There are two things that have caught my attention over the last few weeks, one is a powerful submission on eradicating poverty beyond growth by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter. And the other event seems to be a global phenomenon, the Ambani wedding in India which is making headlines across many news portals, and let me add a caveat here that both have my attention for very different reasons.
Let’s start with the grand circus that is the wedding of Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani that boasts of an international guest list rarely seen anywhere else in the world and also saw the Prime Minister of India make a special appearance to bless the newly wed couple. And anyone guessing the price tag of this colossal spectacle, it is around INR 4000-5000 Crores approximately $0.6 billion which is 0.5% of the Ambani family’s net worth. To further interpret this, it is around 6% of India’s budget estimates in 2023-24 on health care by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
And while many see this as a rich family choosing to do what they please with their wealth; I will use this opportunity to direct your attention to Schutter’s report submitted in July 2024 to the UN Human Rights Council which should put things in perspective. The report very systematically argues why we can’t have endless growth continuing under the pretext that the Earth has limitless resources and has the ability to absorb all waste under this growthism approach. Growthism is a mindset far deep-rooted than structures, institutions and believes that growth must be achieved at all costs. Through the comprehensive report Schutter makes a compelling case to reverse this growthism mindset that limits social and political imagination. Rather than eradicating poverty, we are witnessing a modernizing of poverty, which focuses on a money centric approach of monitoring poverty excluding the multiple deprivations experienced by individuals resulting in social exclusion. An excerpt from this report I found very interesting and relevant in the context of the Ambani wedding in Mumbai, a city where more than half of its 12 million residents live in slums.
“As such, economic growth (defined by an increase in GDP), if accompanied by rising income inequality, may ultimately prove counterproductive: by raising the bar within a particular society, it may in fact worsen the social exclusion – the sense of shame and worthlessness that people in poverty will experience.”
We know for a fact that income and wealth inequalities in India has increased as a report by the World Inequality Database found that the billionaire raj in India is more unequal than the British colonial raj with respect to economic inequalities. This further substantiates the point that economies addicted to undemocratic and not inclusive growth, result in increased inequalities and social exclusion. This makes the Ambani’s grand spectacle vulgar and insensitive, as a wedding meant to be a private affair, is made public by using common resources for the conveniences of the wealthy and powerful. And further contributing to people in poverty experiencing worthlessness and shame by this callous show of capital, resources and power, as it worsens self-worth and social exclusion.
So those celebrating Ambani’s wedding as India’s soft power, please rethink and course correct!
The fundamentals that allow certain families to accumulate wealth which is much higher that the collective revenue of a few pacific island nations, is the economic model build on the growthism mindset. Olivier De Schutter in his recent report deliberates on the limitations to growth and calls for a shift in mindset that will build a system that fights inequalities. These are inequalities between countries and among countries, allowing the elite and affluent to control resources making them unavailable to meet basic needs of people in poverty. This accumulation of wealth has impacts to our ecology in particular greenhouse gas emissions as the wealthiest 1% of the world population are responsible for increasing 23% of the emissions due to their investments, since the 1990s.
The call to fight inequalities is critical as it would restrict the unsustainable lifestyles of the richest in the rich countries of the Global North but also the affluent in the Global South. Unequal societies as the report rightly points out fuel a race for status through consumption which really sums up this show of wealth at the Ambani wedding. In a nutshell the wedding is a stark reminder of the inequalities that run deep in our society and economy and the economic mindset that perpetuates this.
Rethinking the economic model and GDP as a measurement of society’s progress can no longer be sidelined as a romantic notion, but is a well-considered proposal as we find ourselves in a global transition. Schutter’s report makes a persuasive case to transition to post growth economy and development with a focus on human rights rather than production and consumption, which will be significant for poverty eradication. A human rights economy as highlighted in the report puts forth several proposals that could be contextualized to different regions, prioritizing a social and solidarity economy where work is democratized and there are guarantees to fair remuneration and social protection and wealth taxes. But one of the most important proposals put forward is the one on global interdependencies and unequal exchange as a result of this growth model. These dependencies have their roots in neo-colonisation which exploit resources in the Global South to facilitate the growth in the North. The report calls for a degrowing of the structural dependencies between the North and South and developing South-South trade relations with a focus on local and regional markets.
This shift from maximizing profit to a human rights economy within planetary boundaries is necessary and the report by the Special Rapporteur outlines a pathway for a new imagination.
You can access the full report here:
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/069/70/pdf/g2406970.pdf?token=X8QC4B2AQ5c5Jorryw&fe=true
Neha Saigal Works at the intersections of gender and climate change and is a student of political ecology and degrowth.
