Equality as moral imperative

Published December 15, 2017
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.

A WEEK ago it was reported that a mother of three, near Hafizabad, suffocated her children, aged two to five years, before trying to commit suicide by slitting her own throat. Police said that the family had been having financial difficulties and the last dispute broke the camel’s back.

It is hard to even imagine what must have been going through the mind of the mother in the days and months leading up to the decision to kill her own children. Let us not even try to imagine that.

The event is horrendous. But this is not the first time such an event has been reported in recent months and, sadly, it will not be the last. What I find even more horrendous is where society and the media have been incessantly talking about the dharna, resignations of ministers, not to mention the Sharma-Kohli marriage, the killing of three children by a mother has not generated any debate in this society. Especially, when it should be evident to all who live in this society that we are all responsible for what happened. We are all culpable. We are all guilty.

Looking after the interest of the weakest in society must be a part of any basic social contract.

Does a society mean something more than just a number of people living together? Does living together impose any rights and responsibilities on all of us? It seems that irrespective of any governance system we might agree on, the rules of the game we might set, institutional structures we might construct and most importantly, irrespective of the ideology that we might subscribe to, looking after the interests of the weakest in the group must be a part of the basic social contract in any society. How can it be otherwise?

If you derive your morality from a religion, and it can be any religion, caring for weaker members of the society would be a duty. If you are a socialist, the claims of equity and equality will be very serious claims for you. If you are a liberal, and it can be a liberal of any sort, creating an effective welfare state would be an important tenet for you: for Rawlsian liberals looking after the interest of the weakest in society is an important way of thinking about justice itself. If you are a communitarian, claims regarding welfare of others would be serious claims for you. Only if you are an extreme libertarian, more extreme than even the Nozick type of libertarian, would you deny the importance of looking after the weakest members of society. But, clearly, there are no libertarians of that hew in Pakistan.

Over the last three decades, inequality has increased significantly and opportunities for social mobility seem to have decreased substantially in Pakistan. But a lot of this is by design and not by default. State policies of liberalisation, privatisation, reducing deficits and right-sizing government have all contributed to increased inequality and reduced social mobility.

When private health and private education are allowed to flourish, the rich withdraw from using public services. The rich access better quality private services while the poor have to rely on, in general, the poor quality services provided by the public sector. This, by definition, increases inequality, entrenches existing social and economic structures and increases the probability that the same structures will be reproduced in the next generation as well.

If the rich can drink bottled water and the poor can only drink poor quality state-provided tap water, health outcomes between the rich and the poor are bound to differ. And the difference will ensure further increases in inequality over time.

Private sector-provided job opportunities depend on skills and education, and people are fired when they are not able to pull their weight: there is no job security in most private sector-provided jobs. Given this situation, returns from job markets become more uncertain and risky. People with marketable skills can get high returns but people who do not have any skills or education or whose skills might not be in demand are likely to face hard times. If the state does not provide unemployment benefits and an effective welfare net, increased privatisation and liberalisation would lead to significant misery for all those whose skills and expertise are not in demand.

One could argue that despite this, it might still be worth our while to privatise and liberalise the economy: if we can get higher growth rates, even the cost of higher unemployment and misery for groups whose skills/ education are not in demand might be worth paying. But this begs the larger question: why would the state not focus on creating a safety net especially when it is clear that it is its policies that are contributing to increased inequality and inequity in society as well as increased misery for many?

What is equally surprising, if not more so, is that the issue of increasing inequality and inequity has never become a major issue in societal debates. Why are people not concerned about the issue and why has media been relatively quiet here? Should inequality not have been one of the top policy and reform issues in the public imagination? If it were, the media would cover it as well. Should political parties not have had this issue as the central one in their manifestos and debates?

How does one move forward on the issue? Society has to accept that we have a responsibility towards each other. We have a special responsibility towards those who cannot, for one reason or another, take care of themselves. The mother who, given her financial problems, killed three of her children, needed the state and society to live up to their responsibilities and duties. But all of us failed her. All of us had a part in the murder of those children. Will we ever wake up to acknowledging and delivering on our responsibilities?

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017

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