Global Inequalities: Changing World Conditions

Abstract

In 2009 the New York Times ran a story about the marriage of a Pakistani woman, Mukhtaran Bibi, who had been caught up in a village honour dispute several years earlier. While there are numerous accounts of the event, it is clear that the village council was controlled by the Mastoi clan, which was richer and far more powerful than Bibi’s clan, the Gujjar Tatla. The Mastoi accused Bibi’s 12 year-old brother of ziadti (rape, sodomy or illegal sex) or zina (fornication or adultery) on the grounds that he had been seen walking unaccompanied with a Mastoi girl. According to the brother’s testimony delivered much later to an authorized, state court, he had himself been raped and sodomized by three Mastoi men, who then invented the honour crime story in order to deflect attention from their own crime. When the Mastoi abducted the accused brother, Bibi’s family offered a settlement arrangement, even though they believed the boy to be entirely innocent. In the terms of the agreement, the brother would marry the Mastoi girl he had supposedly been seen with, and Bibi would be married off to another Mastoi man.

Political economy … proposes two distinct objects. First, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Book IV

Perhaps the last fifty years have seen more developments and more material progress than the previous five hundred years … [But] we are living in a world of fear. The life of man today is corroded and made bitter by fear. Fear of the future, fear of the hydrogen bomb, fear of ideologies. Perhaps this fear is a greater danger than the danger itself, because it is fear which drives men to act foolishly, to act thoughtlessly, to act dangerously.

Indonesian President Sukarno, Opening the Bandung Conference, 1955

According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.

Anup Shah, Global Issues, March 2010