A friend of mine asked me last night what I thought of the situation in Mumbai. I answered that I find it, like all terrorist attacks, crazy. It’s a sad reaction by desperate misguided individuals who don’t value other human lives as much as they should. After that I qualified my response by saying that although I am “Indian” my parents were born and raised in Africa and I’ve been born and raised in Canada and have spent the last ten years or so in Europe, so I can’t really comment on what the social motivators are in India. But, I believe a lot of these types of acts are committed because of economic factors. People feel that other countries have wealth that they should have access to and without that access to wealth people do crazy things.
With that background I was really interested in reading an economic study on the correlation between conflict and poverty on Vox, the economic research blog/site, today. It’s interesting reading and discusses the links between poverty and violence and how economic hardship can lead to violence.
So as a lot of countries rise out of poverty, like India, there are still too many individuals in countries in Asia and in Africa that are struggling with their own economic progress. People see others rise out of poverty and feel entitled to do the same, and when they don’t have access to wealth they become desperate. Too often we look at religion, or belief, or culture as the driver of terrorism, as the reason why people resort to violence, and we don’t spend enough time or energy examining the economic reasons behind violent acts.
The funny thing is that I thought I would end the post there, until I was writing tags to go with this post and came across the tag “education”. Maybe the investments should be in education in the developing world, which will help others access wealth and escape poverty.
