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Sunday Reflections – Supriyo Chakraborty

An Illusory Paradox

“People died from malnutrition and related diseases yesterday and more will die tomorrow. The occasional droughts, cyclones, earthquakes, and floods that take the lives of tens of thousands in one place and at one time are more newsworthy.”
____Peter Singer (Practical Ethics)
Peter Singer stated five significant differences that normally exist between “killing and allowing to die” in his “Practical Ethics”.  COVID-19, pandemic attack, rebellious attitudes by the world’s leaders and Amphan Cyclone-we are still alive, sustaining ourselves to the full, and trying to feed people. But, how long can we sustain? Is there any way to restructure the system and revive the state to its early stage (when India ranks 102nd out of 117 qualifying countries with a score of 30.3 in the Global Hunger Index)?
The affluent people are scolded or trolled on the social media for not taking enough responsibilities and initiatives to remove poverty. But, those who are absolutely affluent are not necessarily affluent in comparison with their neighbours, but they are affluent by any reasonable definition of human needs. Singer’s chapter on “Rich and Poor” clearly describes the differences between affluence and poverty. Rich people can choose their food to change their taste, but they cannot stop hunger, they can buy fashionable clothes, but they cannot buy them to keep the others warm, and they can move and design several playrooms and an in-house swimming pool for their children, but they cannot keep their property away from rain. Basically, those who have significant amount of income above the level of necessary to provide for the basic human needs can be described as the affluent or the rich.
It is not a crime to be an affluent individual, because people have to work hard to become wealthy. A farmer can spend more than 10-12 hours in a day on his paddy field, and a laborer can spend 8-10 hours a day on his or her workstation, but a lender or industrialist can earn 100 times more than a farmer or a labour. Why? Is this discrimination created by the government? –this is a system and we cannot count the corruption within this already-existing system.
Singer tried to compare this situation with euthanasia. Affluent people spending more money on their luxury and not saving others living under the poverty level can be an example of committing crime and it can be described as “allowing to die”, which is a systematic alternative to “Killing”. But, if we provide enough funds to the people living under the poverty line, then how they will utilize it? Are they educated enough to start a venture to double their income? We are living in a country where the literacy rate is 69.30% and we cannot create adeceptive paradox for the poor people where we expect them to reinvest their funds in the right way. It is an alternative to provide relief to the people, who are suffering from an emergency. But, for how long we can feed them?
You can structure some relief funds and issue loans to the poor, but how will they repay your loan, if they do not have a stable income? So here feeding people, distributing surpluses to the people, controlling our expenditure and helping people who are not affluent is not a long-term solution. Killing and allowing to die- both are crimes, the first one is crime according to the code of law, and second one is an ethical crime. The first one is going to take birth and then multiply because of the second one. We may not face any summon from the court for doing such ethical crimes, but if we do not create a structure or a system for the poor people to secure the next-generation then we will die soon without any further pandemic attack.
We still harbor the curious habit of labelling people as migrants, who have every proof to prove their citizenship.A joker plays a vital role in a circus, but is there any spectator who asks the name of this joker after the entire quota of entertainment is over? Time to think, or better, to re-think.
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