Recently Kashmir witnessed a kind of a small controversy in which a female political activist claimed that she was living in a house which was dilapidated beyond repair and the political party she was associated with never bothered to help her. The journalist did a moving story on the issue at the end of which she dedicated the bank account details of the activist and asked the general public for crowd funding. It appears that a lot of people have actually deposite their hard-earned money into this account with an aim to help this political activist.
A couple of days afterwards a veteran politician whose political party this activist was associated with visited her and assured her of urgent help. The political activist while thanking the politician for visiting her humble home in a strange turn of events blamed the journalist for triggering her to blame the politician. While this much was going on the journalist seemed to have hunted the activists background and to her utter shock funds out that the shocking details of dilapidated house was a fabricated story and she was completely misled by the political activist. The political activist has her huge house in some other area of Srinagar and her son also owns a lavish car. The journalist has now requested the authorities to initiate action against the activist and freeze her account with immediate effect.
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We would have expected the journalist to uphold the journalistic ethics and verified the story first before uploading it. Crowdfunding is a huge way to help people at short notice but this is being misused by many people to meet their ulterior motives. This case should be an eye opener for us all. Crowd funding without proper verification can make rich richer and the deserving poor people will continue to be poor. Let us initiate the process of informing police before initiating crowd funding for a cause. After all this is a hard-earned money of people. It should reach only the deserving.
In the western societies crowd funding is used for novel purposes like educating the poor, treating the sick and so on. It is a greatly effective way of helping the poor. Let us keep its sanctity intact by taking legal action against those who misuse it.
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