In our country charity surely begins at home but in most cases it ends at home as well. Those of us who are moderately rich with a means of transport sometimes feel the urge to be generous to others and find the opportunity of being so when we see street children begging or vending at a traffic signal point. This means humanity in us is not completely dead. And of course as Muslims we can hope to get promised rewards after our death for our act of generosity as it is done in the form of giving two taka (3 cents) to a beggar or buying a chocolate for one taka from a child vendor.

Thanks to the anti-corruption drive undertaken by the interim government, we have witnessed the mountain of wealth belonging to each of the apprehended few and although we do not know how many people there are as rich as or richer than them, we can at least say fairly correctly that the number is huge. If these rich people were ready to part with even a very insignificant portion of their wealth for the sake of the poor the face of poverty would not be as ugly as it is today. Perhaps it is the legacy of being ruled by colonial powers for an inordinate period of time that sometimes force becomes necessary as a stimulus to our being conscious of our moral and social obligations. While in the West giving something to charity is an essential quality of the rich, here in Bangladesh the rich mostly grudge charity.

Many of the social problems facing us are the direct cause of psychological alienation of the rich from the poor. In the past on the slightest pretext of a cause for violence private cars and buildings were vandalized and the phenomenon is often attributed to the deep-rooted anger and hatred of the deprived. Even in the media, the voice against a rich offender is much too louder than that against a poor one. Incidentally, more often than not it is the voice of those in the media, who, given their mediocre financial status, feel inclined to align themselves with the poor.

While the efficacy of specialist prescriptions such as poverty alleviation programme, which is long in the implementation process, remains to be demonstrated, without the hand of charity extended outward spontaneously no meaningful solution to the socio-economic malady can ever be achieved. The problem with us, adults, is we love to give advice and hate to take any, especially when the advice concerns moral issues.

Those that can be influenced and motivated are the ones with no means of their own to be munificent; they study at school, college or at most at the university. But those who are in the best position to guide them are either apathetic towards imparting values or interested in creating a culture of dangerous 'values'. The recent violence erupting from no plausible source at the university of Dhaka bears testimony to the glaring abuse of the teacher's right to guide the young. Teachers are traditionally thought to be the cream of society, and the windfall, if any, of the violence is the revelation that some of the cream, if not all, is infected with deadly virus and thus warrants its being quarantined, if not eliminated.