The Medicine of Hope

The beginning of this blog coincides with the G20 summit in London on April 2, 2009. The G20 is going to be a big event -- not the least because it will be the new US president Barack Obama's first-ever international summit -- but also because the expectations of the world's poor from such a gathering are naturally big themselves.

If history is any indication, then any gathering of or led by the world's richest and most powerful nations has largely gone on to disappoint the world's poor and needy. But then, as the Great Bard wrote, hope is the only medicine for the poor of the world.

So we hope. We hope that this G20 summit, where, finally, emerging countries such as India are being given a seat at the dinner table, will begin a process to practice what its members never tire of preaching -- the need to bring equitable prosperity and reduce the world's yawning disparities that are the biggest threat to world peace in the 21st century.

We hope that with their presence, countries especially such as India and China -- two countries where some of the world's richest share citizenship with the some of the world's most desperate -- will speak up front on the urgent need to bring succor to their more than a billion destitute.

This blog is committed to keeping a close watch on how the world's biggest nations at the G20 react to the agenda of the poor, and how far they go here onward to bring real change.