blurting those words out. When it comes to my work, I am nobody. I am simply a woman, born as one among the teeming millions in Calcutta, in the years before a vaccine was mandatory for an infant. And I am alive. I have been blessed with education and ability. And now a way to give voice to those who so often go unheard. Or so I hope.
In the boardroom where strategies are planned for the emerging markets at the base of the pyramid in the developing world or in the design studios where teams pull together the ideas that will eventually fill the shops and stores and airwaves, that's where the voice of the user needs also to be heard. Particularly for the BoP, for its only now that we are listening to the poor themselves.
I read something the other day, it was a fleeting reference to a report called "Voices of the poor" and some snippets from there stick in mind even as I find myself impelled to write this post today. Here are a few of those voices,
"Poverty is like living in jail, living under bondage, waiting to be free" — Jamaica
"Poverty is lack of freedom, enslaved by crushing daily burden, by depression and fear of what the future will bring." — Georgia
"If you want to do something and have no power to do it, it is talauchi (poverty)." — Nigeria
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