Poverty enables all social inequities

CHENNAI: Poverty is the key factor behind many of the evils in society and it would be possible to eradicate these evils by fighting poverty, a conference observing the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking has observed. Speakers at the one-day observance of the two United Nations designated days noted that evils such as drug abuse went hand in hand with the participation of the youth, and awareness was the need of the hour.“Drug abuse is inextricably linked with the fortunes of the youth. This relationship is not adequately researched in our country,” said R Shekher of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development (RGNIYD). “Evils like drug abuse are supported by the contra-culture, which the state and intellectual machineries have ignored.That’s why our government and academia are unable to gauge its impact and mitigate it,” he added.The one day conference, jointly organised by RGNIYD and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, also dwelt on the role of poverty as an enabler of many social evils. “The one factor that links most of the social evils – like drug abuse, torture and human trafficking – is poverty. Our society and government actually provide silent sanction to many evils that are frowned upon on the world stage. That way we are among the most uncivilised countries on earth,” said RGNIYD director, Michael Vetha Siromony.He pointed out that the average policeman felt empowered to beat people, as he had been armed with a lathi. “It was but an extension of this that led to the physical and mental torture of many that belonged to the lower classes.” As part of the seminar, human rights NGO Peoples Watch presented instances where common people had been subjected to police atrocities and were killed in the process. “The Police is the widest perpetrator of torture in this country.Torture in police stations is more prevalent than torture in jails,” noted Siromony.Such evils were enabled by social inequities like poor and rich, powerful and weak, etc. Striking at the root of these issues alone could help rid the country of them, said MSSRF director Ajay Parida.