A new innovation is transforming many lives in the villages of India by bringing light where there used to be darkness.
An article was published in The New York Times named, “Husk Power for India”. Current, which is routinely available in the lives of most in industrialized nations, is an unimaginable luxury in out-of-the-way corners of emerging countries. What was once fodder for cattle is now used to produce current – rice husks.
Raised in the rural state of Bihar, Manoj Sinha understood what it was like to sit in darkness. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the ability to bring alive the dream of a lifetime. He led the advancement of his power equipment that produces electricity from rice husks and other farm wastes and now he trades it to hamlets across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social industrialist because he feels entrepreneurship is a way out for important problems of the society. “Business leaders must realise that the world’s poor need investments more than handouts,” he says, adding, “these are customers, not victims.”
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, “what is the most perfect form of giving?” Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to define there were eight parts to giving as a way to look at this. So, let me map out the eight distinctions; which in effect are often ’stages’ of giving as well.
Phase one: Exigency – salvaging and helping others who are suffering due to natural calamities, epidemic diseases or other insurmountable problems.
Stage two: Reprieve – providing reprieve from long-standing malnutrition, penury, illnesses, handicaps or inequity which otherwise would prolong or get worsened because of the lack of perception, edification or resources.
Phase three: Curing and defending – morally, bodily and spiritually. Many people carry scars that may be invisible but strongly constricting their lives. Giving the cure to release the long-standing suffering creates more chances for them while giving necessary defense gives them a feeling of security.
Stage four: Education – giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.
Stage five: Inspired investment – giving a help, capital or resources to those who have great talent to alter the situation. This gets used many times as the resources become more and passed on to other people who again produce more out of the prospects given.
Stage six: Tenability – working together with the people in the local surroundings, creating tenable groups – ambiance-wise and reciprocally.
Stage seven: Empowerment – empowering and inspiring the people to unleash their true potential and motivation to make a difference. In this group of giving, the aim of giving changes from ‘giving to the people who are in need’ to ‘giving people opportunity to give to others’ and to the community.
Stage eight: Cherishing – just doing whatever we like to do to tend and care for others. No approach or expected upshot exists in this stage of offering. ‘Giving’ does not even exist here in the physical sense of the word, as there is no sense of owning or decision or craving to modify things. This is where we do not even have to consider anything, we give out of a sense of our own fulfilling sensations.
What we also perceive is that at each one of these eight stages of giving there are distinctive things that the donor gets back.
One: Sense of bonding
Two: Sense of well being
Three: Relief from pain (our own)
Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions
Five: Long-term sense of involvement and fulfillment for our own life
Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish
Seven: Soul fulfilling inspiration and dedication to our own purpose
Eight: Affection
Giving has many planes and understandings upon the basis of the giver and the beneficiary. And the ‘levels’ do not explain which one is higher than the other. All are imperative.
I was lucky to have an experience early in 2008 while journeying with a group of devoted entrepreneurs across India to see how we could be more productive in our helping. I was particularly happy to have one outstanding encounter that led me to think about what ‘actual giving’ really meant.
We were in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another town in the vicinities. We bargained with the driver with care as our hotel staff had told us beforehand that we could be duped since we were not local.
We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a short interval en route to the town. While the others went to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two kids who attended the local school – I began to feel a relationship with him.
I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.
When we landed there we were quite surprised to see the way he was living. It was in fact quite similar (if not worse) to the existence of the slum dwellers we had visited before that. From the bright new taxi he was driving, who could have pictured this
As he drove into the narrow unsealed street between small houses that were made with roughcast concrete blocks and mud painted walls, we almost regretted about saying yes to his invite. For a brief moment I felt pangs of guilt. “How could I go to this man’s home who didn’t seem to have anything and I didn’t even bring any food or gifts for his family”, I thought.
As we got into his house, we saw a small pot and a stove on the mud floor. His shy sweet wife smiled and blushed at the sight of visitors and vanished into the cupboard sized storeroom of the house. As I looked around, I saw the man’s neighbours giving the woman a few cups over the crumbling concrete walls. They simply didn’t have enough cups in their house. There was just a single small room that had a lone cot and an old galvanised trunk adjacent to it.
The cab driver swiftly took out three hand-woven rugs from the galvanised box and placed it neatly on the small space of the mud floor keeping one on the bed.
Hot cups of tea came pretty fast and so did some snacks. His kids as well as all the little ones in the neighbourhood came to see us and stood around near the door. All six of us were totally wedged into the small room. I asked him with surprise where all his children slept. I thought they might be having another space somewhere. To my utter surprise, he pointed the chest and happily said that it was their sleeping space.
He gleefully told us that he was a dancing champion in town and pointed to some trophies on the shelf above the bed. Keen to show us his dancing skills he suddenly dashed outside. From nowhere music filled the tiny room. He didn’t have any music system in the house, it was coming from outside. I was curious so I stood up to see him reversing his taxi right against the back wall of his house with the doors wide open with car radio on full volume!
The time moved fast (with his dancing and the many more cups of tea that followed) and very soon it was time to thank them for their great warmth and courtesy and make our move. As we got ready to leave and express our gratitude to him and his wife, he pulled out the best of all the rugs he had, and just gave it to us. It was one of the very few things he owned. It was impossible to believe that he was offering it to us.
We all politely declined his gift and walked out saying goodbye to all the people waving at us. We got confused about this whole thing. Should we have given some money to the family as their life obviously looked very limited? Should we have accepted his prized gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn’t accept the gift. It wasn’t only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I realised that the sense of discomfort I felt was actually coming from perceiving him as less fortunate. I was thinking that I couldn’t possibly take anything from someone who had so little.
But did he really have so little? Maybe he had more – a lot more.
Maybe the greatest gift we could have given him then was to receive his gift in total respect and gratitude.
Every act of sharing and taking are indispensable for us to fill our world with profusion and satisfaction in equal measure for both sharer and taker. We can start doing this instead of evaluating and validating one over another. The beautiful act of sharing and taking requires no additional elucidation.
Manoj Sinha’s words echo in my mind once again, “these are customers, not victims.” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing. Unique version for reprint here: Eight Stages Of Giving – Your Guide To Wealth.
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