Guidelines On The Value Of Giving

A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.

The New York Times published an article titled, \”Husk Power for India\”. Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity – rice husks.

Being brought up in the pastoral Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to be without light at night. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the competence to bring a lifelong idea to fruition. He led the creation of his power generation equipment from rice husks and other wastes from farms and now he sells power to rural areas across India.

Sinha is what could be called a reformative businessman because he feels business is the answer to major social problems. \”Business leaders must realise that the world\’s poor need investments more than handouts,\” he says, adding, \”these are customers, not victims.\”

The article inspired me to think about giving in a different way leading me to ask myself, \”what is the most effective form of giving?\” Is it education, commercial activity or disaster relief? There are so many ways to make a difference. One way of giving can seem more effective or sustainable than other ways depending on the way it is expressed, looked at or implemented.

I then came to define there were eight parts to giving as a way to look at this. So, let me map out the eight distinctions; which in effect are often \’stages\’ of giving as well.

Stage one: Urgency – rescuing and supporting others who are struck by natural disaster, epidemic diseases or other uncontrollable circumstances.

Phase two: Respite – providing respite from enduring need, poverty, ill-health, disadvantages or prejudice which otherwise would continue or deteriorate because of the lack of awareness, training or resources.

Stage three: Healing and protection – mentally, physically and emotionally. Many people carry traumas that may be invisible but severely limiting their lives. Giving the healing to release the deep-rooted pain creates more opportunities for them while giving suitable protection gives them a sense of security.

Stage four: Education – giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.

Phase five: Innovative investment – giving a helping hand, cash or material to those who have the ability to make a change. This gets weighed many times as the materials increase and is passed on to several others who again create more out of the chances given.

Phase six: Maintainability – working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society – ecologically and communally.

Phase seven: Empowerment – enabling and motivating the people to release their true ability and power to make a change. In this group of sharing, the aim of giving changes from \’giving to the people who want\’ to \’giving people a chance to give to others\’ and to the society.

Stage eight: Loving – just doing whatever we feel to do to love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome exists in this stage of giving. \’Giving\’ does not even exist here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no sense of possession or judgment or desire to change anything. This is where we do not even have to think about anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.

What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.

One: Sense of relationship

Two: Sense of well being

Three: Relief from pain (our own)

Four: Gratitude for our own knowledge, skills and circumstances

Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life

Six: Better ambiance for our own life and for the lives of others we treasure and revere

Seven: Soul gratifying encouragement and devotion to our own purpose

Eight: Love

Sharing has many stages and sensations based upon the donor and getter. And the \’phases\’ do not detail which one is of more importance than the other. All are mandatory.

I was lucky to have an experience early in 2008 while journeying with a group of devoted entrepreneurs across India to see how we could be more productive in our helping. I was particularly happy to have one outstanding encounter that led me to think about what \’actual giving\’ really meant.

We were travelling in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another nearby town. We dealt with the driver cautiously as our hotel staff had forewarned us about the possible swindle when they see that we were not local.

We halted briefly in front of the local train station for a short recess on the way. While the others went to use the restroom, I tried to chat with our taxi driver standing near his vehicle. With his limited knowledge of English and a wonderful smile that showed his blackened front teeth, he told me that he had a house on the suburbs of the town and he had a sweet wife and two lovely kids who went to the local school – I felt a strong bonding with him.

I congratulated him on having such a loving family and told him that I also had two children similar ages to his. When the others returned he spontaneously invited us to come to his house for lunch. I thought it was just a friendly courtesy he wanted to show at first. However, after dropping us off in the town centre, he insisted that he would wait for us until we finished our exploration in town. And he did. I was actually quite surprised to see him still waiting at the side of the road standing next to his taxi more than hour later. We jumped back into the taxi and he zoomed off up the road to where his family lived.

When we reached there we were really quite taken aback to see how he was living. It was more or less similar (if not worse) to the standard of people dwelling in slums we had visited before. From the gleaming new taxi he was driving, who could have thought this

As the car turned into the narrow unsealed road between the hut-like houses that were constructed with crudely made concrete blocks and painted mud walls, we felt contrite about having agreed to his invitation. For a brief moment I felt mortified. \”How could I have exploited the generosity of a man who didn\’t seem to have anything and I didn\’t even get any edible stuff or presents for his family\”, I thought.

As we went inside his house, we saw a vessel and a small stove on the floor. His timid young wife raised her head in surprise and withdrew into the small store room (a cupboard size) adjacent to it. As I took in the scene, I saw the neighbours residing next door giving her a few cups across the broken down concrete fence. The young couple did not even have sufficient teacups in their house. There was a single room fitted with one single bed and a pretty old galvanised box near it.

The taxi driver quickly pulled out three hand-woven rugs from the chest and rolled them out on the small patch of mud floor putting one on the bed.

Hot cups of tea came pretty fast and so did some snacks. His kids as well as all the little ones in the neighbourhood came to see us and stood around near the door. All six of us were totally wedged into the small room. I asked him with surprise where all his children slept. I thought they might be having another space somewhere. To my utter surprise, he pointed the chest and happily said that it was their sleeping space.

He cheerfully informed us that he was a dancing expert of the area and pointed at the medals displayed on the recess above his bed. Bent on showing us his dancing skills he at once ran outside. From some place music started coming into the tiny room. He has no arrangement for music in the house, it was flowing in from outside. I wondered where it came from till I saw him bringing his taxi in reverse to the back wall of his house with the doors open and music flowing in from the high volume car radio!

With his dancing and the cups of tea his wife produced, time moved quickly and it was soon time to thank them for their wonderful hospitality and proceed on our way. As we got up to leave and give our thanks to him and his wife, he took the best of the rugs he had, rolled it and gave it to us. It was practically one of the handfuls of good things he had. It was difficult to comprehend the enormity of the gesture.

We all politely declined his gift and walked out saying goodbye to all the people waving at us. We got confused about this whole thing. Should we have given some money to the family as their life obviously looked very limited? Should we have accepted his prized gift?

As I was thinking about this life-changing experience a few days later, I thought about the refusal of his gift. He looked disappointed that we didn\’t take the gift. It wasn\’t just about saying no to the gift that stuck in my mind.

I understood that the sense of unease I felt was really ensuing from viewing him as unfortunate. I was perhaps thinking that I couldn\’t possibly accept something from a person who had very little.

But did he actually have modest means? Maybe he had other things – a lot more.

Maybe the greatest gift we could have given him then was to receive his gift in total respect and gratitude.

All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.

Manoj Sinha\’s words resound in my mind once again, \”these are customers, not victims.\” I can visualise the eager faces of the village people who are now thrilled to have current in their hamlets and their little ones who now can now read and write and learn even at night.

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