(Image source from: www.cafonline.org)
The act of giving is always selfness. Not only does it help improve one’s take on life and their perception, it also does help them improve as a human being, in general. This was one of the reports that have been jotted down on the World Giving Index. India ranked 82 in the list published while USA did rank first in the list.
As a charitable nation, India stands in the 82nd position, under Nepal and Pakistan in comparison to the other nations around. Among the 128 nations, India did score around 82 in the list as stated by the survey around with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) which is an international organization that promotes to help transform the lives of the people and the communities around.
The findings from the study were released on October 15th, 2019 as an aggregate for the trends from each of the countries as the results of the survey conducted by CAF over the time frame of the past decade from 2009 to 2018.
The survey did cover a large demographic of people including around 1.3 million people from across the world. As part of the results from WGI, USA was placed in the first position followed by Myanmar, Australia as well as New Zealand. Some of the other countries which made it to the top 10 in the list included Ireland, Canada, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia as well.
India secured the 82nd position in the list following behind on some of the other countries like Nepal, Pakistan, Mexico and Brazil. Some of the countries that were found in the bottom included Yemen, Greece and China.
The average figures according to the statistics suggest that in India, around 34% people helped a stranger, 24% of the citizens donated money and 19% of the people donated or volunteered their time accordingly.
The only issue with India’s ranking is the fact that they may not be representing the complete picture since majority of the giving that is done in here is informal, for the most part and could have been overlooked by the survey as well.
Meenakshi Batra, who is the Chief executive of CAF stated saying, “India has a strong culture of giving, but it largely remains unorganised and informal. Assisting others or helping strangers is viewed as a family or a community/ religious obligation. But giving needs to be more strategic. Money needs to go into the right places, for the right cause. With strategic giving, philanthropy will go a long way in creating a strong and healthy economy.”
Batra also said that CAF India is recently going to be launching a digital platform to further make giving a lot easier. In this digital era, it is quite important that we use the technology for our good will and benefit. We need to leverage that to give back in a more convenient and credible way for the individuals. In the coming future, CAF is also planning on launching some of the technology platforms for the payroll giving as well as online giving. This is expected to further enhance the ranking of India in the Global list even further.
By Somapika Dutta
