Donation for School Education

Amid the gloom generated by various scams, particularly the 1.76 lakh crore loss due to 2-G Spectrum Scam, there is some cheering news.  Azim Premji of Wipro has announced $2 billion (Rs.8846 crores) donation for improvement of school education in India. Generally, the Indian billionaires have only one aim in life:   to gather more and more.  Unlike their counterparts in other countries, they hardly spend on social causes.  Here and there, we hear about donation of a few lakh rupees by film artists with full publicity and fanfare, which is just a tiny drop of their ocean of wealth.

Azim Premji was the only big industrialist who came out openly against the wasteful expenditure of Rs.70,000 crore on Commonwealth Games, which money could have been better utilized on providing better roads, education and healthcare.

I salute the kind hearted Azim Premji and hope that other top billionaires would follow his example.  They must realize that their all the wealth is not going with them after this short span of life and only the portion donated by them would go with them.  Swami Vivekanand has said that while donating,  you should be grateful to the person who has given you  golden opportunity to become the donor. India is perhaps the only country in the world where world’s richest and poorest reside.  While a large number of our crorepaties can be counted amongst the wealthiest in the world, almost half of our population are among the poorest and can hardly make both ends meet.  They do not have access to proper food, education and healthcare facilities.  Various agencies of UNO have repeatedly pointed out about the alarming income disparities in India.  With their all attention on increasing the growth rate, our successive governments have failed to tackle the problem of depravity.

Sometime back, I had read that forty of America’s richest persons have requested their government to take a large portion of their wealth and spend the same on social welfare projects.

Would our own wealthiest would follow Azim Premji’s example or of their American counterparts?