{"id":468348,"date":"2022-01-13T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=125379"},"modified":"2022-01-13T15:54:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T15:54:08","slug":"a-programme-for-a-future-society-that-we-will-build-in-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/01\/13\/a-programme-for-a-future-society-that-we-will-build-in-the-present\/","title":{"rendered":"A Programme for a Future Society That We Will Build in the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"
In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report<\/a> that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender<\/i>. \u2018Multidimensional poverty\u2019 is a much more precise measurement of poverty than the international poverty line of $1.90 per day. It looks at ten indicators divided along three axes: health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance), and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets). The team studied multidimensional poverty across 109 countries, looking at the living conditions of 5.9 billion people. They found that 1.3 billion \u2013 one in five people \u2013 live in multidimensional poverty. The details of their lives are stark:<\/p>\n The absolute numbers in the UNDP report are consistently lower than figures calculated by other researchers. Take their number of those with no access to electricity (678 million), for example. World Bank data shows<\/a> that in 2019, 90 per cent of the world\u2019s population had access to electricity, which means<\/a> that 1.2 billion people had none. An important study from 2020 demonstrates<\/a> that 3.5 billion people lack \u2018reasonably reliable access\u2019 to electricity. This is far more than the absolute numbers in the UNDP report, but, regardless of the specific figures, the trend lines are nonetheless horrific. We live on a planet with greatly increasing disparities.<\/p>\n For the first time, the UNDP has focused attention on the more granular aspects of these disparities, shining a light on ethnic, race, and caste hierarchies. Nothing is as wretched as social hierarchies, inheritances of the past that continue to sharply assault human dignity. Looking at the data from 41 countries, the UNDP found that multidimensional poverty disproportionately impacts those who face social discrimination. In India, for instance, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (\u2018scheduled\u2019 because the government regards them as officially designated groups) face the brunt of terrible poverty and discrimination, which in turn exacerbates their impoverishment. Five out of six people who struggle with multidimensional poverty are from Scheduled Castes and Tribes. A study from 2010 showed<\/a> that each year, at least 63 million people in India fall below the poverty line because of out-of-pocket health care costs (that\u2019s two people per second). During the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers increased, though exact figures have not been easy to collect. Regardless, the five out of six people who are in multidimensional poverty \u2013 many of them from Scheduled Castes and Tribes \u2013 do not have any access to health care and are therefore not even included in that data. They exist largely outside formal health care systems, which has been catastrophic for these communities during the pandemic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Last year, the secretary general of ALBA-TCP (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America \u2013 Peoples\u2019 Trade Treaty), Sacha Llorenti, asked Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Instituto Sim\u00f3n Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela to start an international discussion responding to the broad crises of our times. We brought together twenty-six research institutes from around the world whose work has now culminated in a report called A Plan to Save the Planet<\/i>. This plan is reproduced with a longer introduction in dossier no. 48<\/a> (January 2022).<\/p>\n We looked carefully at two kinds of texts: first, a range of plans produced by conservative and liberal think tanks around the world, from the World Economic Forum to the Council for Inclusive Capitalism; second, a set of demands from trade unions, left-wing political parties, and social movements. We drew from the latter to better understand the limitations of the former. For instance, we found that the liberal and conservative texts ignored the fact that during the pandemic, central banks \u2013 mostly in the Global North \u2013 raised<\/a> $16 trillion to sustain a faltering capitalist system. Though money is available that could have gone towards the social good, it largely went to shore up the financial sector and industry instead. If money can be made available for those purposes, it can certainly be used to fully fund a robust public health system in every country and a fair transition from non-renewable fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, for example.<\/p>\n The plan covers twelve areas, from \u2018democracy and the world order\u2019 to \u2018the digital world\u2019. To give you a sense of the kinds of claims made in the plan, here are the recommendations in the section on education:<\/p>\n A Plan to Save the Planet<\/i> is rooted in the principles of the United Nations Charter (1945), the document with the highest level of consensus in the world (193 member states of the UN have signed this binding treaty). We hope that you will read the plan and the dossier<\/a> carefully. They have been produced for discussion and debate and are to be argued with and elaborated on. If you have any suggestions or ideas or would like to let us know how you were able to use the plan, please write to us at gro.latnenitnocirtehtnull<\/span>@nalp<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n Study has been a key instrument for the growth of working-class struggle, as shown by the impact of working-class newspapers, journals, and literature on the expansion of popular imaginations. In 1928, Tina Modotti photographed Mexican revolutionary farmers reading El Machete<\/i>, the newspaper of their communist party. Modotti, one of the most luminous revolutionary photographers, reflected the sincere commitment of Mexican revolutionaries, of the Weimar Left, and of fighters in the Spanish Civil War. The farmers reading El Machete <\/i>and the peasant organiser in India reading the Turkish communist poet N\u00e2zim Hikmet in a hut during the great Bengal famine of 1943 depicted in the woodcut by Chittaprosad suggest places where we hope the plan will be discussed. We hope this plan will be used not merely as a critique of the present, but as a programme for a future society that we will build in the present.<\/p>\n <\/p>The post A Programme for a Future Society That We Will Build in the Present<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chittaprosad, Indian Workers Read, n.d. In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender. \u2018Multidimensional poverty\u2019 is a much more precise measurement of poverty than the international poverty line of $1.90 per [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post A Programme for a Future Society That We Will Build in the Present<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,111],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468643,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468348\/revisions\/468643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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