Easy & pure charity in the developing world

Last time I went to Pakistan, I rediscovered the pure and easy charity method I had earlier formulated. The problem was to discourage begging while giving charity. We had also heard of stories that people kidnap children or women and make them disabled for begging. Even poor parents do that with their children. This is a very serious crime and citizens also need to discourage alongwith the government. So if you give charity to beggers, you are just encouraging this practice. This is kind of a paradox. Once I was sitting in my car in a market and a young guy came to me in a wheelchair asking for money. I asked him to sell something instead. He sighed and said: Sir I have been selling things like newspaper etc, but now i have to wed my sister and for that i need more money. So i have resorted to begging this season. Surprised, I asked him the difference of income, and he told me the figures. I don't remember the figures but his begging brought him more than his selling. That is a shame for us, the society.

So what I do is: i never pay to beggers. Instead i buy small things from people selling them near traffic signals etc. I pay them more than the thing costs, like ten rupees for a newspaper, and they become very happy. I let guys clean my windscreen and pay them, instead of screaming at them. I buy balloons even though there are no children in my house. We can even get useful things from here, like newspaper, pens, flowers, etc. You can't imagine the nice environment at home if you bring your wife flowers every now and then. So buy what you need, and buy what you don't need if possible. This way i do my part in reducing begging and increasing trading. So let us all encourage selling small items instead of begging. Let us stop more people from getting disappointed from selling and going to begging.

One last point is the practice we normally adopt concerning poor sellers. I often see people standing at roadside carts and fighting over the price. Those sellers are very people who can't even afford a shop. We are very happy to go to a very big shop or a restaurant and pay them whatever they demand, but we fight with a poor guy who saves just a couple of ruppees in every trade. It's disturbing when somebody in a big car comes and fights for five ruppees over a half kilo peanuts with a poor seller. True that most of the sellers ask more money than deserving, but in a society that has little justice, people are seldom paid according to the hardwork they do. And those who are, are not well paid because of their hardwork. So until the society becomes just, we should pay these sellers a little more than they deserve in trading.