 Now, if you look at the slide, we are talking about positive duties. Now, a crucial difference that Poggi makes over here is that, well most of us and if we would recollect from the last article that we talked about, when the singer also made this notion of super erogatory acts, that acts of charity or acts of assistance from the affluent is a matter of praise, it should be praised because it is an act of charity or super erogatory acts, acts which are not required. Now, Poggi too fine tunes this distinction, commonly held belief or moral belief that well, it is an act of charity that well, when an affluent nation contributes to a lesser affluent or a underdeveloped nation. But he tries to, Poggi tries to shows that the existing world poverty manifests a violation of our negative duties. So, our duty is not to harm. So, what he is basically saying is that well, positive duties are duties that you ought to do and there is nothing wrong if you do not do it. But negative duties is our commitment not to create harm, which is therefore, more minimal and therefore, much stronger as more foundational that after the completion of negative duties, positive duties may be reward worthy or praise worthy. And negative duties are almost seen as a necessity or as compulsorily to be performed. So, removing world poverty is does not belong to this notion of positive duties, but to the very fundamental nature of negative or fundamental nature of negative duties that is our duty is not to harm. So, Poggi does not talk about positive duties tackled here, he does not tackle it in this paper. In fact, he does not find alleviating world poverty as something which belongs to the domain of positive duty, rather it belongs to our duty is not to harm. So, it is not that when the affluent are assisting the poor that it is an act of charity to be praised, but that it is something that has to be necessarily done by the affluent. And let us go into the genealogy why he holds such a view. Well, to first he regards the positive, the negative duty is stronger than the positive duty. So, gives an example that the duty in the third bullet, the duty not to assault people is more stringent than the duty to prevent such assaults by others. And having assaulted another, the attacker has more reason to ensure that his victims injuries are treated than a bystander would. So, Poggi makes a very binary stance here, that well analogically, so when he says that the duty not to assault people is more stringent than the duty to prevent such assaults by others. And having assaulted another, the attacker has more reason to ensure that his victims injuries are treated than a bystander would. So, first that poverty is not, the affluent are not a bystander to the whole game of poverty coming into existence, that the affluent as he shows are directly responsible for the poverty that comes to different nations, and he tries to prove that. And therefore, having caused this poverty, the affluent owe the duties of the reparation to the underprivileged, because it is direct, it is an harm done by the world's rich on to the world's poor, and therefore, the world's rich are required to compensate for this harm that has been done. So, before we go into that Poggi's claim, what is this, let us tackle a little bit about this notion of negative duty being stronger than positive duty. So, how do you associate that, but would you like to dispute that, or as negative duty as stronger than positive duty? It seems to me, you know the example that he gives, in which he says that, if you are a bystander, then you do have a duty to prevent an assault on somebody by a third person, but if you are someone directly engaged in that assault, then the moral responsibility is greater. So, I think, well before I go into this, I would like to disagree with you on the understanding of positive duties itself. It seems to me that you understand positive duty completely as super-arrogatory acts, acts of charity, but I think they are to be understood properly as duties, moral obligations. And even in Singer, when he says that, we cannot maintain the distinction between duties and super-arrogatory acts. What he is really saying is that, so-called super-arrogatory acts are also to be considered acts of duty, so he expands the realm of positive duties, but he only tackles with positive duties, acts that one is morally obligated to perform. And I think that, so he does not go, so for him, on a superficial reading of his article, it seems that for him, the affluent citizens of the world are mere bystanders in the world event of poverty. He does not go at all into the roots of poverty and the role that the affluent play in causing and maintaining that poverty. But Poggy's approach is completely different and he shows how the affluent are not just bystanders, but active agents and participants in that event. So that being the case, the affluence being directly involved in bringing about that harm and in maintaining it, they have, so if you talk about their duties concerning that event or that situation, it can no longer be seen as a simple positive duty. It has to be understood as a negative duty, not to harm, because they are involved in causing that harm in the first place and it also has to be understood as an intermediate duty to prevent future harm from something, some action that they have performed in the past. So I think Poggy's analysis of the situation is deeper than singers. He goes a step ahead and finds this, because when he says that well, negative duty is making this concept that well, that is something that has to be done if you have to have a moral existence. And you know if you do not analyze the role of the affluent in world poverty, then you cannot, what basis do you