Every age, every society, has lived with inequality. It is structural, they say; to the cynical it is part of the divine comedy. Mythology, of every culture, glorifies the strong and wealthy, spinning stories around immortals and mortals, luxury and want, the learned and the ignorant. That imperfect science, Economics, started off searching for a more level playing field - until it became fashionable to find a positive correlation between moderate inequality and growth.
Islam is founded upon the values of equality and equity - you are born equal and you die equal. It protects private ownership but prescribes several 'balancing' instruments to ensure greater equity. In prohibiting usury and monopolies, it made way for profit sharing (musharakah). Islamic scholars hold that a workman is entitled to a share of the employer's profits (Maliki school argues for half the profits). Islam doesn't look askance upon creation of wealth but strongly urges the rich to share. Inheritance laws seek to mitigate concentration of wealth. So does zakat that taxes wealth rather than income.
The developed world pursued equality through democracy - giving people the power to secure a fair deal. It hasn't quite worked -squalor still jostles with splendour in major cities-but by and large people do have access to justice, reasonable education, decent health care, and despite Piketty's well researched thesis that owners of capital accumulate wealth more quickly than those who provide labour (rich get richer) the inequality index is not so alarming as to create despondency. It ranges from a low of 4 in Sweden to a high of 8 in the US.
Literature covers a swathe of equality issues from gender to social to participative. All relevant and important, but for Pakistan the issues that scream out are economic equality, equality before law, and equality of opportunity.
We don't need Kuznets' inequality curves, no Gini coefficients, to inform us of the alarming state of economic inequality. Rural or urban, it stares us in the face. The abundance of cheap labour that is in no position to negotiate, much less demand equity, is a boon to the industrialist and our life style - the privileged aunties might crib about the quality of domestic help but can't do without it.
Inequality before law is on full display on any road intersection - the motorcyclist 'negotiating' with the cop as Hondas zoom through the red light! You draw up a profile of those executed, or on death row, and chances are very good they belong to the bottom of the pile. Cases of 'celebs'who feature in our media for heinous crimes, whether the well-connected young man who kills another or the mafia don, invariably linger on - until they are effaced from our collective memory.
Equality of opportunity is a non-starter where half the country is illiterate and where the appalling quality of education imparted to those few of the under-privileged who don't drop out gives them no chance to compete with the privileged. One look at the lineage or background of our parliamentarians will tell us those who make laws may have the votes of the under-privileged but are not from amongst them. Little wonder the laws they make don't do anything for the 'untouchables'! The mother law, the Constitution, of course is emphatic in reducing inequalities, but where is the beef?
The chattering classes explain away people not rising in protest because that is the way it has always been. In other words, the disadvantaged have learnt to live with their fate. Such an argument is both unconscionable and fallacious. The critical mass of frustration, perhaps inadvertently accelerated by the media, is now waiting for the detonator, what sociologists refer to as 'voice'. The coming days are most certain to find greater numbers venting through the vehicle of religious groupings, whether genuine or masquerading as one albeit with an entirely different agenda.
It requires no genius to conclude there are only three instruments available to take us to the point where we have more haves than have-nots: education, taxation, and redistribution of assets.
All these instruments are necessary but Education is the glue that holds everything together. There is no chance of infusing the required equalities in an uneducated citizenry.
Sadly, over seventy years we have seen no improvement in our educational statistics or standards; only a steady deterioration. The simultaneous growth of private schools has widened the opportunity gap between the haves and have nots. While there is no quick fix to the problem we need to generate the right impulses, one of them being a smarter use of the quota system for government services, more particularly a leg-up to products of government schools. Quota can act as a leveler only if it provides a fillip to the disadvantaged, not if it boosts the prospects of the rich just because their parents belong to a less developed province. Is it fair for someone from Balochistan, who has had his education at Aitchison and GCU Lahore, to get into the Administrative Service just because of his domicile? He should be competing with his fellow Aitchisonians and not with those of Government High School Dera Bugti.
Tax policy is never just about revenues. It is a poor policy if it does not meet the ends of equity. Our failure to broaden the tax base has led to regressive measures pillared on consumption and withholding taxes that hurt the lower income groups the most. We have got to find a way - vouchers, cashable food stamps, whatever - to exempt people below a certain threshold from iniquitous levies, especially when the State has failed to provide any welfare benefits like unemployment, old age and health care.
Asset redistribution is the toughest part but if we really mean business it is indispensable. Let us start with genuine land reforms. Besides, all land belongs to the State that 'leases' it out for a fixed term. What stops the State from allotting it to the Haris upon the expiry of lease? Let's us follow it up with shareholding to the workers in industrial/commercial enterprises as was done in respect of state enterprises.
Will the political parties walk their talk and give us a manifesto that genuinely seeks to make the poor less poor? Otherwise, "the rich get richer and the poor get - children". Well said, Gatsby. That will be some revenge!
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