{"id":113626,"date":"2013-11-08T02:18:23","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T20:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=113626"},"modified":"2013-11-12T16:51:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T11:21:50","slug":"on-giving-left-and-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/on-giving-left-and-right\/","title":{"rendered":"On Giving Left And Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Malinda+Seneviratne+&amp;x=8&amp;y=4\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_105560\" style=\"width: 140px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sunila-abeysekera-and-the-prerogatives-of-the-displaced\/malinda-seneviratne-150x150\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-105560\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105560 \" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" width=\"130\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n<p>OMG, BTW, WTF and other three-letter \u2018words\u2019 which sound more like 4-letter words are relatively new.\u00a0 Time was when acronym was \u2018short\u2019 for proper noun, for example a political party; there was LSSP, CP, UNP, SLFP, FP, TULF, JVP and later TNA, ITAK, SU, JHU and so on.\u00a0 Maybe NGOs (yes, another 3-letter four-letter word) had something to do with it.\u00a0 NGOs, or rather FGOs (Foreign Government Organizations) as veteran journalist and prolific commentator H.L.D. Mahindapala calls them, talk a language that sounds foreign to non-N\/FGO people.\u00a0 Nothing beats CSR, though, I sometimes feel.<\/p>\n<p>Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, sounds nice.\u00a0 Wholesome.\u00a0 It probably makes those who work for corporates feel good about themselves.\u00a0 But CSR projects generally cost next to nothing in overall expenditure and typically corporates make a song and dance about SCR that quite out-shouts the pits and pieces of feel-good they dish around.\u00a0 It is called brand positioning.<\/p>\n<p>Consider this.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately after the tsunami struck Sri Lanka in December 2004 and after the immediate sense of horror, there was an outpouring of generosity. People gave and gave and gave, and gave in a thousand different ways.\u00a0 There was no name to giver, to claim of giving.\u00a0 People gave, as individuals and collectives.\u00a0 Schools, clubs, cooperatives and groups of friends did what they could.\u00a0 But there was a different class of givers too, a different colored \u2018generosity\u2019.\u00a0 This was the Giving-Bragging club, one could call it.<\/p>\n<p>There were corporate entities sending lorry-loads of bottled-water. With label.\u00a0 Either on cap or on the side of the bottle.\u00a0 With legend about who did the giving.\u00a0 That\u2019s giving of the return-envisaging kind.\u00a0 It is called investment.<\/p>\n<p>Is that giving?\u00a0 Is that <em>dana<\/em>? Well, it is of course unlikely that one can draw a direct line from beneficiary to some kind of advantage that the giver obtains somewhere down the line.\u00a0 On the other hand, a generally positive association with a brand, product or company does pay, down the line.\u00a0 Investment is recovered, often with interest.\u00a0 That\u2019s giving \u2018of a kind\u2019, but only in appearance.\u00a0 In essence it is business. As usual.<\/p>\n<p>Alms is not about that kind of giving.\u00a0 It is not investment, it is not business.\u00a0 Consider the following line from the Bible: <em>\u2018But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth\u2019<\/em> (Matthew 6:3).\u00a0 Such giving goes without name-tag.\u00a0 There can be face, word and smile, due to necessity, but there won\u2019t be thought of possible recovery, possible benefit; not of the \u2018return on investment\u2019 kind and certainly no thought of pruning tax payments.\u00a0 One gives, because some urgent need is identified and because one can.\u00a0 And that\u2019s it. No more talk of it.<\/p>\n<p>If, on the other hand, the left hand knows what the right gives, then left, metaphorically speaking, is ready and able to take back, in one way or another, what was given.\u00a0 With interest, one must add, because that kind of giving is not about giving X and taking back X+A (A=Transaction Cost), for business if not about a zero balance sheet but an exercise where marginal benefits must outweigh marginal costs.\u00a0 Like CSR.\u00a0 Like politicians doing what they are mandated to do and what they promised to do, and then spending public funds to brag about it as though it has cost them an arm and a leg, which they gladly \u2018gave\u2019 because they so love the people.<\/p>\n<p>Merit accrues. One way or another.\u00a0 But if it is desired, the gloss of giving comes off.\u00a0 If it is advertised, then there\u2019s no gloss to begin with.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to give or if someone claims to give, this side of not looking a gift horse in the mouth, it is always good to check the hands, right and left, and their knowledge or ignorance of one another.\u00a0 Good to ask oneself, for we are all humanly frail and unconsciously pass the buck, so to speak, from one hand to the other.\u00a0 In short, we can\u2019t do alms and CSR at one and the same time.\u00a0 That would be a four-letter word, I am sure.<\/p>\n<p><em>*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/malindawords.blogspot.co.uk\/\">www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - 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