offer for their moral duty to interfere in that situation and to elevate it? You cannot go beyond saying that on the basis of a shared humanity, they have to... The pull of such a claim is not as strong as the pull of when he understands it or when he understands it in terms of a negative duty. So just as I am not obliged perhaps so strongly to help bystander, but I am definitely more required not to harm a bystander. So when tackling global poverty, Poggy pulls down this tackling of global poverty from a positive duty to a negative duty, that is it is a requirement not to create harm and global poverty is a result of a failure of this negative duty. So even in our inaction, what many of us would like to think as our inaction or our choosing not to be more human than we are, Poggy's downright claim is that well, we tackling global poverty comes under the duties of reparation, it is a wrong that has already been done and it has to be undone or compensated. So that way it is an attack just as the analogy he presents that it is a negative duty because the attack has by, you have attacked bystander and thereby you are more obliged than anybody else to compensate. And also you continue to attack them through the socio-political institutions that you help maintain. He puts out the world economic order as that way. So well, negative duty does come out stronger than positive duty. Positive duty does, what Singer does is he tries to fuse super-arrogatory acts into duties that they are no more praiseworthy that they are essential duties. Perhaps Poggy is a layer stricter and he further reduces it to that these acts are not only a part of what they should not be praiseworthy, but they are expected to be done. It goes one step further and says that these acts are acts of reparation. So these are necessary. So these are like the repayment of a loan. They are no more an act of charity that needs to be praised. So duties of reparation are much stronger than charity. So here whatever assistance or whatever means for alleviation of global poverty is talked about, they are duties of reparation and they are definitely much stronger than charity and definitely not an option. So how the wealthy, now of course this stands on the question that well how the wealthy are morally related to poverty. This is not a case for charity, but for negative duty as Poggy puts it. But what makes, now Poggy goes on to explain that why it is a part of negative duty that how the wealthy are responsible for the poverty that comes across. And this is when he claims that the wealthy are responsible for sustaining the macro order that benefits and perpetuates from inequality. So what, this is almost a contestable. This is the most contestable claim that Poggy puts out that well many of the world organizations would count on humanity as the pull for assistance. Whereas Poggy puts it out that well the wealthy are responsible for sustaining the macro order that benefits and perpetuates from inequality. So here inequality is not a random event, but it is a very very caused event and the cause of which is the cornering of the resources of the world to the affluent. And by at the cost of the, at the cost to the poor. So this is where many many macro order theories would differ from Poggy. This is a very crucial claim on which Poggy's entire argument hinges upon. One of the claims that I can see immediately is that well the theory that first wealth is not the world view that wealth is not a finite amount in the world and wealth can be generated. It is not that to make one person or to make a region wealthy it has to be at the cost of another region. Now the, so an argument could be that well wealth is definitely not created by cornering it out of another region. Another strain of argument could be that the wealthy are wealthy because of their thrift, because of their effort, because of their efficiency and the poor are poor because of the lack of these qualities exhibited. Now there have been very strong critics of Poggy's claim over here that which to them has made a very black and white interpretation that all wealth is cornered out from poorer regions to wealthier regions and there is no factor given to human effort and human thrift and human the human element in creation of wealth where and wealth is simply seen as a transfer of resources from one part to the other. You would have some views on this. We have discussed this while discussing Singer. What comes to my mind is that, that a human enterprise is important but you know human enterprise needs a conducive environment to thrive in and that is where the macro order comes into the picture. One can reasonably ask if an enterprising person would have the same amount of success in a developing country as she would in a developed country. The odds that she has to battle against in a developing country would be so much higher. All right. This is taking on Poggy's strain that well even if human enterprise has to be valued it has to be valued only if we have a common fertile ground for it to prosper and this macro order does not allow for that even parity between these common grounds where human enterprise has to can prosper and therefore this macro order becomes so essential and so overpowering that it dominates over the presence or absence of human enterprise. It makes it almost futile. Now we talk about the ecumenical approach that Poggy takes again to bring forth this very claim that he talks about. You know one does also think about those individuals in the developed country who have risen up the economic ladder by the end of their own hard work and enterprising spirit and if you go to I mean their case is very different from the case of the big CEOs and business tycoons. If you go to them a person