India has a tough lesson to teach about fate: It is often not up to us to change it.
India has numbed my repulsion of poverty (in much the way as my repulsion to illness, like the way I look away when a bloated African child appears on TV, remains unchanged). While my thesis on the art of not giving may sound anti-socialist, it is the belief that poverty is an economic reality to be solved with macro economic policy (e.g. government spending and taxation) and microeconomic incentives (e.g. micro finance) rather than the belief in a personal responsibility for another’s lot (e.g. charity) that will ultimately help the poor escape their fate.
India’s many beggars use many tactics to extract funds, and after giving money to more beggars than I can count, I am slowly learning the art of not giving, a task I am finding much harder than its contrary - guilt-driven giving coupled with beggar dodging. I have limiting my experiment to situations where the beggar seems unwilling to change their lot (i.e. does not engage in fraud or enterprise) and where but for guilt or pressure, I would have otherwise not have given money - such as a mother parading her retarded son or a deformed man threatening to touch me with his stump if I didn’t give him money.
It is the belief that one has no responsibility for another’s lot that enables one to get out of the entanglement of unnecessary guilt and attachment. Of course, if one is naturally disposed towards not giving, perhaps you should run the experiment in the reverse.
Here’s an example of not giving: The other day I had left my phone to recharge in the home of my innkeeper as the power was out in my room. Last night I received a note from my innkeeper’s son, a university educated young man, who has developed an unhealthy obsession with my phone, stating “Please Please Please, PLEASE FRIEND GIVE ME MOBILE. Ur’s favour will be on me always”. He has ambushed me in the morning and night to beg me for my phone and has offered to pay its market value (after borrowing Rp10,000 from a loan shark at 10% per month) or work for me for a period of time. I decided against it despite my intention to dispose of the phone, the fair value offered and the tremendous amount of guilt exerted (including an invitation to tea, birthday party and family house). The truth is that he had no need for a PDA – and should be prevented from entering a cycle of debt for a useless purpose.
So it seems, perhaps sometimes withholding is the better form of giving.
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4 January, 2008 at 3:16 pm
harinair
A few years ago, on a journey to Gorkarna, I met an American tourist. The gent was in his late thirties or early forties. One thing he told me stuck. He said, the first time he came to India, he couldn’t figure it out. Everything he figured in the first few days was overturned in the next few. So he decided to return for another take. And kept returning. When I saw him, he claimed to be on his 8th visit.
So, I have a feeling this is a good subject for a blog. Since you have just started, there is a possibility of it going on for sometime. Sorry to sound smug; but I am an Indian, so the idea of repeated visits to ‘understand’ us is fascinating.
Welcome to India. Have fun.
10 January, 2008 at 9:52 am
The art of not giving | DesiPundit
[...] on his first visit to India, learns a lesson about fate and fatalism. India has a tough lesson to teach about fate: It is often not up to us to change [...]
10 January, 2008 at 6:52 pm
lekhni
My own experience is that giving results in 2 kinds of reactions from the recipient - (i) a sense of obligation to return the favor (think return gifts between friends/ colleagues) and (ii) a sense of entitlement (when the recipient is poor).
I personally prefer to give to people who are trying to earn through honest work, rather than beggars. So I will buy balloons and pens I don’t need from a kid and tip him extra, but I will not allow a beggar to guilt me into giving him anything. Why should I encourage the beggar’s self-pity and sense of entitlement?
11 January, 2008 at 4:07 am
Jam
I, as an Indian, who have seen these beggars in almost all Indian cities have made myself a resolution not to give any assistance to these folks simply because of one reason, and that is to teach them not to rely on this ‘profession’ as their only source of livelihood.
I personally have seen instances in Bangalore, where people get out of autos, go behind the tree in the corner, change from their moderately decent clothes, to beggarish clothes and then go out to traffic signals to engage in their ‘livelihood’. At the end of a hot day in the sun, after inhaling all that carbon monoxide fumes, they go back behind the tree, change into their decent clothes, pocket their earnings and probably go back home to their modest dwellings. These are not ‘beggars’ in the right sense of the word, for most of these folks, this is a ‘profession’ and not the only means of their livelihood.
This kind of hoodwinking is encouraged by most middle class Indians who in their ignorance are breeding generation after generation of beggars in India.
Cheers………..Jam
13 January, 2008 at 10:09 am
skp
Sweet !!