“Paar chanaan de disse kulli yaar di.”¹ This line is from a famous Punjabi folklore named ‘Sohni Mahiwal.’ It translates to “Right across the Chenab lies my beloved’s hut.” It is centred around Mahiwal, a young farmer who falls in love with Sohni, a pottery weaver, and his attempt to cross the River Chenab to Sohni’s hut. He endeavours to cross the river with the aid of a matka (clay pot) to meet Sohni.

 I first came across the tale when a popular music station released an indie-rock rendition of it. It brought up an unfamiliar sense of excitement; being a Punjabi myself, this tale was my introduction to Punjabi culture. I soon began to idolise not only my ancestors’ history, but also the river’s. To this day, the Chenab serves as a lifeline for the largely agriculturalist Punjab province. I found it fascinating that my ancestors had travelled from some barren lands far away, and eventually, established numerous towns and cities around it. It seemed a joyous history, without any blemishes.

However, I soon found out that the Punjabi association with the river was not so fascinating after all. To this day, it is upheld by a series of oppressions. The river feeds into the larger Indus River System, which flows throughout Pakistan from north to south. The Punjabi manipulation of the water system has deprived southern communities of what is perhaps the most valued asset in the world.² In Thar, a particularly hard-struck district, desertification and malnutrition are prevalent, and the situation is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis.³ This crisis is built upon a bedrock of flawed historical narratives, accompanied by the messy relationship between oppression and enrichment.

Romanticization and Ignorance

We tend to believe the perfected narratives of our histories that are passed down or propagated to us. It is often not the omission of facts by others, but rather our own confirmation biases which cause us to latch onto more acceptable versions of our histories. This also means we are reluctant to dig deeper, instead believing things as they appear on the surface.

In The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula Le Guin depicts our tendency to hold on to these false perceptions. She describes the fictional utopia of Omelas – in a rather heavenly fashion – but quashes this image soon after by stating, “I fear Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody.”⁴ Despite what we wish, our histories are rarely as utopian as we wish – as was the case with Omelas.

Enrichment has always been inseparably tangled with oppression. This idea is also discussed in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, where he implies that there are always those who “suffer under the weight of the Dream[s]” of others.⁵ Coates postulates that the oppressed go unnoticed not because of an unconscious selection of facts, but rather the privileged consider it their duty to believe in their power as “just” and as “the natural result of grit, honor, and good works.”⁶ This proposal would have a different ethical implication than believing in unconsciously perfected narratives: choosing to justify oppression has a greater moral burden than being ignorant of it. For every Chenab, there is a Thar; when a community establishes itself at the expense of others, it becomes their duty to forego any blemishes which may taint their struggle as unheroic. We must either conclude that oppression will always accompany enrichment and accept things the way they are, or find a way to separate the two. The former may seem like a rhetorical claim with an obvious conclusion, but we must realize that if it were so easily dismissable, we would have achieved the histories we so obsessively romanticize over.

Debt Flow

In the present day, wealth is being created disproportionately. The Stanford Centre on Poverty and Inequality states that “CEOs “made 185 times more” money than the average worker in 2009, as compared to “24 times more” in 1965.⁷ Nineteenth-century political scientist William Sumner has advocated for an acceptance of such inequality, claiming that “social classes (especially the successful ones) owe not a thing to others” because everyone has “earned their station.”⁸ This laissez-faire mindset seems to be the prevailing ideology in many free-market economies, such as the United States, despite the prevalence of progressive voices. Philosopher Herbert Spencer states that this ideology represents “a large, far-seeing benevolence.”⁹ He advocates the utilitarian view that a meritocratic system which filters out the skill-deficient, is good for humanity’s progression.¹⁰

However, the inequality of opportunity here must be considered. In Why Does Inequality Matter?, T.M. Scanlon states that procedural fairness is important when everyone is working towards the same goal – enrichment in this case.¹¹ However, not only do some people have the opportunity to build their stations on more suitable foundations, but they also actively use their acquired influence to destroy the stations of others – thus depriving future generations of the platform they need to earn their wealth.¹² Considering this, the idea that no one owes anything to anyone seems inappropriate. Are some people just lucky to be born in a geographically suitable location or to an affluent family that can afford to educate them? That would merely be injustice — fueled by luck — that accumulates as wealth is passed down from one generation to another. This substantive unfairness in allowing everyone to succeed further suggests that debt is owed by the lucky (privileged) to the oppressed. So, no matter how stubborn this entanglement of enrichment and oppression might seem, we must somehow make the two independent of each other.

