Long back, when I was working at Infosys, a colleague joined office and he was allocated seat near my cubicle. Those days, employees used to have fixed place to sit and work from, I am sure it is like this for most companies even now, although many IT companies have switched to 'cost saving' by removing physical allocation of cubicle to employees. Due to fixed cubicle, we used to have "neighbours" and got to bond with them. I remember, the new colleague was very obese and had just come to India after working in the USA for many years. When asked, he said he shifted to India to better look after family, although he did not like life and facilities in India as much. He was also upset that some of the promises made to him at the time of joining had not materialised, and he was not even happy with his work because he was given project work in a different area than his core skill. Remembering those days, it feels like very good times, when there were plenty of jobs, plenty of employees and plenty of choices and grievances.
At that time when the new and 'unhappy' employee started working from the cubicle next to me, there was a donation drive conducted in office to fund some social work. I remember a couple of colleagues visited cubicle-to-cubicle and collected funds. They did not ask for more than Rs 100 and I was happy to contribute the same amount when asked. But the US returned rich but unhappy colleague declined to contribute anything! When asked about the reason, he said something like, "We already pay so much money in taxes to the government, what is the need to also spend money in charity? Why government is not making use of tax money to fund all those social work?" After the contribution seeking volunteers went back disappointed, the particular colleague kept repeating his moral stand of not contributing.
At that time, I did not understand his motive much. All these years, this incident came to my mind many times and I still did not fully understand his stand. But recently, a thought came to my mind, which made me look at that incident in a whole new light.
First of all, I don't think the colleague was right in assuming that our social obligations end with paying taxes to government. Paying taxes is not a voluntary act from our side, but it is a statutory requirement which we fulfill without giving a thought, and often to save ourselves from prosecution or penalisation too. I think true charity or social work has to be a voluntary act, where we "choose to help" when we had a "choice not to help". Therefore, his theory and moral stand for not contributing was juvenile at best.
At the same time, a thought came to me recently about how much role "external validation" plays in the things we do; and why do we think that only helping "strangers" count towards social service. How about a man giving money to an orphanage supporting children, but at the same time not giving time to his own children who keep getting raised without proper love and care of their parents? How about someone making visits to old-age-home and giving financial support to the old people living there, but at the same time one's own old parents are living troubled devoid of love and care by their grownup children? Why is it that giving love and care to one's own family or blood relatives not considered akin to social work? Like it has happened to child-raising where a woman goes to school to take care of other people's children while her own children are also being taken care by others, making a chain of weird "unsocial" relationships; if we stretch this to other spheres of life, the world becomes too gloomy.
Under light of these thought, I am looking at the behaviour of my old colleague, my own behaviour and work, as well as all the ongoing things around me in a different shade.
What if there is no social brownie points to be earned for doing social work or charity; how many would still choose to do it? And how many of us would understand that prioritizing the welfare of their own family does not make them selfish or bad people? Our own family, children, parents, relatives, they all are part of the "society" we intend to service, and although we shall not get any "certificate of appreciation" for doing something for them, what we do shall still be very valuable. And perhaps irreplaceable.
Hoping for peace and health of one and all.
- Rahul Tiwary
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