Aspiring For Equality Gautam Adhikari So, was Karl Marx right? Is capitalism doomed to failure because of unsustainable, ingrained contra dictions? Or did Marx misread the future? It’s a debate that has flickered back to life in thinking circles in the US and Europe.     Two sparks have ignited it. One is a mushrooming of studies that show a rapid widening of economic inequality in major economies of the West and in emerging markets like India, Brazil and China. In Asia, 12 economies, which account for 80% of the population of the region’s developing economies, have seen inequality rise steeply in the last decade. A Pew survey of pre-poll public opinion said 70% of Indians were highly dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country. Their chief worries: corruption, inflation and, importantly, inequality.     The other spark is the release of a book, Capital In The Twenty-First Century, by French economist Thomas Piketty, a p...