Inequalities in equality Bharat Jhunjhunwala The West and Islam are at loggerheads with each other. This is unfortunate because both are fundamentally egalitarian ideologies. The French Revolution of 1789 was anchored on the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Yet, the French people enslaved large parts of North Africa in the nineteenth century–after the French Revolution– and perpetuated a number of atrocities on those people. They applied “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” to the French people and not to the African people. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States. Yet, the US today has been aggressively promoting the interests of its multinational corporations leading to wealth for the West and poverty for the East. It introduced the Patents Acts in the World Trade Organization. Previously India was free to copy and make a product invented by an American MNC as long as the Indian copier did not use the same process to make the product as used by the American inventor. Before the introduction of the Patents Act in the WTO, an Indian pharma could make the Pfizer vaccine for Covid-19 as long as it used a different process than used by Pfizer to make the vaccine. To give another example, it is reported that the cost of production of Windows software by Microsoft is only one US dollar whereas Microsoft is selling it at about ten dollars per piece. Indian software companies cannot copy the Windows software due the Patents Act. This kind of profiteering is leading to poverty in developing countries and richness in Western countries.