Vested Interest:Enemy of Growth

Many years ago a British theologian by the name Thomas Malthus wrote that the world's capacity to feed itself was been supplanted by the rate of population growth. Not long ago, a Harvard geologist Dr. Kirtley Mather countered this proposition that mankind has the capacity to feed the world and according to him what has been deficient is the lack of the willingness to direct resources in food production and the sciences thereof.

The best of brains are not devoted to social progress but rather chauvinistic tendencies. The total defense budget of all the developed nations including that of developing world if summed up together can be used to reduce poverty to the extent that the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin can have three square meal a day dotted by snack at every interval, access to education, clean drinking water and access to primary and secondary health care. This has not been our priority because the vested interest are making money whenever there is war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Kosovo.

Who are the vested interests in this world? It is not easy to pinpoint a single person. Vested interest is not restricted to the military industrial complex but almost the giant companies in the world which feels that their monopoly or domination in the market would suffer should there be an efficient ways and means of doing things.

Take for instance, the invention of fully fledged electric car is belated yet we are told by the so-called conglomerate that the technology is not yet available. If men could go to the moon more than fifty years ago then it is possible for such invention to be made.

Vested interest in the pharmaceutical world have not allowed life saving drugs to reach millions of people in Africa and Asia who need them most. Vested interest in the area of communication make it expensive for international calls to developing countries to be unreasonably higher than the media rate for developed world.

I still believe that if vested interest would invest in clean water, safe transportation and sound education in developing world we can bring happiness to lives of people who have never drunk clean water before, or those who have not been to the classroom before.

Appiah Adomako