In the season of scams and sleazy tapes, human compassion
has blazed like a meteorite. WIPRO chairman Azeem Premji's 2 billion
dollar donation to Indian primary education could become a turning point
in the relationship between rich and poor in post - Independence India.
Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra and Narayan Murthy may have given millions
of dollars to Harvard University, but Premji has donated over 8000 crore
to primary schools in rural India.

The
biggest donation ever in the history of philanthropy has not gone to
business schools or to religious establishments or to higher education.
Instead it has gone to the youngest Indian citizens and called on them
to dream the impossible dream. It is a donation that has invited tiny
feet to abandon the slushy dirt tracks and run to school and then climb
the staircase of destiny.

Premji's
donation will fund 100 schools over the next five years, train teachers
and invest in technology to create quality modern education at the
lowest levels of development. Premji has promised more money in the
future.

Premji's act has brought philanthropy to centre stage. In
the heady era of the 'I-don't-care-I-want-to-party' mindset, India's
philanthropic and charitable traditions have fallen by the wayside.
While western pop icons like Bob Geldorf, Sean Penn, Madonna and
Angelina Jolie are distinguished by their commitment to sharing wealth
and becoming voices of the disaster-struck, India's popular icons are
marked by their endorsement of brands and jockeying for IPL teams. There
are notable exceptions like Shabana Azmi's recent support to the 'Ek
Jodi Kapda' campaign or Rahul Bose's work among tsunami victims. But its
difficult to find a Bollywood star who would lend his services as
passionately and as self-effacingly to a disaster struck area as perhaps
actor Sean Penn's humanitarian work for the victims of Hurricane
Katrina.

Historian Kancha Ilaiah
believes that spiritual traditions determine motivations towards
philanthropy. The bania notion of "gupt dhana" or hidden wealth has
meant that wealth has been hoarded not openly shared with the needy as a
way of enriching society, as an act of individual conscience or even as
an act of worship. The Christian belief that god exists among the poor
and the suffering is not as central to the Hindu way of thought where
poverty is often seen as bad karma of a previous birth. Great charitable
works have been done by religious foundations like the Sathya Sai and
others, but often ritual donations to temples and priests have taken the
place of focused development-oriented wealth sharing.

In
the 50s and 60s, the Birlas and Tatas led the way in the setting up of
many educational and cultural institutions. But today's prevailing
culture of unabashed display has meant that the elegance of the old
wealthy families where money implied low key taste and discreet good
living, is hardly practiced. The Ambani billion dollar home, valued at
4000 crore or Laxmi Mittal's famous 60 million dollar wedding for his
daughter are at one level signals of the arrival of Indian business on
the world stage, but from the point of view of the aam admi, they stand
out as symbols of flamboyantly displayed wealth, wealth as shock
treatment, rather than wealth as a healer.

The
profits of India's new billionaires have not kept pace with their
philanthropic works. While there are local development initiatives in
RIL's Jamnagar, announcement of facilities for poor patients in the
Ambani hospital, these are only a fraction of the mega profits of
India's top businessmen. Firms that are committed to the building of
human capital, or building brain power have fared better. There is the
Akshay Patra scheme of Infosys, rural school network of the Mittal
group, the Vidyasagar scheme of HCL Infosystems. No doubt suspicion and
hostility of the bureaucracy towards corporates, lack of public private
partnerships in key sectors like education have perhaps curtailed
society building initiatives. Yet a grand gesture of generosity of the
heart has been missing. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates asked US
billionaires to give away 50 per cent of their wealth to charity: But in
India we want to pamper our own children and our own next generation
too much.

Three years ago, in a
message to India's rich, Manmohan Singh advised that they should shun
wasteful lifestyles and conspicuous consumption like ostentatious
weddings. The prime minister said every rich person should do more to
help ordinary people, instead of creating lifestyles that plant
resentment in the minds of the have-nots. "India has made us," the prime
minister said, "let us build bharat." A return to Nehruvian style
austerity may be impossible in a market economy. But can there be any
doubt that in a country of the poor, the rich do have a duty to be a
little low key about their wealth?

As
the economy grows at above 8 per cent and more money than ever before
becomes available, let each one of adopt a sector where we can be a drop
in the ocean, be it health, education or environment. In 1991 we
underwent a collective mental transformation. It was a psychological
overhaul. As the economy changed, making money was no longer seen as a
sin and we ceased to be hypocritical about the human urge for material
improvement. As a nation we became healthily unapologetic about
generating wealth, generating jobs and generating much needed revenue from business.

But
now we can't let corruption and selfishness take away from achieving
the 'good life' in every sense of the term. Lets each of us take a
pledge of philanthropy, that even if we can't do as much as Azeem
Premji, we will become a country where India's priveleged are known
worldwide as India's hands on care-givers.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/sagarikaghose/223/62112/sagarika-ghoses-blog-rich-behaving-poorly.html