<b>Hamid Ansari:</b> Without equality there wouldn't be much of a future

Rising inequality is seen as a contributing cause for the rise of authoritarian leaders

In advance of the world’s financial and economic elite going to Davos for their annual meeting, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report. The 2017 edition highlights some risks facing the global system and places the issue of income inequality as the number one risk because it is associated with a rise in populism and threatens the cohesiveness of countries. It describes the present as “a febrile time for the world”.

Four earlier annual editions of the report had similarly identified rising inequality among the top four global risks. It is therefore not surprising that reducing inequality