People Helping People
By Vengrai Parthasarathy
People helping people is not something new. Every religion commends it. While dropping a Rupee in a beggar’s bowl is a good gesture, surely one can do more than that .
Here in USA there are no beggars like we have in India, but there are quite a few homeless.
Following local practice some Indians have banded together and gifted what can be termed as a sumptuous breakfast consisting of bread-rolls, muffins,fruit juice etc.,
In India too I have seen charitable individuals supplying food packetsto commemorate some dead relative. These are but sporadic acts.
What impresses one most is the organised attempt by
individuals pitching in with efforts to trace missing/ kidnapped persons, specially women and children.
Hundreds of friends and neighbors scour the entire locality and help the police in looking for clues. And when the search concludes they
offer flowers and sympathy messages. It is all done on a purely voluntary basis at some personal expense. Other occasions when such voluntary efforts were witnessed were after the Katrina disaster and Florida floods.
It warms the cockles of one’s heart to see humaneness at
its best.
In BHEL Hyderabad, when Mr.C.B.Cariapa was the General Manager there was acommendable scheme. There were about ten thousand employees working in the Hyderabad Unit in those days.
On a voluntary basis .almost every employee contributed a
Rupee–just a rupee–every month and the money was given to the family of any employee who had died..
While ten thousand rupees is good money to the family, it mean only a rupee to the individual– a great scheme.
There is a strong case and much scope for individual volunteerism
to supplement the efforts of government and charitable organisations.