December 5, 2007

Hidden Motive Behind Philanthropy

By Gazaraj
These days I am enjoying some kind of free time, and using it by browsing all the news sites around the world mostly originated in my country, neighboring countries and country where I am living at present.
I have been hearing about these rumor for quite a while but it came to my notice strongly when I had a chance of going through a show in CBS network which portrait a school of thought of providing a laptop to underprivileged child somewhere in the remote third world countries. While watching the show I was thinking about the very topic and different thought for and against the proposed idea.
Some of the good thoughts behind this slogan are to provide the opportunity of using technology to the underprivileged child at tender age. The pilot project conducted in some remote place in Cambodia suggest the use of laptop in their school increase the number of students and it even suggest that the most popular word among those kids is Google.
I was always skeptical and always remain so until some one provides me the clear answer to some of the question raised in my mind.
My first question was; is it necessary?
When I try to think about it, I don’t get any suitable answer why it is necessary to introduce the laptop or any technological gadgets at tender age. We have been following the same educational stream for thousands of years where book is the center of attraction. which is cheap, easily transferable, can be stored and have life period of hundred of years but I could not exactly say the same about the laptop.
My second question was; will it be successful?
The odd against the success of this project is very high, lets think about a remote place in Nepal (Jumla ? ), where there is no access to electricity; what would a child do even we provide him the laptop? Further more when I think about a laptop it has a life span of few years so what would a child do if it gets broken? Does he get a new one or he had to learn to live without it.
It is equally possible that the laptop would end up in the laps of sons and daughters of officer in charge rather than the child in remote since it has been the paradigm of all the projects in Nepal I am more than certain that it will end up like this.
My third question is against the so called philanthropy.
In my deep thought I always try to look for the different objective why somebody is doing this. I even doubt the motive behind this philanthropy and personally think it is only to make people of third world their salve (a technological slave). The reason behind this is if I get a chance to use a laptop at tender age I will be so much used to with that I will have to live my whole life using it so if I invest little now I will get a customer in making. Secondly we the people of third world due to our relation with soil we are very realistic, our teaching methodology makes our brain a keen specimen and it tend to function very well without the help of any gadget, due to that fact western world are now afraid of our brain. There are evidences of their adventure to brain wash people by intriguing in our culture but due to deep rooted in our cultural belief they have had little success.
Now government in the developed world in a desperate situation are urging people to study science and math but due to the facts that they are introduced to use of technological gadgets their ability to use their brain is decreasing. Further more foreseeing that they will loose the control in hold of technology in future they start this propaganda of making the mind of third world people dull by introducing these gadgets at tender age. Our child could never compete with people of developed world on use of technology as we always lag a good 20 to 30 years behind them.
My last question is concerning the technological dumping site.
When I go through the internet I found that the specification of these laptop is below 500 Mhz Processor and 256 MB ram we all know that due to rapid increase in processing speed beyond 1GB ram and so on so many computer are remaining idle we also know that due to strong environmental concern they could not dump it or it is very costly to dump it so it may be the motive of the company itself to use the third world country for dumping these computers in the name of philanthropy. Where, they don’t have to oblige to any environmental pact to take certain measure before dumping them.
In my concluding remarks I would like to urge people to think about the hidden motives behind the name of philanthropy and try to save our children from being the test specimen of this developed world.