Former Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji is an extraordinary human being, a philanthropist par excellence and light years ahead in terms of the individual charities he is involved in. There are many charitable trusts that regularly do charity on a huge extent, but they do it as a collective unit, Premji does it individually. Just to get a sense of the scale we are talking, here is some data pointers. The amount of charity the top three individual Indians made last year 2019 in rupee terms. Azim Premji (Rs 7904 cr); Shiv Nader of HCL Technologies (Rs 795 cr) and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries (Rs 458 cr). Premji also happens to be world’s third largest donor for pandemic relief efforts for this year.
Most of the Azim Premji Foundation is into education, girl rights, and on poor communities that face discrimination and economic deprivation. Premji avoids unnecessary limelight, but whenever he has communicated he has strongly spoken about his belief that he is just a trustee of his wealth and not the owner and therefore needs to support the communities that we live and work. His work as a philanthropist has earned him praise from his peers in the industry with Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson of Biocon, going on to call him a ‘true nation builder’ for taking philanthropy to the next level.
Nobody should disagree with Shaw’s statement of calling Premji a true nation builder, but it could be a very loaded statement in an atmosphere where politicians have positioned themselves as the only chosen few who are allowed to be called true nation builders. The rest of the citizens are just irrelevant and incidental despite their dedication and efforts in nation building. Not that Premji is longing for the entire country to praise his deeds, but for his efforts to get less noticed compared to some politician’s daily blah-blah only shows how our country has become all show and lack of substance. It also has something to do with the prolonged silence philanthropist like Premji practice, just by quietly giving and allowing governments to get away with wrong decisions.
True charity needs to be done on the quite, no question on that, but the fact that Premji focuses on education, girl rights and poor communities, are all focus areas that are primarily government responsibilities to be financed by the tax payer’s money. It simply means somewhere down the line he feels the government’s effort in these areas have been not up to the mark and so his intervention is needed through his charity. So here is the question, is doing charity silently the best option, for all you know we might be actually encouraging mishandling of tax-payer money by filling the gaps through our charitable contributions in these focused areas. It also means all these government appointed planning commissions don’t deserve to be in their jobs and take fat salaries for getting their math wrong and making improper budgets and then finally depend on private citizen’s charity to bail them out of their messy calculations.
If Premji has committed so much of his wealth in education than he also becomes duty-bound to use his influence to advice government as to how they should utilize tax-payers money on education. His foundation does work with state governments they operate, but focus should be on giving sane advice to governments beyond the states they work because it would have a lasting impact as government has huge tax resources at their disposal waiting to be either put to good or bad use. It also makes sure his efforts in education are not neutralized by government taking the opposite direction in other states. Individual silent charity has to change in a country where politicians have manipulated people minds into believing they are the only guys doing charity even if it is with other people money.
Here is a trivia Goans needs to answer at the snap of the finger. Who is the highest tax paying individual Goan? Ahhhh – no answer. Here is another one. Who is the biggest spender of Goan money? Chief Minister. See most Goans don’t even know the name of the biggest financer for all projects the government undertakes. This is because we don’t make enough noise to make sure everybody know who pays the highest tax. To make matters worse the highest tax payer also prefers to stay silent even if he sees his tax money going down the drain in front of his nose. This is like giving money to your child, not bother to find out where s/he spends it, only to realize later that s/he picked up all the possible bad vices, thanks to the money you gave with no checks.
Tax or charity, are two sides of the same coin, to do greater good to society with people pitching in their share of money. Even though tax is compulsory and charity is optional, yet both the monies need to be tracked as to where they are channelized and make sure there are no forces working in the opposite direction to your efforts.
On Dec 25, 2018, I wrote a piece in this publication titled ‘Silence of the Goan lambs’. It took two years for Goans to realize that silence is detrimental to our existence. Even the Catholic church of Goa is requesting people that matter to speak out. It was hearting to see the Generation Next and fellow Indians speaking out to protect the biodiversity of the state. Wish they also take courage and ask their parents as to why they have elected and sucked up to crooks in politics for decades together. Meantime, in the most generous Indians list while Premji was way ahead, there was another industrialist at No.10 Rahul Bajaj who had donated just (Rs 74 cr), not even a per cent of Premji’s amount and yet made a huge impact by his comment that the government had flattened the wrong curve. It was a first and direct hint to the government that the lockdown was harsh and the economy had to be opened with proper procedures in place. A comment like that could be worth several thousand crores for the country.
(The author is a business consultant)
