Too early to die - The Hindu

Too early to die - The Hindu


Wake up call

Jeffrey D. Sachs makes this observation in the introductory paragraph of his book “The End of Poverty” (Penguin, 2004): Currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive. Our generation can choose to end that extreme poverty by the year 2025.” He himself qualifies the observation, saying that ‘it is not a forecast. I am not predicting what will happen, only explaining what can happen.” One wishes, on one of those holidays our legislators take under the excuse of ‘disruption by opposition’, Lok Sabha Secretariat arranges to put out the audio version of some chapters of this book by Sachs. That will help those responsible for policy formulation understand that real expenditure on reducing poverty forms a small percentage of money spent on luxuries including preparation for war and handling terrorism.
Meanwhile, let us remember the quote from Robert Kennedy at the end of the last chapter of the same book, which reads asunder:
“Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man can or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence…Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in total all of those acts will be written the history of this generation…”
M G Warrier, Thiruvananthapuram

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