who has started out as a factory worker and then gone on to you know make a very successful career. If you talk to such a person and say that your success is not a result of your own efforts but of this socio economic institutions in your country that benefit its own citizens at the cost of citizens elsewhere I do not know how convincing that argument would sound to that person but it may also be a case of that person conveniently not taking that bigger picture into account and selectively deciding to focus on their own efforts. Right perhaps at the first encounter with such a question this person would be would feel wronged that his entire effort is being reduced to just fertile macro system around him or her but perhaps if I may be allowed to rephrase that question and if you ask that person that would she be able to achieve the same level of that she has achieved in a different macro economic or macro social order and that would perhaps bring out the role that apparently inert socio economic or the macro system around an agent place in the flourishing of that individual. So yes it is almost a statistical correlate that most of the best say students come out from most of the best schools and it is only a thin segment of outliers where there is an exception that well worse of schools bringing out better of students. In the latter case the students are successful not because of atmosphere but despite. That is an enormous tribute to the power of human spirit that overcomes all odds against it but not counting the outliers in making a policy that well it is almost like a deterministic setup that well people or students who go to such a kind of a school will probably land up in such a kind of a profession. Whereas people who go to such a kind of a school another kind of a school have more probabilities of landing up in other kind of a profession. Of course human endeavor or enterprise is not written off but it only flourishes in an environment and it requires enormous energy to flourish in an unsuitable environment and it is also not the case that a suitable environment will bring out the best in everybody. But yes so Poggy's attack is that well discounting the differences in human enterprise and entrepreneurship and perhaps at a deeper level even seeing the differences in human enterprise and entrepreneurship as a result of the macro structure in which one is raised where went is given for ideas to translate into reality and where there is very little went and possibility for the idea for ideas to translate into reality that itself affects the human enterprise or entrepreneurship. So in a way yes Poggy's essential claim is putting the macro economic or macro social the macro structure before the individual enterprise and thereof that becomes more fundamental than human enterprise. So when he talks about now this is another as a paper in applied ethics there are certain it stands on certain foundations and stills about theoretical ethics that he talks about and one of this is what he calls the ecumenical approach. So traditionally we have been aware of theories and theories contradicting them and another theory coming up. So an author's loyalty remains to a particular theory and there is an argument against another theory by propagating may be a counter theory to it. But here Poggy brings about almost like a populistic or a universal appeal a universal net cutting across all ideological commitments. So he wads off the possibility of reading an ideology into his claim and he makes it or he pegs his theory on a single consistent baseline of he does not peg his theory on a single consistent theory. In fact it is he makes an appeal which can be seen across various theories. So it is not particularly that he is arguing against the consequentialist theory or in favor of deontological theory but it is almost a theory that has a universal appeal cutting across theoretical or ideological commitments. So he puts it he explains it in this third section of his article when he talks about radical inequality. He puts out five basic observations which are very empirical in nature and but hardly would there would be disagreement about these observations. The cause of these observations may vary or the justifications of these observations may vary but these observations are fairly generic and empirical and fairly well documented. Well first is that the worst of are very badly in absolute terms. They are also very badly of in relative terms very much worse of than many others. So it is not that in just in absolute terms that they are doing ill of that the requirements of human existence are lesser than what are absolutely required but he also points out that they are also badly of in the terms of the disparity between the worse of and the better of and this inequality is impervious. So that the movement from one segment to other segment is not as free flowing as it ought to be. This inequality is pervasive it pervades a large region and last of all his claim which is definitely not an empirical claim that this inequality is avoidable. So his understanding of radical inequality pegs on these almost four observations and fifth value claim claiming that this inequality is avoidable because if these four observations are true what it means is that there is enough resource to be distributed amongst all. So in principle it is possible to have a lesser disparity and a higher absolute minimum standard and to allow mobility between segments. So if these four observations are accurate then it is obvious that or it is logically very obvious that inequality is therefore avoidable. Why do you say he has a single consistent baseline? Well because he says he does not. He does not yes. He is reacting to a single consistent baseline