ABSTRACT
Assuming that the whole world took the UN Declaration on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2015–30 seriously we designate the present historical moment as the SDG Moment. But the seventeen-point package has no organising principle which could drive their implementation. The idea of equality could have played that role. The value which was a key goal of the anti-colonial struggle in every part of the world has been steadily pushed to the background first by the governance strategies of regimes that relied on reservation policy and then by the powerful forces of globalisation. The dominant objectives of both were achieving economic growth and maintaining stability. In this process not only much of the old inequalities of caste, class, gender, religion and others had continued, many new kinds of inequalities had emerged resulting in increasing alienation and violence. The regimes responded to them with security measures accompanied by degrees of welfare support. This chapter argues that unless structural sources of inequality in power relations are addressed, tensions in society and the world would grow and the SDG perspective will end up as yet another attempt to legitimise the neoliberal agenda of globalisation.
