You have set yourself as an example for the generations to come………..
Do you know what the biggest disadvantage of capitalism is? Unequal distribution of wealth and resources, capitalism provides opportunities not equality, opportunities that too only for the strongest, toughest, fittest, the intelligent, the highly qualified, and the rich. Other way to describe capitalism is ‘survival of the fittest’. Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory applies to the life in jungle. Capitalism is based on the same cruel theory; a capitalist society hardly cares for the sick, needy and the unfit.
Prof. Jeffery Sachs, The Director of Earth Institute, at Columbia university and former Chief economic advisor to the then UN General Secretary Mr.Kofi Annan and present Special advisor to UN General Secretary, Mr.Ban Ki Moon, writes in his book ‘The end of poverty’ – How can we make it happen in our time, that “we can eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2025 within the limits that the rich world (rich nations) has already committed (at United nations): 0.7 percent of the gross national product of the high income world, a mere 7 percent out of every $10 in income. All of the incessant debate about development assistance and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1 percent of rich world income”. But he speaks about various prestigious international organizations like IMF, Word Bank etc and governments of the rich nations that don’t take much serious efforts to even fulfill their commitments.
In a situation like this when even international organizations and rich Government don’t stand enough for the cause of the poor. A man somewhere from a rich and powerful nation, the heart of capitalism, where most of the people enjoy good standard of living, stands up for the cause of the poor, he is not just an another ordinary man, but a billionaire, business tycoon, to whom the world listens to, the man is none other than Microsoft’s Founder Mr. Bill gates.
Generally, I don’t have a good opinion about the super rich, or respect them as they just mindlessly keep on accumulating wealth without knowing that nothing can they take with them when they leave the earth, and don’t have the insight to think that being powerful and rich they have a great opportunity to serve the poor and needy and make their own lives more meaningful. A few do some kind of charity for the sake of society and the charity that they do is nothing compared to the revenue they generate, thus nothing substantial is ever achieved to help the bottom of pyramid to raise their standard of living. You may ask, why should one help the poor, it’s their fate, doing charity is a choice not an obligation. It’s up to them, As Jeffery Sachs writes in his book how most of Americans thought that they couldn’t afford to help poor nations as they have to spend for the army to protect their nation. Well, a poor is poor not only because of his fate, but because of our system itself, which favors a few, a few become super rich only at the cost of the millions of poor, the system which facilitates the smart and intelligent and the strongest to drain all resources that could have been sufficient to feed millions and the system forces them to remain under poverty. Well, I don’t want to explain this fact in detail, as it would require a couple of economic theories to highlight and explain how the wealth systematically gets accumulated at the hands of few and that is not the subject of this article.
Coming back to the story, I would say that this man is exceptional and unique, stands up for a cause and sends out a strong message to the super rich of the word that ‘let me be the first, come and join hands with me, we will together make the world a better place to live’. Recently, this Gentle man, Mr.Bill Gates along with his wife Mrs.Melinda Gates and another interesting personality Mr.Warren Buffet, another billionaire and owner of Berkshaire Hathaway, has started a campaign in United States asking the nation’s billionaires to pledge to give at least half of their net worth to charity in lifetime or death. They have till now got tremendous response from the billionaire community in the United States. Thirty-Eight US billionaires have pledged at least 50% of their wealth to charity so far and Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet have a combined net worth of around $100 billion have already committed most of their money to charity. There are around 400 billionaires in US and if all were to give 50% of the net worth of wealth away during the life time or death, which would be $ 600 billion. A charity campaign drive which is the biggest in the history of mankind and the US press claims would change the face of philanthropy.
These three (Gates, Melinda Gates and Buffet) probably would have thought and come to the conclusion that, the true meaning of life is to make others happy, In Albert Einstein’s words ‘a life lived for others is worth life.’ These two wonderful people (Gates and Buffet) have always been successful in life, passionate about it and business earned a lot of wealth and now they have decided to spend their wealth for the under privileged, diseased and the poor. I don’t think anyone can make his/her life better than this.
The Melinda and Gates foundation has been doing some wonderful charity work around the Globe by running so many projects (education, medical aid, aid for disaster victim etc) to help the under privileged and the poor mostly of the developing or under developed countries of Asia and Africa and most importantly there is no question of corruption in foundations run by such people, they keep everything transparent and clean and would ensure that the funds are properly utilized for the welfare of the poor.
There was news about Bill Gates planning to come to India extending this campaign to ask the billionaires of this nation to join them in this biggest charity drive run ever. Billionaires in India, are the most privileged not because they are billionaires but they are billionaires in a nation where most of the population depends on agriculture, and millions live under poverty line and the standard of living of the middle class of this nation (a strong 300 million which the economists say is a big advantage) is not up to the International Standards and these billionaires have always been tremendously favored by governments by either favorable policies, or by facilitating these people to buy or acquire controlling stake in profitably running PSUs and even if so called sick PSUs were sold, they were sold at a price much lower than the market price (Possible price the units would have commanded in the market) or by granting licenses for mining our natural resources ( which many corporate companies have misused in the past and even the recent times)all these factors have also helped them accumulate wealth. (Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri has written an article about how billionaires of this nation accumulated wealth and how government facilitated it, in one of his article ‘Blood billionaires, Scam Billionaires, Indians storm into the global billionaires’ list’). Now that a great charity campaign coming to India, it’s time for these billionaires to respond and show their loyalty towards their nation and some compassion towards the poor.
It’s not that Indian industrialists haven’t moved by the pathetic conditions of the poor in our country. In every case, there use to be exceptions and here again there are exceptional people like Narayan Murthy who has been sincere and straightforward and earned wealth by his hard work, intelligence and efforts. He has been said to be doing some great charity work already. Mr. Shiv Nadar, one of the founders of HCL has pledged 10% of his wealth for charity and his focus he said would be education, but still we need a lot of such Narayan Murthys and Shiv Nadars.
Now, it’s time for Indian billionaires to come forward and do something for the society and not just lip service, but charity in a true sense. When Bill Gates comes to India with such a campaign, he would expect the same kind of response and enthusiasm from the Indian billionaires as well that he got from the Americans. Is Corporate India Listening?