so that there is no in fact that way he is anti-reductionist that is his theory cannot be reduced to one particular theory of ethics. So in fact his approach therefore is more acumenical because it is more catholic or more encompassing human requirements and sensibilities than flowing from an ideological commitment to a particular kind of theory and therefore he tackles various theories at various levels. Now he talks about engaging in the fourth part of his article he talks about engaging historical conceptions of social justice. Now this brings about the genealogy that how he thinks that well social justice is not a matter of is not an option but is almost a necessity. Because of historical wrong doings the social positions of the worse off and the better off have emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive previous wrongs. So now this is the beginning of a world view of which this article's claim is a applied conclusion to it. So the view being that well the social starting positions that how people start off both the worse off and the better off have emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive previous wrongs. So the poor and the rich did not evolve out of different processes at different places and therefore they are not independent or innocent bystanders to each others position. Rather they are the product of the same process and therefore there is a very close connect between the worse off and the better off because they have evolved or emerged from a single historical process that was and this historical process is pervaded by massive and previous wrongs. The most obvious example from the Indian tradition could be the colonial legacy that well the colonization of a nation has completely stripped the resources of a nation into a more prosperous nation and this moral accountability has to be extended over generations. Now these are very two very foundational claims that Koki here is making one is that they belong to a single historical process. He is seeing the entire world order as a single historical process of which the wealthy and the worse off and the better off the wealthy and the poor are mere offshoots therefore one is connected to the other because the other way of looking at the other world view at the same position would be that different cultures which developed independently of each other had their own had their own enterprise flourishing into bringing about affluence or the lack of it bringing about penury but Poggi makes it very clear his claim being that it is a single historical process that was of which the poor and the rich are offshoots and secondly that this moral accountability that this poor and rich or the wealthy and poor where a process of a offshoots of a single historical process and therefore their succeeding generations owe moral accountability to the same. Now this is a very crucial claim because how does one extend moral agency over individuals in fact this is the claim of moral agency being extended over generations that from various if this is held as an guiding principle then having moral accountability over generations would almost naively put or simplistically put read about punishing the coming generation or rewarding the succeeding generations for the acts of preceding generation. Now this seems to be two very dominant views world views that or foundational views that Poggi hinges his claim upon but which are nevertheless quite debatable and disputable. So this the author reads this historical context as so strong and horrendous that there ought to be an acumenical agreement on just entitlement the rich have to have a catholic holistic agreement for the affluence that has been cornered into their parts of the world as sourced from which are now the poorer parts of the world and there just has to be an agreement on just entitlement. So what about before we proceed let us just explore this notion of moral accountability over generations now if this is a guiding principle at one hand for making do or undoing the exploitation or the cornering of resources that had taken place that had been taken place by one generation then it also opens up. One here is objection being poised against this claim this tenet of morality in the Indian context as well in relation to the reservation policy. The individuals some of the individuals belonging to the so called upper caste argue that since they themselves were not responsible in creating the unjust caste order and the resultant deprivations why should they have to suffer in order to rectify the wrongs. One thing that comes to my mind in response to that objection is that we have to recognize that the inequality or the regime of deprivation and discrimination is far from over we haven't left it behind in the past be it the caste system in India or the pervasive poverty and inequality in the world or the colonial and imperialist regime which creates that inequality it's not over it's not a thing of the past imperialism continues to shape the world so but it may have reinvented it it may present itself in new avatars so the first thing is to recognize that the source or the system of deprivation continues in some time. The second thing I think the second thing to recognize is that even if we are not personally involved in in holding up that system we are its beneficiaries in some way so the reverting to the Indian situation again if I am a so-called upper caste person but I personally believe in equality of all human beings and I don't engage in any discriminatory act against anyone even then just just because I was born in this upper caste situation I have read some benefits of that situation I have been treated differently in society I've had a differential sort of access to resources not