If Better Off Than Before - Ii Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

If this world were better place to live,
If it gets better by morn to eve;

If we live and eat better, earn more,
Live haply much longer than before;

If rich gets richer, poor has more aids,
If growth graphs grew for five long decades—
Than in five hundred that preceded;

If we grow taller still and healthy,
And freer in all the history;

Consuming calories indiscreet,
Watts, horsepower, gigabytes and square feet,
Megahertz and mileage per litres;

If we get best of things from far shores,
Global trade if gathers from all doors;

Luckiest ever born if are we,
Freedom, peace, leisure time, what might be,

Or learning, Medicare, travel clime,
Why we still face such gloom, why such crime?

We prosper, pathetic yet more get,
Invent more, enabled as ne'er still,
Where's the catch, where the hidden devil?
We grow but our greed gets ever fat.

Millions more if get the market bulls
Poverty, why it still never cools?
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The progress world has made is beyond doubt. Yet, something is amiss. In his book, The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley argues that the world has become a better place to live than ever before. This piece (in anapaest metre)takes off from what he says.
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Reflections | 08.07.14 |