Deparochialising Global Justice: Global Poverty, Human Rights Cosmopolitanism and India’s Superrich

This book offers a deparochial account of global justice and addresses disenchantment stemming from its West-centricity and provincial theoretical formulations. As the recurring global poverty debate restricts the duties of alleviating poverty and inequality to the developed world, this book attempts to broaden the spectrum of duties to the superrich of the developing world. Drawing from the case study of India’s superrich as an exemplar of the potent agency of rising powers, the book examines the structural relationship between unbridled affluence and the (un)realisation of the human rights of the poor. It contends that India’s superrich, like their counterparts in other powerful developing countries, both contribute as well as benefit from the highly decentralised global economic order that (re)produces affluence of the few and deprivation of the many within these countries. In doing so, this book argues that the superrich have a positive duty to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality beyond their free-standing moral responsibility for philanthropy.

Aejaz Ahmad Wani teaches Political Science at Amar Singh College, Srinagar, India. He was earlier the ICSSR Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Kashmir (2022-23). His work has appeared in Journal of Global Ethics, India Review, Economic and Political Weekly, and Asian Affairs. He is currently working on a book project titled Savarkar, Schmidt and Machiavelli: Interventions in Comparative Political Theory.