Charity is defined as a business which has two stakeholders-the donor and the recipient. The donor by his donations feels complacent by helping the recipient and the recipient feels relieved as his problem gets solved.But does charity really solve our problem?
Yesterday while standing at the auto-stand queue at 9 am,i saw the same face of an young girl coming forward for her daily alms.And as usual i opened my purse,took out a 1 rupee coin and placed it inside her begging bowl.She accepted that with gratitude and a smile on her face and went to the gentleman standing in front of me.Generally there is a feeling of inner satisfaction after giving her alms but yesterday the feeling was not the same.
What struck me was whether i was really helping her or rather enhancing her problems?Why was she coming back to us on a daily basis?Has she made this her profession like we travel to our office ?And if this is so then why so?
After some introspection i came to the conclusion that the problem lies with us and not with beggars and begging.Its our mere nature or rather say social habit to give one and two pennies and rid ourselves of our guilt.But its our donation which makes them so complacent that they think this can be an easy way out of getting free alms.Instead of giving those few alms if we all can give few minutes to talk to them and make them realize that they can achieve much more with fruitful effort and hard work that would amount to a real help to them.Nobody wants to be at the receiver’s end.Situations force him to do so.But regular donation makes that a habit.Charity then becomes a curse rather than a boon.