Trampled in the rush for riches
As this young century moves with dizzying speed across new frontiers of science, technology and medicine, further enriching the lives of millions in an age of plenty, I am reminded of six-year-old Veli from Swaziland, whose daily aim is staying alive.
I do not know Veli, but his face stares forlornly from the World Vision website, where you can find many pictures of children like him. They come from third world nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where many communities are ravaged by Aids, poverty and ethnic strife. The children are linked by a common thread - a futureless future, unless someone, somewhere, sponsors their survival with US$1 a day.
It makes you wonder why, when we have entered a century of such promise, we still have such despair, and why, when rich societies crave to define themselves by the number of brand-name stores they have, we still have Veli.
To escape from our conscience, we pretend that the line between the haves and have-nots is removable, that we are all part of a global village sharing the same boat sailing towards a more equal world.
We are told that this is possible with globalisation and trickle-down economics - helping the rich get even richer so some of the money can trickle down through job creation. We are asked to believe that in globalising trade, poor Colombian coffee farmers will be able to earn a fairer wage for their beans, which fatten the pockets of Starbucks. Believe that and you will believe things really go better with Coke, that McDonald's cares about your health and that you, too, can look like the Marlboro Man by smoking their cigarettes.
The reality can be found on the angry, working-class streets of Paris, Jakarta, Los Angeles and other Asian and western cities where despair has recently found expression through mass protests.
When you see jobless youths hurling firebombs on television because they believe they have no future, and then you see oil companies announcing such record profits that it makes your head spin, can you take seriously the politicians and business leaders who insist we are winning the fight to bridge the gap between rich and poor? If you can, you have been duped. The rich are definitely getting richer, and even though some of the poor are becoming less so, that does not amount to a bridging of the gap.
When thousands of jobless Parisians wrecked shops and burned cars during weeks of recent riots, their fury was driven not only by mistrust of new labour laws, but also by a deep suspicion of big business and government.
With unemployment at 10 per cent - and a much higher 22 per cent for youths - French leaders thought they could encourage bosses to hire more young people with new rules that would also make it easier for them to fire staff. But the rioters saw the proposals as yet more collusion between the government and big business to rob them of their rights.
A continent away, in Indonesia, where 40 million jobless people are trapped by the huge divide that separates the masses of poor from the privileged few, the promise of trickle-down economics is even more illusory.
The May Day protests that saw tens of thousands of people spill onto the streets of Jakarta and other cities were largely peaceful, but they mirrored the anguish of the Paris riots. The masses just didn't trust the government's new laws, which promised more jobs in return for giving employers greater flexibility in firing workers.
Look no further than the US-Mexican border for an actual line dividing the rich from the poor. The huge May Day protests across American cities by Mexicans and other Hispanics were about immigration rights, not labour laws, but the underlying grievance was the same - the protesters wanted a fairer slice of the world's wealth pie.
Years after the North American Free Trade Agreement linking the US, Canada and Mexico - which big business promised would greatly improve the lives of Mexicans - thousands still risk life and limb daily to sneak across the border to the land of plenty, where they can at least earn a living filling the minimum-wage jobs that Americans shun.
When corporations win freer global trade, do well-paid executives gather in their boardrooms and exclaim: 'How wonderful, now the working-class can have a fairer share of the world's wealth', or do their eyes gleam from the thought of yet more stock options, bonuses and profits?
Open markets do lift many out of poverty, but it is a slow process, and they can also threaten the livelihoods of others, like the South Korean farmers who rioted in Hong Kong against the World Trade Organisation last December.
Those who burned cars in Paris, protested in Jakarta, and marched for the right to stay in America all come from different cultures, speak different languages and have different skin colour, but they are bonded by the same belief - that they are the manipulated underclass.
A prospering world is shrinking this underclass, but not fast enough to stop producing children like Veli who, unless they are given a chance to share in that prosperity, could grow up to become tomorrow's petrol-bomb-thrower.
Michael Chugani is editor-in-chief of ATV English News and Current Affairs
