The Dead Sea of Wealth

Life is not just about getting but also giving-be it wealth, knowledge, love or respect. Only then does it flourish and nurture more. Money made through wrong means is like the water in the Dead Sea, which supports no life, and cannot be put to productive use. By the very nature of its generation, it cannot come out in the open for fear of being caught and the perpetrator punished. What you have to hide away you cannot give or channel for good work. All that you can do is keep it stashed-thus dead

During my school days in my Geography class, I would be fascinated while being taught about the Dead Sea. It is actually a lake and not a sea. It is so high in salt content that the human body can float easily. You can almost lie down on it and read a book. The salt in the Dead Sea is as high as 35%, almost ten times the normal seawater. The higher amount of salt allows no life at all in the Dead Sea. No fish, no vegetation, no sea animals either. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea and hence, the name.

Dead Sea vs Galilee

While the Dead Sea has remained in my memory, I don’t seem to recall whether I was taught about the Sea of Galilee in my Geography class. So when I heard about the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and the tale of the two seas, I was intrigued. It turns out that the Sea of Galilee is just north of the Dead Sea. Both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea receives water from the Jordon river. And yet, they are very different. Unlike the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee is pretty and rich with life. It has a colourful marine life. There are a lot of plants and fish too. In fact, the Sea of Galilee is home to over twenty different types of fish. Same region, the same source of water and yet while one sea is full of life, the other is dead. How come?

"The salt in the Dead Sea is as high as 35%, almost ten times the normal sea water. The higher amount of salt allows for no life at all in the Dead Sea. No fish, no vegetation, no sea animals either. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea and hence, the name"

Goes nowhere

The Jordon river flows into the Sea of Galilee and then flows out. The water simply passes through the Sea of Galilee in and then out-and that keeps the sea healthy and vibrant, teeming with marine life. But the Dead Sea is so far below the mean sea level that it has no outlet. The water from the Jordan river comes into it and gets accumulated, and is subjected to evaporation due to heat. It is estimated that over seven million tons of water evaporates from the Dead Sea every day, leaving it salty. The Dead Sea is full of minerals and unfit for any marine life. The Dead Sea takes water from the Jordon river and holds it. It does not give. The result, no life at all.

Life is not just about getting. It is also about giving. We all need to be a bit like the Sea of Galilee. We may be fortunate to get wealth, knowledge, love and respect. But if we don’t learn to give, we could all end up like the Dead Sea. The love and respect, the wealth and the knowledge that we possess can all evaporate like the water in the Dead Sea. If we get the Dead Sea mentality of merely taking in more water, more money, more everything without giving, then the end can be disastrous. A good idea is to have many outlets for giving out money, knowledge, love and respect to others. Make sure that we do not just get, we must share and give it too. Open the taps, and the floodgates to happiness open too. We must make it a habit of living a life of giving back to the people, of whatever we have, after just keeping enough for our subsistence. Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good. “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile,” said Albert Einstein.

The ethos of ’giving’

Our ancient Indian culture always emphasises on ‘giving’ to others. The giving was not only of money or materials but also of love and respect. We always considered the world as one family and our founding prayer still is that all should be happy and healthy. Probably this was one of the reasons that India was known as the golden bird. ‘Daan’ which means giving, was always in our tradition. The names of Daanvir Karna of Mahabharata or Saint Dadhich give us an insight into the extent of giving by our forefathers. The ultimate result was that India was the land of wealth.

Is it true today? Not really. After about a thousand years of foreign rule, we became a developing country, no longer rich. We also forgot our tradition of giving (daan). A major proportion of our population remained busy fighting for their daily bread, and a small section of the rich had no inclination to help others, except for a minuscule number of philanthropists. The land of riches and wealth, which believed in giving has now turned into a land of greed and has resulted in poverty.

Giving originates from compassion and it is always voluntary. In not a too distant past, we had business houses, which believed in philanthropy and they are still continuing with their noble tradition. The Tata Group comes first in this category of business people who believed that making money cannot be the sole objective of doing business. Globally also we had such business people. Henry Ford was one such global noble businessman and he said, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” Our Mahatma Gandhi believed in the theory of trusteeship and he extolled business people to follow this principle. He argued that good money earned by the rich is to be kept in trust for the poor and given to them in their hour of need. We can proudly talk about reputed organisations and institutions started by the philanthropy of the Tatas. Tata Cancer Hospital, Indian Institute of Science and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research are a few illustrations. The Government of India always believed that philanthropy is seriously needed to build the country, as the Government would be lacking in resources to cover all social services.

The Income Tax Act has been designed to give tax incentives for philanthropy. Public charitable trusts doing good work of running educational institutions and hospitals do not have to pay any tax subject to some liberal conditions. Income Tax, ED, and CBI conduct raids to detect financial irregularities in the society and the outcome of these raids reveal that many of our rich people have not learnt from the example of the Dead Sea. They have also not learnt from the example of the Sea of Galilee.

"Our ancient Indian culture always emphasises on ‘giving’ to others. The giving was not only of money or materials but also of love and respect. We always considered the world as one family and our founding prayer still is that all should be happy and healthy. Probably this was one of the reasons that India was known as the golden bird"

The Dead Sea of black money

These raids have resulted in seizures of huge unaccounted cash and valuables and also the detection of unexplained immovable properties kept in different names to avoid tax. The raids have also detected multiple shell companies hoarding black money. Black money also crosses boundary demarcations and travels to offshore tax-havens. The custodians of this black money never believed in giving and helping the needy. They went on and on in sharpening their skills in earning black money, hoarding it and then hiding it. Some might have been successful but many also get caught by the enforcement agencies and they land up in jail and their money gets evaporated like the water in the Dead Sea. Their money gets seized by the government and they are left behind with the extreme saltiness of pain.

They could have remained rich with accounted income while also giving surplus to charity. Some smart rich people who might have escaped the raids by the enforcement agencies, ultimately get caught due to their bad ‘karma’ when family disputes break out. Even after their death, it is the legacy of war which evaporates their wealth. The fact of the matter is that evaporation of the hoarded wealth can take place either in the lifetime of the owner or after his death. It is like the law of nature which creates the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.

Earnings of crime

Raids conducted by enforcement agencies not only unearth earned and hoarded money but also criminally extorted money that is hoarded. For example, recently, a senior lady IAS officer was arrested for keeping about `19 crore with her chartered accountant while also owning properties worth 150 crore, as per media reports. These earnings were not from legitimate activities but from criminal activities of robbing the state and the people. Since she had to hide the money, obviously there could be no charity. Today, she and her husband are in jail and all her cash has been seized and properties attached. In this category, there are many politicians who are supposed to do public service, get caught and their wealth also ultimately gets evaporated. The greed of earning through criminal means forces them to remain in hiding. There cannot be any philanthropy from such people. Robin hoods are rarely born.

We all are stakeholders while developing the country. We all have to individually contribute if we want to see our society growing or the country becoming economically and socially developed. We must realise that among other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver. Let us follow Mahatma Gandhi who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”