Do not forget the ATM The economics of philanthropy
Greed was good, but philanthropy appears to be better. Billionaires fight over who can leave the biggest legacy for posterity or get to share a platform with Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Sonia Gandhi or the Chief Minister of Goa. But why would people work hard only to give their earnings away in charity? Warren Buffet says it is better to be hardworking, profiteering, wealthy and philanthropic than just to be lazy like a Goan Bhatkar because one is already rich. If one looks at the way the mining concession holders, who must surely bless the day they thought of finding a surrogate father for the “Opinion Poll”, the joy of giving seems to have washed on to Goa’s shores with the wealth from iron ore sent to Japan and China. The.240 million rupees “gift” of the four-lane “Mineral Bridge” at Usgao is just the latest of the series. According to news reports, the four-lane bridge has already claimed the life of one Tulshidas Gompu Naik hours before the inauguration. Two more students, Sangam Shivram Bandekar and Vishvesh Damodar Gaokar aged 14 and 15 years respectively, died in a crash with a speeding mining truck driven by a driver from Jharkhand. A study of the truck drivers and other workers employed in the mining areas will reveal exactly for whom it generates employment in Goa. This is not about xenophobia; it is about the truth of the assertions from an industry that provides a paltry 200 million rupees per year to the state exchequer. This amount is just about enough to pay the 20 percent Goa State share of arrears in salary to the teachers in Goa University. The rest will be paid by the University Grants Commission. Incidentally, newspersons traveling to Usgao for the bridge inauguration noticed that water taps had gone dry in Goakarvaddo, Usgao, and this is not an uncommon occurrence in the mining belt. It will soon spread to towns like Panaji, Margao, Vasco, Ponda, Sanquelim, Bicholim and Mapusa. Life is a learning process from the time one is born. The very first thing a child learns to do in this wonderful world is to cry. Doctors generally encourage the newborn child to cry. It is a sign of life and good health. A child with a weak heart soon is discovered to have “blue blood” in its veins due to poor oxygenation aggravated by the crying like a normal child. The child later learns that when one cries out there are very good chances of being heard. The villagers have learnt a similar lesson in the Gram Sabha meetings. The “education” system in the colonized world is set up to stifle the cry of the oppressed by teaching the learners about decency and decorum. A very serious and sustained effort was made to teach me about decorum in the Goa Bachao Abhiyan till the wannabe gurus, both male and female, discovered that I was a slow learner of these colonial instructional modules. They discontinued. There was no Domino effect. Most of the GBA is anti-gambling and anti-Casino, anyway! One of my master educators was simply known as “Guruji” by students and colleagues in St. Britto High School, Mapusa. Hardly anyone knows that his real name was Shri Pandurang Mahadev Naik. He taught us, and generations of students before and after us, Hindi and Marathi. He taught us the lesson about a mad king whose palace was burnt to ashes because of his eccentric laws and ordinances. The moral of the story was summed up in three words that are imprinted on my mind since Std. VIII, “Ati Tithe Maathi” or ATM. The three words simply mean “Excess turns to dust” and brings all your efforts to naught. A case in example is the Regional Plan 2011 that was repealed in 2007, but not before a head rolled in Taleigao. James Andreoni from the University of Wisconsin Madison has written an 82 page review for S. C. Kolm and J. Mercier Ythier, editors of Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, Vol. 2. The paper reviews over 25 years worth of economic research, and points to the many challenging new questions that remain. One of his conclusions is that, despite its importance, a clear understanding of philanthropy has eluded economists. He states, “One reason is the basic challenge in understanding the motives of givers: why do people give? The model of “warm-glow giving” provides a good foundation for analysis. This, however, is just a partial answer to this question. The concept of warm-glow is only a convenient reduced-form representation for deeper and more complex considerations of givers.” “We begin to analyze philanthropy as a market, with both suppliers (the givers) and demanders (the fund-raising charities). Both sides of this market are active and strategic, and both are likely to respond to changes in the government policy or other factors in their environment. Unfortunately, this interaction between the supply and demand for philanthropy has been largely neglected in both theoretical and empirical analysis. Clearly, however, its impact is extremely important. Failure to treat philanthropy as a market has likely led empirical work to overstate the effect of the marginal tax rate on giving. As policy changes, so do fund-raisers to counteract the change, so that in the long run the price elasticity of giving may be lower than could be estimated in a cross-section.” he writes further. The URL for this entry at: http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341caf5253ef00d8346171a169e2 Mining is a global business and minding their business is no less global. Once one has understood the above, it is easy to understand the Opinion Poll, the dissipation of the Konkani Porjecho Avaz [KPA] after the Devanagri chauvinistic Official Language Act, 1987, Statehood, illegal and contrived legal mining, the ODPs, DPRs, amendments to the TCP Act in 2008 and proposed amendment to the Panchayat Act, 2009, the Regional Plan for Goa, the attempts at taking the GBA down the KPA route and, of course, the “offshore” casino ships in the River Mandovi. Only the four-lane “Mineral bridge” at Usgao cannot be floated into the high seas. Unfortunately, Fr. Felix Lobo, the Parish priest of Usgao, is being converted into the Dr. Jack Sequeira of the bridge. Sudin Dhavlikar and the inimitable ex-Chief Secretary of Goa thanked Fr. Felix Lobo, whose names mean “cat” and “fox” but he was not as smart as either it appears in hindsight! In the meanwhile, attempts are made to demolish the lean-to the house of Xavier Fernandes at Vanelim-Colva while a 50-double room plus convention centre built illegally by the Fomento group is sought to be regularized at Vainguinim by amending the holy cow called the Land Acquisition Act with retrospective effect. Philanthropy at Sonsoddo and Usgao is followed by with returns on investment in philanthropy at Vainguinim. Can there be a better investment than philanthropy?? Miguel Braganza This article has appeared in the GT on 27 February, 2009 Get perfect Email ID for your Resume. Grab now http://in.promos.yahoo.com/address
