After the din of a bitterly contested election, it is easy to forget that society is the foundation on which political parties and the entire edifice of democracy actually stand.
One indicator of the vibrancy of Indian society is the ‘Everyday Giving in India Report 2019’ which shows that Indians, some of them not even in the middle class, donate a total of about ₹34,000 crore every year to help others, mostly strangers. And according to the World Giving Index of 2018, by the U.K.-based Charities Aid Foundation, India tops the list of countries in the number of people donating money (although it ranks only 89th for participation rates when calculated as a proportion of the population). India is followed by the U.S. and China. However, it is significant to note that 90% of India’s ‘everyday giving’ is to religion and community; only 10% goes to social purpose organisations.
Increase in everyday giving
The good news of the ‘Everyday Giving in India Report 2019’, conducted by the Bengaluru-based Sattva, is that over the last 10 years there has been a significant increase in citizen engagement and volunteering — not just the act of giving money. Present-day ‘everyday giving’ is largely a continuation of a long-standing Indian tradition of citizens giving money to religious and caste-based organisations. India’s freedom struggle inaugurated the practice of donating in cash or kind for larger social causes and for the welfare of underprivileged communities without religious or caste considerations. This kind of donation saw some decline immediately after Independence, but has re-emerged over the last few decades. One of the most famous examples of this is Child Rights and You (CRY), an organisation founded in the 1979 by Rippan Kapur, an airline purser who in his spare time sold greeting cards to raise money for disadvantaged children. Over 40 years, CRY has benefited millions of children of all religions, castes and regions, by raising small donations from lakhs of supporters.
With the earning capacity of both Indian residents and the Indian diaspora rising, India’s ‘everyday giving’ has the potential to grow four times in the next 3-5 years, according to Sattva.
What drives people to donate? About 74% of respondents in the Sattva survey said they are moved to support a cause that needs urgent attention. Some givers said they felt a sense of affiliation to a cause, whether related to health, environment or education. Half of those surveyed said they went by the recommendations of friends and family.
Among the most common ways of collecting donations are door-to-door collections, telemarketing, payroll giving, crowdfunding, and e-commerce-based giving. All of these are projected to grow strongly.
However, many of the people surveyed said their willingness to engage with social causes was impeded by lack of information on reliable organisations. More significantly, the report says few civil society organisations make citizen engagement the core of their mission; they instead prefer to reach out to large donors (high-net-worth individuals) or international funding agencies.
There is indeed a big role to be played by large-scale philanthropy by the rich. For instance, the rich can help to plug a part of India’s ₹533 lakh crore funding shortfall to meet the targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But as Chairman of the Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra, says in this report, the Indian context needs “a billion givers rather than a billion dollars by a single giver”.
Supporting good ideas
This potential of a billion givers can only fully be realised if the giving is connected to cultivating a strong sense of citizenship and respect for the rights of all. At present, NGOs which foster this commitment to citizenship receive a small fraction of everyday giving. Secularised organisations need to reach out much more to engage the everyday giver. At the same time, religious and community-based institutions that are recipients of large-scale everyday giving need to expand beyond welfare programmes directed at their ‘own’ congregations to include work that cultivates respect for constitutional guarantees — most importantly, the right to dignity for all.
This report is of interest because it highlights the importance of making it easy for large numbers of people to support good ideas, good individuals and good institutions. In a society that appears to be bitterly polarised today, this is important.
Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based writer
