On his recent visit to India, the US businessman, Bill Gates, donated half a billion dollars to the Indians — $100 million to help AIDS patients and $400 million to promote the country’s IT industry.
These generous gestures by one of the richest men in the world mean a great deal to Indians, more than, in fact, help from charitable funds which aim simply at helping alleviate the poverty in Indian cities. Bill Gates seems to realize that genuine scientific and industrial progress is the only hope for Indians to escape the clutches of poverty and all the problems that accompany it.
We should learn from a billionaire such as Bill Gates who has chosen a meaningful way to perform a charitable act. His large investment is expected to yield far-reaching positive results. It will serve both him and a billion people in a country saddled with overpopulation and poverty.
It is not a difficult thing for Bill Gates to donate $1 billion to charity, particularly when US regulations allow considerable tax breaks for charitable contributions. Whether Gates is prompted by his love of helping the suffering millions or motivated by business interests is not the question: I am sure his dollars will serve both purposes — the interests of his own industry as well as helping the Indian economy to generate more employment opportunities.
This is the time of the year in our area of the world for campaigns to collect donations and perform acts of charity. However, I do not find any among us with Gates’ ability to identify the factors that lead to real progress in poor societies. His act also emphasizes that charity should not be simply handing out free meals or free housing.
On the other hand, charity should be a means of developing a country’s employment and economic potential as well as enabling the country to make economic progress and liberate people from poverty.
One wonders what the point is in collecting huge sums for charity every Ramadan and spending it in ways that do not reduce the number of poor people or keep them out of dole queues. What is the point in giving people more blankets and boxes of dates for a few days, and then leaving them hungry and cold for the rest of the year? Why should we keep people clinging to a brief once-a-year dream of relief? Why are our charity funds not used to develop the potential of the poor so that they can convert their dreams into reality and extricate themselves from poverty?
The idea of charity in our societies has for too long been associated with shortsighted humanitarian considerations which mean the poor must wait for donors year after year. In fact, what the charities should do is dedicate themselves to permanently emancipating the poor from poverty.
