By Lawrence Pherliam Sumer
What if there is equal distribution of wealth in society? What if there is only a small gap between the rich and the poor? What if there is more social responsibility from everyone? The fact is such wishful thinking will not exist simply because every individual is selfish but some have self-control over it while others don’t. Selfishness leads the latter to one goal i.e. accumulate personal wealth as much as possible. Some do it through sheer hard work and talent, while others take the easier route through positional advantage and dishonest gains. Both nevertheless become wealthy and successful. Society does not fail to applaud the former and their success stories become motivational reasons for generations to come. On the other hand, society resents the latter and rightly so when there is lack of transparency in such wealth acquisition. What is more brazen though is the fact that today such acts are practiced indirectly. It is an open secret that many of the present day politicians acquire unaccounted wealth through family members and close relatives. No wonder we often see during necessary declaration of personal assets that their spouses’ are much wealthier. Heights of false humility!
According to “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2014”, India ranks first among nations worldwide for the overwhelming majority of extremely poor people living in the country. With 32.9%, India has the largest share of global extreme poor. In 2010, one-third of the world’s 1.2 billion extreme poor lived in India alone. Extreme poor are those who live on less than $1.25 a day (which is always debatable if we take into account the living standards of societies). On the other hand, India is also home to the fifth largest group of billionaires in the world. According to China-based research firm Hurun’s 2014 global rich list, the country is ranked fifth with 70 billionaires, 17 more than 2013. Interestingly, India has higher number of these super rich individuals than Germany, Switzerland, France and Japan when economically we are performing very poor compared to these same countries. The combined wealth of the Indian billionaires comes to a staggering USD 390 billion and hold on! These figures reflect only those who declare their assets. What about the amount of black money stashed away in Swiss bank accounts which the present Indian Government is trying to gain access to? With these two extremity indices of the poor and the rich, the gap becomes wider each year. This reflects badly on our country and it shows the powerful are becoming more powerful while the weaker section of society is becoming weaker. Who are we to blame? This gap does seem to increase all the more with BJP receiving loud backing from the corporate business conglomerate in the run-up to the 2014 general elections and thus reinforcing the image of BJP “pandering to the rich.” However there is a glimmer of hope after it came to power, if inside sources are to be believed. The BJP is trying to correct this perception by restructuring its policies and strategies keeping in mind the poor and aspiring middle class.
The need of the hour though to shorten this gap between “rich and poor” is to have a strong government ready to adopt tough economic measures and not just pander to the self-perpetuating interests of the elite few. Further, the government alone cannot help this cause unless there is an all round contribution from all sections of society including the opposition parties (who just seem to oppose everything the government does), the business houses and the citizens. Closer home, the scenario is no better than what we witness at the national level. In fact we may be even worse. We do not have access to any data here, so there is no way to compile the so called “Rich List” in our state. We only get a glimpse of this reality before the elections when the candidates have to mandatorily declare their assets. Lately, one of my close friends was asking me why only the wealthy bag the big tickets from the political parties. I had no answer but maybe the political parties do have answers to that. The truth is if you want to jump to politics, the first criterion is to have deep pockets. That is why we have majority of representatives who are “pro-rich” and would do anything to guard the interests of the rich in the Legislative houses of the country and the state but remain dumb on the more pressing needs of society. Government schemes and programs can only contribute to a certain extent in alleviating poverty from society. More social responsibility from big business individuals and corporate houses will help bridge this gap tremendously.
Philanthropists are a rare commodity today. Majority of the world’s rich and famous are philanthropists viz. the Warren Buffets, the Bill Gates, the Azim Premjis. For those who love society (Jaitbynriew as we call them here) these are the guys we would want to emulate. Critics may say because they have so much that is why they are able to give out much but I say philanthropy or social responsibility is a habit. It is only when we have learned to give out of our humble earnings that we will be able to give out of our abundance. When our world is small, we only see ourselves but when our world is big we see beyond ourselves thereby noticing the need around us. So do our children after us. After all they become what their parents are and society becomes better only when we have more of such people.
(The writer is an entrepreneur and can be contacted at [email protected])