Solutions

As Jennifer Nedelsky states in The Multidimensional Self and the Capacity for Creative Interaction, our current legal and political systems are achieved by “stripping away crucial dimensions of human beings.”¹³ This lack of humanity is evident in many public institutions around the world, most notably, amongst the police force in the US, which often fails to treat every human as more than just a body. By extension, this dehumanizing attitude on the part of our institutions does not consider what happens to those who are left out of the wealth-accumulation cycle. As a counter, I propose we factor in two things: procedural fairness and duty-based ethics. Procedural fairness entails the realization that not everyone gets the opportunity to prove their worth, as Scanlon aptly pointed out. As such, Scanlon’s argument calls for the promotion of fair competition, where the state ensures that every citizen has a level playing field to “earn their station.”¹⁴ It would be the duty of the state to provide an environment of fair competition to level the playing field by means of education, loans for small businesses, etc.

In addition, there is a need to universally introduce the notion of Kantian duty-based ethics in policy frameworks. This moral framework requires that we “emphasize the value of every human being.”¹⁵ As such, we cannot leave those who do not make it through the “survival of the fittest” – fair competition or not – to fend for themselves.¹⁶ Doing so would undermine the service of many compassionate people who do not think along the self-interested lines that Spencer assumes for everyone. For example, many essential workers, such as paramedics, pursue their professions not to accumulate wealth, but to help others. Nonetheless, many get paid next to nothing. An NBC article reports for example, that many first responders in New York state feel like they are “third-class citizens.”¹⁷ Can we really declare that such an essential workforce earns what they deserve? Or that it has not made it past the “survival of the fittest?” The utilitarian might argue against the state taking care of everyone. After all, where is the benefit in catering to individuals who generate more expenses than income? I believe the answer lies in Nedelsky’s analysis as well as Kantian assessments, both of which declare human beings to be of equal moral worth–an ethically important value to preserve. It is obvious that our sustenance would not be possible without such services. Thus, we should elevate those who dedicate their lives to these duty-based ideals.

My mind hearkens back to another line in the song devoted to Mahiwal as he attempts to cross the river: “the waves are splashing higher and higher, but don’t lose heart.” The stakes could not be higher; the waves are certainly splashing higher than ever before, but if we hold on to our intentions of providing equal chances of success to everyone, I believe it is possible to make it through.∇

Omar Qazi is a second-year International Scholar at Trinity College in the University of Toronto, majoring in Ethics, Society & Law and Cognitive Science, with a minor in History. His academic interests include legal philosophy, public-policy ethics, and post-colonial politics.

1. Shilpa Rao and Noori, “Paar Chanaa De,” Coke Studio Season 9, September 2, 2016.
2. Daanish Mustafa, Special Report: Hydropolitics in Pakistan's Indus Basin (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2010), 9.
3. “Three More Children Die in Thar”, News International (Karachi, Pakistan), Jan. 13, 2022. 
4. Ursula Le Guin,  "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 2.
5. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2020), 119.
6. Coates, Between the World and Me, 98.
7. “20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know”, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2011.
8. Simone Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest,” unpublished course hand-out TRN171 (2020-21), accessed December 14, 2020.
9. Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest.”
10. Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest.”
11. T. M. Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 53.
12. Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest.”
13. Jennifer Nedelsky, “The Multidimensional Self and the Capacity for Creative Interaction”, in Law’s Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 161.
14. Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest.”
15. “Ethics Guide: Duty-based ethics,” BBC, 2014.
16. Davis, “Herbert Spencer and WIlliam Sumner on survival of the fittest.”
17. Theo Wayt, “Medical First Responders Say They're Underpaid and Overworked. Will Anything Change?”, NBCNews.com, December 30, 2019. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/medical-first-responders-say-they-re-underpaid-overworked-will-anything-n1101926 (accessed December 14, 2020).