just material resources but also cultural resources which ultimately put me in a better situation in life so if and you know that the advantage that all those factors have given me are not a result of my own individual effort so I can't I can't say it's all earned by merit personal individual merit if I recognize that then I'll also recognize my duty to to compensate for the corresponding disadvantage that other people have suffered due to similar factors did I complete my sentence yes in fact perhaps Pocky couldn't agree more because this is the same kind of a justification that he proposes that well if one is responsible or one is benefiting from the results of an unequal distribution that took place in preceding generations so one ought also to be responsible for the duties of reparation that stuck along with the unequal distribution that started in the preceding generations so yes moral accountability over generations only if and even very well put in the Indian scenario that positive or affirmative action finds it just if it finds its justification that because one this generation may not be discriminating as the earlier generations but this generation does benefit from the advantage that the earlier generations got out of the discrimination and therefore when this advantage is inherited the responsibilities for the just entitlement as Pocky puts it also are inherited so for Pocky this moral accountability over generations finds its justification in this kind of a claim that if we do benefit from inequality how much ever in the preceding generations that it took place that took place we also therefore inherit the advantage and therefore the responsible responsibility for a just entitlement or the duties of reparation that we have so next Pocky's claims that argues against the fictional notion of history that claims that any distribution however skewed could have been the outcome of a sequence of voluntary bets or gambles now yes here he is alluding to those people who would like to critique the historical processes as various or several processes where cultures or generations in cultures took decisions or showed lack of thrift and therefore landed up in the poverty that they landed up in or the other way around landed up in the affluence that they landed up in so such a fictional notion of history that claims that any distribution however skewed could have been the outcome of a sequence of voluntary bets or gambles just as the way even today perhaps giving an analogy to this situation is that well the wealth or the lack of it that a person lands up in is a result totally of he is or her own good wrong or right choices now this also perhaps Pocky would not agree because this also depends on the kind of macro order that these two individuals have been exposed to just as it is very much possible that well children in the Indian scenario from the under privileged background are highly likely to be schooled till a lower level and thereof highly likely to take up employment at a semi skilled level whereas children of the privileged classes are highly likely to be exposed to better schooling and thereof highly likely to land up in more skilled employment and therefore more affluent lifestyles so these seem to be this seems to indicate a problem in the macro system not just a result of the individual decision making so may be three fourth of the people languishing in Indian prisons that come out from the lowest income groups so Pocky's very systematic claim is that this three fourth is not because these three fourths of these people of the people in the prisons are belong to the under privileged classes or lower income groups because they all took wrong decisions it is because the macro order is such that that that almost determines them to take decisions which they would have not taken so putting it totally on voluntary putting one's position or taking full or assigning full responsibility for one's position in socio-economic order to one's own decisions irrespective of the macro milieu in which one is raised seems to be untenable according to Pocky so in fact he goes on to appreciate Locke when he does his historical extrapolation because we theoreticians want to extrapolate to understand why the way things are the first and the most obvious way is to extrapolate so he finds well with Locke's extrapolation he says that well a fictional extrapolation of history can be plausible only if the participants rationally agreed to the contract so he puts it what well he talks about the social contract theory and he talks about well the justification for the contract theory is that well when all the participants rationally agreed to the contract so if we take process of colonization so Pocky would say that well this is colonization or the colonial spread can be seen as a conscious process which resulted in this in equal distribution of resources only if all the participants rationally agreed to the contract so any extrapolation has to give that much of credibility to the agents that in principle they would have rationally agreed and that filters out a lot of historical claims that seem to justify inequality as result of individual decisions. The present world is characterized not merely by radical inequality as defined but also by the fact that the better of enjoys significant advantages in the use of a single natural resource base from whose benefits the worse off are largely and without compensation excluded so it is a very powerful claim made that well the present world is characterized not merely by radical inequality as defined but the fact that the better of enjoys significant advantages in the use of a single natural resource base from whose benefits the worse off are largely and without compensation