The Right of the Poor to Life
Recently India's Supreme Court has recognized the fundamental right of all citizens to be free from adverse impacts of climate change (in a plea by environmentalists to protect the great Indian bustard from the encroachment of its natural habitat by companies building wind and solar farms for expanding India’s capacity for renewable energy). Meanwhile a political controversy has flared up on the question of whether a private property belongs only to its present owner and his inheritors or should return to the public with the demise of the owner. At the same time, a nine-bench of the Supreme Court is re-examining its interpretation in 1978 of Constitutional rights to private versus public property. Here too the question is about the fair redistribution of wealth in society.?
Property Rights versus Human Rights
At the heart of the ideological contest between capitalism and socialism is a contention about which rights are superior: property rights or human rights.
In a capitalist system, votes to determine the purpose and course of an enterprise are, explicitly or tacitly, proportional to how much wealth a person has. Those who have more money have greater power in the governance of a business enterprise, and also have more power to influence public decisions, through lobbying, funding of political campaigns, and financial support for think?tanks and research programs. Whereas in a true democracy, every living citizen with a beating heart must have an equal vote with all others, whether she is a millionaire or a pauper.?
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Economic Efficiency versus Nature's Sustainability
Economists abstract a material and monetary sub-system out of a complex social and natural living system. Their science focuses only on the efficient use of material and financial resources to create surpluses. Questions of ethics and equity are excluded from their equations.?
Solutions for climate justice which must include the rights of all living systems require a broader systems' view. I have explained this in my recent book, Shaping the Future: How to Be, Think, and Act in the New World (A Guide for System Leaders) (available on Amazon).??
An expansion of the question of private versus public property is in my piece published by the Economic Times on 25th April.?A glimpse into the systems' view of justice is in a piece published by The Tribune on 18th April. Links to both are here.?
CEO , Amongst Top Angel Investors of 2020 by Forbes India and 2021 by Fortune India, Author ,Story Teller , Dil Se Connect -Dost , conscious living . Hero , Ranbaxy , Escorts
6 个月You are truly a thought leader sir Arun Maira , you write very thought provoking and well researched articles , may you continue to be blessed as you share your thoughts , I hope I can have a chance to meet you soon .
WayMaker (Mentor | Coach | Guide | Counselor)
7 个月Thank you, Arun Maira for this post. The abstraction of a material and monetary sub-system out of a complex social and natural living system fragments and weakens the whole living system. Maybe, the root cause of this is the Newtonian view of life being taught in schools from childhood where subjects taught are abstracted from the whole for simplicity without the means to see the relevance of each part to the whole. We are taught from childhood that "the sum of the parts equals the whole." As mentioned by you, the natural system within which the multitude of social systems exist is a complex and interconnected web of systems where "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." It will be interesting to explore the possibility of transforming how we educate our children from the beginning to transform the current system, which fragments and divides an individual, to a system that helps children be whole and complete. It may be a utopian view, but there's nothing to lose. Thank you once again for this post.