The whole ecosystem was damaged, and numbers of Chinook salmon fell by more than 90 per cent. This had a profound impact on members of the local indigenous tribes, such as the Yurok and the Karuk, who have lived alongside the 254 miles of the Klamath for thousands of years....Now, after decades of campaigning, the dams are being demolished. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/)
In the USA, they are bringing down four dams for the sake of the salmon. We are shown these moments where the dams are demolished, which will enable the salmon to reach their spawning grounds to breed.
Tavayogi obliged my wish to carry out my very first Annadhanam or serving free food at his Kallar Ashram when I was there the very first time in 2005 after seeing photos of children in the neighborhood being fed. Many years later, in 2013, Agathiyar brought several youths to my home, and we engaged in feeding the poor and hungry, first in the welfare homes, old folks homes, children homes, and later took this aid to the streets, feeding the homeless, subsequently branching into handing out groceries to those who had a roof over their heads but were poor and unfortunate. Then he had us stop this in 2019. This directive came in the wake of the pandemic. He asked me to go within. When Agathiyar asked us to stop, we did have the question crop up in our minds of what would happen to them and who would help them now. But Agathiyar asserted that somebody else shall continue the work. Many years later, my wife told me that we were getting "high" in doing this. This act though noble, was secretly working on building our egos, she felt. If allowed to continue, we would be caught in the vicious net of attachment. Hence it was halted we assumed. We began to ask ourselves, too, if we were making the recipients dependent on these handouts for life.
My daughter shared a video of how damaging aid can be. The video at "PragerU" was both shocking and saddening. Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade made it clear on the onset that,
"To be clear, I’m not speaking about aid in response to an emergency like a natural disaster. But these disasters are rare. “Development aid” is an ever-flowing river of money and goods, and it’s destroying a continent."
We, too, I guess, began to "measure success by money spent and goods distributed, not by actual economic development or the creation of profitable businesses", as she said further.
"Even more frustrating is how this system creates a culture of dependency that diminishes their dignity." Indeed, we had contributed towards eroding their dignity further too. We carried videos of these handouts on YouTube and other social media. Realizing this some time back, I have made these videos private since then.
Magatte Wade says it aptly, "Condescension cloaked in do-goodism." I guess we had joined the fold of the "misguided kindness of strangers," as she says.
We have come to realize that Agathiyar had given us an experience through this, and that we had to move on to seek other experiences as well. Hence the reason for bringing the shutters down of charity.