Some of the most powerful countries of the world met recently at Davos to take stock of the world’s financial situation and to woo investors and business leaders from across the world to their respective countries. Each nation aspires to do well, but there are glaring income inequalities between them. What leads to these inequalities? Is greed to blame for an unequal world? Or is the culprit human aspiration? Sometimes, it is difficult to draw a line between what is greed and what is an aspiration for a better life.
In a discussion at the Jaipur LitFest on ‘Greed and Human Aspirations’, panelists Ambi Parmeswaran, Arun Maira, Dipankar Gupta, Stephen Green and Gurcharan Das discussed how both greed and aspiration affect life. This session, moderated by Srinivasan Jain, focused on how greed is reflected in our lives and capitalism’s ability to provide equal opportunities and at the same time, accentuate greed. “In the past, people wore certain kind of sarees and jewellery, all meant to distinguish them from others. You may have heard of a groom in Rajasthan, riding a horse, wearing a sword and being accosted by people who said, ‘how dare you?’In the consumption culture, this is unheard of! In a consumer society, everybody should be able to do everything, “said sociologist Dipankar Gupta. In this sense, consumerism is an equaliser, he pointed out.
Aspiration, on the other hand, propels us as a society and also helps us relate to one another. “The magic of consumerism is that you don’t really know which class you belong to. Aspiration takes you away from drudgery. This is what people want, “he added. Gurcharan Das said that people use the word ‘greed’because of confusion in language. “Adam Smith, the intellectual founder of capitalism, talked about the difference between self-interest and selfishness.
He said we are all self-interested – we want to buy things and sell them expensively. If it rains, we want to buy an umbrella – there is nothing greedy about that. It’s just human behaviour. Daniel Bell talked about the cultural contradictions of capitalism. He said when capitalism begins, there is frugalism and hard work, but when the second and third generations start to feel comfortable, some of it gets lost, “said Das. He urged the audience to make a distinction between greed and capitalism, although he admitted that capitalism could tilt towards inequality.
Management consultant and former Planning Commission member, Arun Maira said that we associate greed with things money can buy, whereas aspiration is associated with things we value, but which money can’t buy. “With wealth, we can provide opportunities to our children that others will not have. With it, we can buy fame. Richer nations have more power to influence decisions in organisations such as the WTO.