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 a piece named, “Husk Power for India”. Power, which is common in the lives of most in advanced countries, is a rare bonus in far-flung areas of underdeveloped countries. What was once cattle feed is now used to generate power – rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a lifelong idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages 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 identify there were eight sections to giving as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight methods; which in effect are often ‘phases’ of giving as well.
Stage one: Necessity – saving and helping others who are afflicted by natural catastrophe, contagious diseases or other unmanageable conditions.
Stage two: Reprieve – providing reprieve from long-standing malnutrition, penury, illnesses, handicaps or inequity which otherwise would prolong or get worsened because of the lack of perception, edification 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.
Stage five: Creative investment – lending a hand, money or resources to those who have great potential to make a difference. This gets leveraged many times as the resources increase and passed on to many others who again make more out of the opportunities given.
Phase six: Maintainability – working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society – ecologically and communally.
Stage seven: Empowerment – empowering and inspiring the people to unleash their true potential and motivation to make a difference. In this group of giving, the aim of giving changes from ‘giving to the people who are in need’ to ‘giving people opportunity to give to others’ and to the community.
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 bonding
Two: Sense of wellbeing
Three: Relief from pain (our own)
Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions
Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for our own life
Six: Better ambience 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: Care
Giving has many planes and understandings upon the basis of the giver and the beneficiary. And the ‘levels’ do not explain which one is higher than the other. All are imperative.
I was fortunate to have an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated businessmen through India to see how we could be more useful in our giving. I was blessed to have one exceptional happening that made me think about what ‘effectual giving’ actually 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 chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school – I began to feel a relationship with him.
I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As he drove into the narrow unsealed street between small houses that were made with roughcast concrete blocks and mud painted walls, we almost regretted about saying yes to his invite. For a brief moment I felt pangs of guilt. “How could I go to this man’s home who didn’t seem to have anything and I didn’t even bring any food or gifts for his family”, I thought.
As we got into his house, we saw a small pot and a stove on the mud floor. His shy sweet wife smiled and blushed at the sight of visitors and vanished into the cupboard sized storeroom of the house. As I looked around, I saw the man’s neighbours giving the woman a few cups over the crumbling concrete walls. They simply didn’t have enough cups in their house. There was just a single small room that had a lone cot and an old galvanised trunk adjacent to 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.
Steaming cups of tea and hot snacks arrived soon. Both his kids as well as kids from the neighbouring houses came to see us and remained at the doorway. The six of us could just squeeze into the tiny room. I was curious to know where his children were sleeping. I thought maybe they had another space somewhere. To my astonishment, he just pointed at the chest and said with his happy smile that it was their bed.
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 courteously begged off his gift and moved out waving goodbye to all the people waving back at us. We got real baffled about the whole affair. Should we have paid them something as they surely had only too little money? Should we have consented to take the cherished gift he made us?
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 realised that the sense of discomfort I felt was actually coming from perceiving him as less fortunate. I was thinking that I couldn’t possibly take anything from someone who had so little.
But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more – many more.
Maybe the greatest gift we could have given him then was to receive his gift in total respect and gratitude.
Every act of sharing and taking are indispensable for us to fill our world with profusion and satisfaction in equal measure for both sharer and taker. We can start doing this instead of evaluating and validating one over another. The beautiful act of sharing and taking requires no additional elucidation.
Manoj Sinha’s words echo in my mind once again, “these are customers, not victims.” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.
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