Renowned international academician Prof. Thomas Pogge on Tuesday said that unequal distribution of wealth is the primary reason for the existence of rampant poverty.
Delivering a lecture on “Severe Poverty, Human Rights and Institutional Design”, under the aegis of Institute for Human Development (IHD) and Centre for Development and Human Rights (CDHR), he said, “ Unequal distribution of income is the reason for rampant poverty’s existence.” He further said, “Seven billion people in the world are suffering from deprivation, like undernourishment, child labour, lack of electricity, diseases, illiteracy and poverty.”
Making a strong case for banishing poverty and deprivation from the world, Prof. Pogge said that out of 57 million deaths that occur every year, 18 million of them are due to poverty-related diseases, like diarrhoea, malnutrition, childhood diseases, tuberculosis, bronchitis, meningitis and hepatitis. He also pointed to the fact that statistics show that deaths due to such diseases are much higher that those of World War I and II.
Through his power point presentation, the learned scholar displayed that ever since liberalisation and globalisation came in, only the top five per cent of the people have gained enormously by it and not the rest.