excluded so in fact this goes ahead in fact I could surmise that we even question property rights right from what the claim Pocky is making over here say for instance let us take something like a single natural resource like portable water now in a same transposing this claim of Pocky into say an Indian scenario we can find that well in the same city there is better quality water in the bath tubs and the flush tanks of people and for the same quality of water people have to wait for a very long time and have a very difficult access to the same level of water so Pocky unequivocally puts it off puts it up that well this significant advantage that the better of enjoy is not any coming from any parallel natural resource but it is the single same natural resource from whose benefits the worse off are largely and without compensation excluded so something like portable water now there is a single natural resource and if it if it can water the lawns or land up in the bath tubs it is landing up at a cost and the cost is borne by the worse off who do not were prevented from accessing that water and there is no compensation for the same in fact this is almost a clarion call against the commercialization of the distribution of natural resources so any natural resources that society is endowed with to commercialize it and therefore distributing it according to once commercial ability or requirement against one who is not commercially capable enough to acquire it is more than radical inequality it is it is even the radical inequality model that Pocky suggest is only mere in comparison to that so especially when it comes to natural resources I Pocky is pointing out that well the significant advantages that the better of enjoy are at the cost of preventing or at the cost of the worse off so are therefore prevented and without compensation excluded so in fact one can draw a lot of applied cases that occur or that have occurred even in the Indian scenario one that occurs to me is the pissy culture or the shrimp business that took place in India a few decades back which was largely outsourced from the west to India and adjoining Asian countries because it did consume a lot of water from the water table and this water from the water table comes at a cost to the access of water from the water table to the farmers in the adjoining areas where these pissy culture units started up so natural resource is clearly finite even if some theoreticians would like to propose that wealth is can be generated or can be created in the matters of natural resource there can be no such argument or ambiguity that natural resource is definitely a finite resource and that comes from any allocation of it will definitely or any distribution will definitely be affect both the parties or all the parties amongst which it is distributed just distribution of natural resources is definitely not innocent and the better off are responsible for deprivation of the same natural resource into the worse off if we goes on to say that if current inequality is justified as a consequence of the historical root it falls short as the actual historical processes is populated with huge wrong doings the Poggy's claim is very clear here that well the historical there can be no justification of inequality from the historical roots so one does have to get into the history of the world order to understand the difference different positions taken up so and he does find huge wrong doings wrong doings in this historical process so as it is the citizens government and governments of the affluent states are violating this negative duty when we where he means citizens of the wealthy or affluent nations in collaboration with the ruling elites of many poor countries coercively exclude the global poor from a proportional resource share and any equivalent substitute so here this is the final acquisition that Poggy makes is that citizens and governments of the affluent states and the ruling elites of many poor countries together sustain such a macro system which corners away a disproportional resource to a certain population and leaves very little resource or for the others who are condemned to poverty thereby and not also providing an equivalent substitute now this is a problem or this is a claim that he is raised is faced in many societies in many cultures about in various perspectives so we can have places like the building of any Indian scenario there are the buildings of dams of roads of access to water by industry and where commercial interests clearly come in conflict with the fair distribution so Poggy is very foundational claim is that well the macro order is such that the distribution of financial power does not reflect in fact far from is just it is downright unjust the ideally an economic system or a financial system would want affluence to be a representation of human thrift ability enterprise and the lack of it a reflection of that but Poggy finds fault with that at this distribution in financial power is not caused by that particular generation rather it is or by that particular individuals but it is only a result of the macro order in which people are and therefore deciding on the basis of financial ability or commercial ability or using that as an indicator to or a parameter to distribute natural resources is definitely unfair so historical process one has to look into the historical process and the historical process is flooded with wrong doings and these wrong doings need needs to be repaired we cannot start at a zero baseline we do have to take a look at the what made the baseline different for different people and therefore we do have to have a correction in the baseline so this is what he talks about when he talks about engaging with the historical process