Unwarranted giving is as bad as undeserved taking

Murtaza Jafferjee
Chairman
Advocata Institute

‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ This is an oft used phrase.

I studied both economics and engineering; in both cases, the reference is to constrained optimisation. In the case of the former, resources are limited with alternative uses; and in the case of the latter, there are technical limitations.

One can only get better by being constrained – such as in Israel, where drip irrigation was developed because there was a scarcity of water.

In most cases, unwarranted giving will lead to valuable resources being poorly used. As the saying goes, ‘easy come, easy go.’ It will also have the unintended consequence of further weakening the recipient’s self-esteem.

Entitlement breeds malaise; it kills initiative, risk taking and hard work.

Unwarranted giving will lead to valuable resources being poorly used