Charity begins at home, but where should it end?

I never liked the idea of charity, though I have nothing against this pro humanitarian effort yet the reason for looking at it from a different eye is the fact that charity is most prevalent in societies that are weak economically, socially, and politically.

It is ironic that charity is looked upon as the highest of moral virtues but on a social scale, it breeds parasites. Pakistan is one of those countries where there are thousands of charity organizations. Some operate on a small scale while others have a presence in all major cities of the country.

There are various kinds of charitable organizations that deal with sectors like healthcare, food, and shelter. It certainly seems a great idea to provide food for the destitute, put a roof over the homeless, and to care for your fellow beings but our efforts could always become a part of the problem rather than making a real difference.

Charity is only effective and needed in situations such as what we are facing today. Coronavirus has created an unimaginable health situation that has baffled the whole world. Being unprecedented, COVID-19 was a real shocker for China. For Europe, the example of Wuhan was at least a reference point to being with. For the rest of the world, the only important thing was to lock itself down.

When Corona started taking lives in China, Iran, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the USA and had reached Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and India, Pakistan was free of the virus. At that time one thing was needed that would have been more valuable than all our charity efforts put together and that one step was the closing of our borders and all entry points including airports and seaports.

The government was not serious enough at that time when few Corona cases were reported in Sindh. Now, when we have allowed the virus to seep through our streets, we have assumed the role of the most ethical, humanitarian, sensitive, and charitable nation of the world. Due to the negligence of the government and the nation at large precious human lives have been lost and thousands are at risk.

All our Prime Minister Imran Khan can do is ask for money from the people, the act he is famous for since he bagged the World Cup. How can a nation be morally upright if health has never been its priority? Since 1947 we have been busy defending our borders at the cost of the health and education of the nation. We made bombs but not hospitals or universities. We encourage people to be charitable while nobody talks about policymaking on issues concerning the common man.

We don’t need charity organizations we need infrastructure, we need a national policy on health and education. Not just that we need to allocate a large amount of our national budget to make things work. People are dying and more people will die as long as we keep doing charity. We have a habit of looking at things too closely, it’s time to look at the bigger picture.