Need For Equality And Justice In Today’s Civilization

The contemporary world-the world that has come into being after the Second World War-is full of complexities and contradictions. It has seen mind-boggling revolutions in science and technology and also unprecedented increase in the reality of some of the nations. It has also committed it self, through the United Nations and its agencies, to the preservation of internet peace and to advancement of human welfare all over the globe.

Take, for example, medical sciences. Many dreadful diseases are being contained or eliminated. Heart bypass surgery has become as routine as an appendicitis operation. Transplant from higher organism holds the promise of raising the physical and intellectual level of mankind.

Consider another field-chemistry. Chemists have already stnthesidsed over eight million compounds.Bio-technology is on the threshold of providing thousands of new materials-from fuel to medicines, form food to vaccines, and for chemical to pastiches. Never before in history have such profound, dramatic.all-pervastice improvements taken place.

There has also been a remarkable upswing in economic development of quite a few courtiers. For example, per capital annual income into he United States has soared form $ 1600 in 1948 to $ 25,000 in 1993, Likewise, in South Korea and Singapore, the per scantier GDP has incensed by about 550 percent between 1960 and 1990.

Setting up of the Untied Nations has been another significant feature of the contemporary world. Freedom form war was not its only aim. Freedom form hunger, diseases and ignorance was also sight. So was all round social and economic development. To effectuate these aims and economic develop met. To effectuate these aims and objectives, a number of aeries such as FAO, WHO, UNESCO, and UNDP were established. And with a view to making the intonation system more equitable and just, quite of high level commissions-Pearson Commission, Willy Brandt Commission, etc-were set up. Scores of international conferences on population, health and environment were also held and under of colorations made and covenants Sigrid.

With all these advances, one would expect that the present day world would be a veritable paradise on the earth. But what is the position?

There are 1.4 billion people who are absolutely poor. About 18 million people die annually due to hunger-related diseases. Malnutrition kills about 13 million children under the age of five. Vitamin A deficiency impairs the physical and mental faculties of about 40 million children, causing even blindness to about 250,000 every year. About 600.000die each year in pregnancy and childbirth, and 30 times than number suffer injuries which, to use the words of UNICEF, “ are usually untreated and unspoken of and which are humiliating and painful and debilitating life-ling; it constitutes of the most neglected tragedy of our times. “

About 1.7 billion people are without pure water supply and about 3 billion have no access to sanitary facilities in cities alone,abotu 600 million people are either homeless or live in what the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements calls “life and healthy threatening environment.”

All is not well with the developed world too. It has sizable areas of darkness. For example, crime has increased and assumed sinister form. In 1992, 14 million cases were reported to the police in the United States. There million children were abused and 7,000 children suffered gunshot wands. There were about 15,000 cases of rape. And annual expenditure on narcotics exceeded to combine GDP of 80 developing countries.

Large disparities of income constitute another sad part of the picture. The developed countries have only about 20percent of the world population but have cornered about 80percent of its resources. The most inhumane part of the disparities is seen the pattern of food consumption. A person in a developed country consuames, on an average, 1,000 calories more than a person in a developing country.

The above facts raise some pertinent questions. Why with phenomenal knowledge and skill at mankind’s command should things be falling apart? Why in and age intellectuality dominated by theorems of liberty, equality and treatment and human rich should there be stark inequalities and injected Why despite unprecedented affluence in the present-day world should be widespread hunger, diseases and death? Why a rich European or median, ostensibly enlightened, should be overconsuring the resources and acting as a “veritable cannibal and eating the children of ht poor countries?”

Clearly these paradoxes have arson mainly because the post-World War has continued to be guided by old attudes, values and reflex that were rotten in unabashed materialism and theories such as ‘survival o the fittest’. It has failed to realize that the challenge it face sis civilization and cultural realties’ than the challenge it faces is ciliate and cultural. What is needed is a new design for life, a new orientation of humankind, and world-wide civilization shaped by culture of condiment, compassion balance and harmony and illumined as much ay knowledge as by DePaul radiance. And in fluting that need, developed counties can plat a pioneering role.

The emergence of a new world-wide civilization is necessary to end the incipient barbarism of the present-day world, and its hidden injustices, inhumanities an paradoxes. Without the coming into being of such a civilization, no courtly. Developed or developing, can really solve the basic problems of a happy and harmonious living. Bothe the parts of the world, the developed or developing, world continue to be bedeviled dehumanized-one by the increasing impact of deprivation and the other by the rising tide of affluence.