Friday, November 9, 2012

To give or not to give


UK to end financial aid to India by 2015

An article on the B(iased) Broadcasting Corporation site about Britain's decision to phase out aid to India, which was a whooping $319m support. That is not a small amount for sure and if you have seen poverty in all its glory, you will know that even $1 can bring a smile.

It was sad to see from comments below the article that many liked the comment -
"Can't believe the people on here saying that we should still give aid to India. Maybe they do have povety - well let them sort that out. Like many people, I work in a company that is laying off hundreds of staff and outsourcing to India. Their economy is growing. We need to look after our own people first, i.e. the ones out of work due to India offshoring!"

Maybe this person did not pay attention in the history classes during school or it could be that the common history just glorifies Britain's colonization. I believe in something similar to Einsteins - 'Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed', which is - wealth cannot be created nor be destroyed. My point being - the way world economics worked till now is - when some get richer, some get poorer. Our economics has not been able to go beyond this. But this is not all that bad if you think the surplus wealth helped man to invent at a faster pace. Saying all this, it is not to point figure at Britain for its imperial past in India and to just blame and say "give our money back!". Neither do I believe aid alone will solve poverty in India. The idea is - not to neglect people beyond your countries boundaries, the world is not that simple anymore, it has never been either. The able needs to help poor through any means they can - we need to help each other. Poverty is now the root of all evil, desperate people are easy seeds to radicalization, terrorism. More than the factor of religion, the root cause is imbalance in progress and prolonged poverty in many areas of the world. Once upon a time poverty used to create thieves only.

For another comment in BBC article, many dislike - "I am dismayed by some of the comments on here.
Poverty in the UK is no where near what poverty is like in countries such as India.
Just because there is a economic down turn we shouldn't forget our responsibilities in giving aid.
I suggest people who think they are in poverty in uk move to one of the 3rd world countries the UK give aid to and feel what real poverty is like."

Well all I can say to this person is that mankind is not that kind still. We are a better lot now than a couple of centuries before for sure though.

By calling BBC Biased in the beginning of this article, I do not mean to offend anyone. Everyone is biased in one way or the another. We will have a truly unbiased media or world when the world acts as one, when we figure out to think beyond color, region, nationality, culture and even intelligence...

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