After Edhi

Edhi is gone. No marble or gilded monuments will outlive his powerful rhyme. No eulogies sweet or dirges heavy worded can do justice to the man’s work. What matters now, is what’s next after Edhi.
For all the good work that Edhi Foundation does, how much does the society even know about the foundation as an institution? Will it continue to grow, provide protection to the poor and needy while maintaining its professional integrity or will it crumble after Edhi?
Edhi’s legacy is enough to keep the good work rolling; his wife and children at the helm of affairs have the good intentions, the goodwill, and the capacity to take charge. But until when? Once the tears dry up, and that will understandably take quite a while, a well thought out succession plan needs to be put into action. The same should be done by all other institutions of charity and philanthropy in Pakistan, considering that most of them are personality led.
Second, the society needs to take a step back and think about institutions of charity in this country. According to a SPDC study, there were about 45000 active organisations engaged in philanthropic activities in Pakistan by the year 2000, of which about a third were are not willing to be registered under any one of the four registration laws. Updated studies to that end are publicly unavailable, if done at all.
Likewise, to date no one has any reliable estimate of total charity spending in this country. The maxim that ‘one hand shan’t know what the other hand doles out in charity’ is appreciated. But that doesn’t mean that as a society we don’t record charity spending, analyze it, and make appropriate decisions based on that information.
Third, there are many big businesses and rich notables who give charity and undertake other philanthropic work over and above the due taxes they pay to the state. However, there are presumably – based on anecdotal evidence - a huge lot of people who easily conflate the two.
This lot comes in few broad categories: there are those who earn livelihood through ill-gotten means such as drug money; and there are those who underreport their revenue/profits or otherwise cook their books to evade huge taxes. In both cases, some of that ill-gotten or ill-saved money is used to build their own charitable hospitals or give charities to other institutions.
Then there are firms that have their own trusts and NGOs registered in the pre-approved list for corporate charity, and that clears the way for them to give out huge quantum of charities to their associated trusts – only to route the same back into their personal pockets. Reports by Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy point in that direction; PCP’s reports show how firms making Rs8-10 million in pre-tax profits, for example, give out Rs4-5 million as corporate charity.
Perhaps this lot wants to wash its conscience clean, pay a subscription fees for heaven, or become famous by building their reputation as a philanthropic individual/firm. Or perhaps they don’t simply trust the government to deliver public services and social welfare.
The latter might sound a bogus argument to some, but as much as the work of Edhi and his likes is appreciated, the fact that these institutions have grown so huge symbolizes a weak state - a state that has failed to protect the weak and provide for basic needs such as ambulance, orphanage, health care, blood bank, shelters, hospitals and all other services that Edhi, Chippa, Alamgir, SIUT, Shaukat Khanum etc provide.
Interestingly, according to a 1999 research by Arshad Zaman Associates for Aga Khan Foundation (Pakistan), two-thirds of monetary donations represented inter-individual transfers, while the remainder was made to organisations. This either shows a lack of awareness of institutions or lack of trust over them or perhaps a general cultural practice which may or may not be based on a convenient interpretation of religion. To the best of this column’s knowledge, those aspects are yet to be studied formally.
To the rich, private charity may provide a feel-good fulfilling feeling. But it is ad hoc. It doesn’t capacitate the poor to permanently graduate out of poverty. Nor does it help towards efficient allocation of resources; there is overspending on some sections of population or some social sectors and under spending on other. It also robs the recipient of basic human dignity. This is not to say that the society should put an end to private charity, but only that it should not come at the cost of taxes due to the state, nor should it come at the cost of efficiency or human dignity.
Anyone who wishes to take Edhi’s legacy forward should not only help strengthen institutions of philanthropy but also fix the state – a state whose system is rigged in favour of the political, feudal, and industrial elite, leaving millions at the mercy of charity.