The other day I caught Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive and founder of Facebook on a dated episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Yes, the same where he declared that he would be donating $100 million to update and revive the public school system in Newark. Despite the resentment I felt at the way foreign channels in India keep palming off stale content to us, I watched the show for many reasons.

For one, it was shot very close to The Social Network’s release and cynics had presumed  that Zuckerberg was buying goodwill with a very fat cheque to nullify the damage to his image by the impending release of a less than complimentary film.

But the fact remains, he did not have to do it.  And not many men in his club would part with that kind of money easily.

Interestingly, Governor Chris Christie and Mayor Cory A Booker are going to work in synergy to use this money to reform the state-run school system.  This is interesting especially in the light of the fact that the Governor is a Republican, and the Mayor is a Democrat.

Booker is something of a hero also because he is tirelessly urging business leaders and celebrities to throw their weight behind education and has found a champion in Winfrey who has thrown her media might and her money behind the cause.

Incredible, isn’t it that one cause has brought together a billionaire, two political figures of conflicting ideologies and a media baroness on one platform to do something constructive and make a difference? Would this ever be possible in India?

Would we ever see for instance, an Ambani, top political rivals and the head of a media house coming together to address  the cause of street children in India whose number is growing every day?

We are going to have to deal with many generations of education deprived, abused children growing up amid wealth and privileges they have no share in and if they take to delinquency or worse, we will have no moral right to judge them because hell, we keep to ourselves and mind our own business in this country.

When they come knocking at our car windows, we look away because it is unsettling to leave our reality to embrace theirs. So what should WE do about it?

Well, a mini revolution of sorts is unfolding in America after filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (who also made An Inconvenient Truth) made a film on the wobbly education system. It is called Waiting For Superman and it shows what happens when ordinary citizens do not intervene to change an unfair system and keep waiting for a superman to come fix it. So we see a bunch of bright kids through a system that fuels drop out rates and does nothing to inspire and motivate children to excel. In India, waiting for Superman to fix our roads, our politics, even our garbage disposal system is a national pass time.

And recently we did have two supremely wealthy men,  coming down here to tell us that a little personal initiative and some amount of corporate generosity can heal many of our ills. A few days ago, two of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, met many of India’s wealthiest to share how giving generously can pave the way for greater good and equitable and not lopsided growth.

Did some of us feel a twinge of shame that in a country where more than 450 million people are poor and around 50 billionaires account for 20 per cent of India’s GDP, it took two American philanthropic billionaires to hold up a mirror and show us  just how easily we take our abundance and our poverty for granted?

We desperately need conduits and bridges today between the divided halves of India. We have so many unsung heroes who work for street kids, stray animals, AIDS and HIV victims and other assorted causes but most of them remain chronically understaffed, overstretched and financially challenged.

Two friends of mine rescue stray cats, dogs and birds and fight for trees in distress. It is their life’s purpose and they have put all their money and time in it.

They have even opened their home to strays but they get no help either from government bodies or private donors. Another friend works for and with HIV afflicted individuals and even left a well-heeled job to commit to  this cause but finances remain a challenge and this is the story of many individual initiatives.

In no other country, so much money from the public coffers  gets stashed away in mysterious bank accounts that no trails lead to. In few other countries, scams are forgotten so quickly and tainted politicians voted back to power while roads and infrastructure stay in a state of disrepair, cash strapped farmers kill themselves, children grow up on the streets of big cities, agricultural land is gobbled by politicians and corporates and no one ever asks why? Atleast not in a collective, persistent voice.

Buffett as we all know has pledged to give away 99 per cent of his wealth. Which industrialist in India would do that? Gates has set up a $37 billion foundation which primarily works in developing countries and addresses issues such as high mortality rates and diseases like malaria, polio and AIDS.

In India though, we like to hoard more than to give, barring a stray Azim Premji or a GM Rao, the chairman of the GMR group.

Our celebrities are known to take a cut from even charity concerts and in a city teeming with slums, we have a $1 billion home with 27-stories meant for a single family.

Reuters quotes a study to say that charity in India amounted to about  $7.5 billion in 2009 which is about 0.6 percent of the country’s GDP. We pride ourselves as a nation with spiritual moorings, with a richer inner life that many Western countries should aspire to but our outer reality is infested with corporate greed, political corruption and general apathy.

Maybe, the visit of Gates and Buffett will crack open some closed minds and unblock perceptions  about what it takes to make a nation great. Maybe we will learn that unless we invest in the future, we cannot roll up our car windows against the present and hope that a Superman or a Buffett will fly in and fix it for us.