When I want to feel good about charitable giving in South Asia, I look to ordinary people, not the super rich. Despite religious and cultural taboos against organ donation, there is one town in India where tens of thousands of people have pledged to donate their eyes when they pass away. And it’s not just talk, the people of Neemuch in Madhya Pradesh have already given sight to 3,000 others across India.

This large scale kindness to strangers started out in a more modest and typically desi way, with a gift of a cornea within a family:

Neemuch’s reputation as the town of eye donors began some three decades back when a venerable local politician Shyammukh Garg pledged his eyes before passing away at the age of 55. Mr Garg had pledged his eyes for a simple reason: his grandson had lost his vision after his birth, and he was keen that the little boy should try regaining his sight with his grandfather’s corneas… his grandson … received his grandfather’s eyes and got his vision back.

Inspired by Mr Garg, all his family members donated their eyes. [Link]

Where this story becomes unusual is that this tradition went beyond the family, and prevailed over superstition to become a local tradition:

The Garg family persuaded a local club to push a campaign for eye donation - newspapers, billboards, door-to-door visits - were used to extol its virtues.

It was not an easy mission. There were religious taboos to counter, including one that held that an eye donor is born blind in his next birth. The club members were also attacked by family members when they turned up at homes where somebody had died with a plea to donate the deceased person’s eyes.

But people soon began converting to the good cause - so much so that even the police began allowing removal of eyes before post mortems were conducted on people who had died unnatural deaths. [Link]

Lastly, they surmounted technical obstacles. In the beginning, many donated corneas were going to waste because they had to be transported on dry ice to a hospital 160 miles away and would not be usable upon arrival.

It was then that a local philanthropist, GD Agarwal, stepped in and launched an eye hospital in 1992. Besides corneal transplant, the hospital has facilities for cataract, retinal detachment and glaucoma surgery - so far it has performed over 6,000 surgeries of which nearly 4,000 were free of cost. [Link]

I hope that someday the Mittals and Premjis and Ambanis and Birlas can learn something from the Agarwals and Gargs of this world ..