Famine, Affluence, and Morality

In November 1971, people were dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical care. The suffering and death were not inevitable, not unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to very small proportions. This chapter argues that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed, the whole way people look at moral issues-our moral conceptual scheme–needs to be altered. It highlights that suffering and…