Myopic philanthropy needs new glasses

How do we change the inherent thinking about the right to equal resources among India’s growing population of wealthy professionals?

THE affluent professional in India has a problematic relationship with philanthropy. The notion of sharing their own, burgeoning wealth – which they consider their natural due in recompense for their work – is not informed with any idea of equality or empathy.

It is, instead, considered an opportunity for a display of moral superiority, of playing to the social gallery for adulation and approval, even of impacting their self-perceived balance-sheet of good and evil deeds.

It almost never stems from a conviction that there is something fundamentally wrong in an unequal society, and doing a little bit to right this wrong is one of the most human acts that can be performed.

There is no understanding of the enormous injustice that is being perpetrated in a country where 1% of the population owns 42.5% of the wealth, with the bottom 50% owning just 2.8%. There is no realisation that a more equitable sharing of assets is only a natural way to conform to the fundamental equality of all humans.

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that philanthropy in any form is low on the list of personal priorities even of individuals or groups who might be demonstrating their capacity for sensitivity, even empathy, in other situations.

The pitches that NGOs make to well-off sections of society to contribute money for the deprived follow the same pattern: the less-than-subtle emphasis is on the personal heroism, the acquisition of the halo of goodness, that making such a contribution implies.

Those soliciting such contributions – their idealism and doggedness in the face of rejection is extraordinary and unequivocally admirable – make transparent appeals to the potential donor’s conscience and probable guilt in order to get something out of them.

Surely the time has come to change this. In a country where everyone is competing for limited resources, it is all the more important to inculcate a sense of fairness, to instil the realisation that it is one human’s natural, fundamental, even cosmic right to have access to the same standards of living – including food, shelter, education, healthcare, and the resultant freedom – as everyone else.

As we have seen over 50-odd years of a more or less socialist economic framework, followed by 25 years and counting of the charge towards a market economy, neither system has succeeded in changing the fabric of society in a way that economic strategies and forces are consciously directed towards reducing, and finally eliminating, financial disparities.

In this situation, only a profound change in the zeitgeist can ensure that wealth, no matter how it is created, is distributed in a way that reflects the fundamental equality between humans.

The professional, in particular, used as they are to the paradigm of competition, must find a way to internalise the philosophy of equality, to direct their efforts not just towards the construction of pools of wealth, but also towards its redistribution. Unfortunately, the neoliberal ethos is driving even fair-minded individuals and groups of people towards widening the disparities further. The problem, it appears, is someone else’s (the government’s?) to solve.

Perhaps any sustained strategy for converting citizens to philanthropy must begin not with appeals for contributions, but with efforts to change the intrinsic thinking about the right to equal resources. Redistribution of personal wealth, then, might become not a choice but an organic component of living.

First published in the SmallChange.ngo blog

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