This is no poor man’s world

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer wrote English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley two centuries ago and his words ring true more than ever in the current age when divisions among humankind and his hatred for his brethren have touched unforeseen heights.

‘A decade of division’ is how the latest Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power described the world where we live in. 

The wealth of the richest five has doubled while a staggering 5 billion people have become poorer for a variety of reasons - government policies which breed inequality, a favouring of rich corporates and monopolies while framing economic policies and a growing tendency to cut funding for pro-poor schemes on which the vulnerable and the deprived rely heavily to eke out a meal or two a day.

Right-leaning regimes and political parties are on the ascent and the poor hardly matter to them except when voting is round the corner or when the dissatisfaction over rising prices and falling jobs tend to cross all limits and spill on to the streets.

This is no tendency confined to India - the world over, political parties professing farright ideologies are spawning a new trend where the rich and powerful determine the course of politics and the economy.

Inequality is growing and it’s growing in leaps and bounds leaving humanists, who have their sights set on building a society on the time tested principles of equality and justice, a disillusioned lot.

In our country, the poor are as vulnerable as ever with prices of something as basic as food grains and vegetables zooming to new heights.

According to the commerce and industries ministry, wholesale price based inflation rose to a nine-month high of 0.73 per cent in December last year driven by a sharp rise in food prices.

And most disturbing of all is the price of something as essential as onions with its price registering a 91.77 percent jump.

Joblessness continues to be as grim as ever with the IT city itself witnessing a slump in hiring; many IT majors have put off plans for hiring freshers amid a not so positive global outlook which has hit their business prospects hard.

Rural distress in Karnataka because of drought has devastated the farming community and despite the chief minister and his ministers making several trips to the national capital to secure relief, not much has been forthcoming from the Centre - for political reasons or otherwise.

And if people are being overwhelmingly swayed by freebies, there is no point in blaming them for they offer much needed succour amid an otherwise grim scenario where making both ends meet has become a painful ordeal.

Fighting poverty and inequality hardly seem to be priorities for the government as its goes about its grandiose plans for the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

With the crucial Lok Sabha polls now just three months away, there is a more than subtle attempt to whip up religious passions which seem to have succeeded to a great extent even as other pressing economic issues are relegated to the sidelines.

A humane and compassionate society has been the yearning of great men and women through the ages but considering the manner in which inequalities have been growing with man’s cruelty against man crossing all bounds amid the raging wars in Gaza and Ukraine, one is tempted to ask if we are fast losing our moorings as a just and humanitarian society.

It’s time to reclaim our right to be free, liberal and critical minded individuals who would scoff at any attempt to pull a shroud over our eyes by diverting attention from the pressing problems of our lives - joblessness, rising prices, insecurity and the like.

And instead whip up intolerance of the worst kind which has already done enough damage to the secular fabric of our great nation.