How much is he worth? Anand Sankar does some number crunching.
While the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, marks his fiftieth year as a Tibetan refugee in India, in his Tibetan capital-in-exile, Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh, it is business as usual. The parliament-in-exile and its bureaucratic satrap have been putting together a budget for the current fiscal — a sum of Rs 103 crore that will be spent on the administration and welfare of a community that numbers 1.4 lakh today. (Click here for more pictures)
Going through the budget, the “officials” are keen to point out its salient features. Among their new ventures is exploring options to set up an independent co-cooperative bank to make credit more accessible for themselves, plans to set up BPOs in the refugee settlements to provide employment to graduate Tibetans and make organic agriculture the norm for the community.
Of particular interest is the income generated by the Green Book. The Green Book is a record of the “voluntary tax” that the community pays to their government-in exile. The officials stress the importance that this tax has on the future of the community, and the need to kick-start more income-generating projects. On the face of it, it appears that the Dalai Lama’s plans to make the community accountable for itself are taking shape. The Tibetans seem to have come a long way since 1959 when the Dalai Lama, followed by about 80,000 of his people, made their way into India to “escape an encircling Chinese presence”. They crossed the formidable Himalayas with nothing but the possessions on their backs.
| THE TIBETAN BUDGET Rs 103 crore (2009-10). It is the total of the administration and development components. | ||
| Year | Development | Administration |
| 2009-10 | Rs 85 cr | Rs 18 cr |
| 2008-09 | Rs 80 cr | Rs 18.5 cr |
| (The budget is in variance of about 10 per cent along these numbers for the last few years, as it mostly depends on foreign donors releasing their long-term funding in batches) | ||
Being the unquestioned spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama finds himself in every facet of Tibetan life in some form or the other. But a closer examination reveals there is an invisible and inseparable umbilical cord that ever more firmly links the Tibetan exile economy to what can be called Brand Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama is currently on a tour of the United States, a country he is visiting for the umpteenth time — and not without reason. Though he is not pencilled in to meet any officials or President Barack Obama, the US State Department is by far the largest donor to the Tibetan exile economy at almost $3.5 million annually. And the US has the largest bloc of individual and organisational donors. Almost 70 per cent of the Tibetan exile community’s budget is still reliant on long-term funding from a battery of foreign donors as projects to generate income from within the community have not delivered. Upon their arrival in India, land was leased to the Tibetan refugees by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Karnataka. Here the Dalai Lama attempted at creating an economy that could sustain itself on agriculture and the cottage industry. But that has failed. While the cottage industries were divested from the exile administration into individual Tibetan hands in 2001, the agriculture story too has unravelled in due course. Agriculture in Tibetan settlements is today acknowledged to not be adequately profitable, which is the reason provided for its shift to organic farming, but that too does not have a track record of proving sustained profitability.
Following the US closely are the European countries — Norway, United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany — in backing the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama is expected to visit these countries regularly over the next few years, even though the toll these exertions will place on his ageing body are clear. In addition to the funding by donors, simply tickets to listen to the Dalai Lama generate income — a ticket to listen to him in Frankfurt in August will cost between ¤130 and ¤230. Sometimes charity dinners follow these public appearances to raise funds, an example being one held in Mumbai recently.
The money generated goes into directly supporting programmes that are outlined by the Dalai Lama as key to sustaining the refugee community — preserving the cultural identity, education and keeping alive the political struggle. The funding from the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration pays for Tibetan schooling and Fulbright scholarships for courses in the US, while the same department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs pays for preserving the Tibetan identity. There is direct support from organisations such as the Norwegian Church Aid to fund the Dalai Lama’s middle-way approach (to seek autonomy and not independence from China). Finally, the same Norwegians are funding the attempt to revive Tibetan agriculture through organic methods.
The Indian government takes the official stand that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China and does not extend any formal monetary support to the Tibetan refugees. It bore the cost of the initial settlements but since then its role has remained restricted to the leased land and providing identity and travel papers for the refugees. Only refugees who have opted for Indian citizenship are allowed to own land
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It is worthwhile noting their silence when members of the Tibetan hierarchy are asked about a future without the 14th Dalai Lama. Even in the democratic setup the Tibetans claim to have created in exile, the Dalai Lama is still at its apex wielding a certain degree of power. Though they insist that structures are in place to handle his absence, Thubten Samphel, writer and member of the Tibetan bureaucracy, betrays the nervousness when he says: “It is the persona of the current Dalai Lama that worries the Chinese the most.”
It is the persona that has won the man a Nobel Peace Prize and Congressional Gold Medal from the US among a plethora of felicitations. Last year he was voted among Time magazine’s world’s 100 most influential people for the second time. He set a record in 2003 when he drew a crowd of more than 65,000 people at a speech in Central Park, London. And a German magazine’s 2002 poll reported that 37 per cent Catholic Germans listed the Dalai Lama ahead of Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II as the wisest public figure.
These are joined by headline-grabbing Hollywood personalities such as Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Sharon Stone and Steven Seagal who back him and the
Tibetans in their struggle. When the Dalai Lama voiced support in favour of conservation efforts targeting the royal Bengal tiger, the Tibetans in China stopped using tiger body parts for any kind of use.
The process to choose the next Dalai Lama will be a tortuous one and will begin only when the incumbent is no more. While the man himself once said he might be the last Dalai Lama, it is unlikely. No one knows where the search for the next Dalai Lama will happen. Will it include Chinese Tibet? But the Dalai Lama has insisted his reincarnation “will be born only in a free country”. Tibetan activists and leaders brush off fears that uncertainty will be the result of this power vacuum. The Tibetan government-in-exile funds the rituals performed to bless the Dalai Lama with a long life from its own budget — for there can be no doubt that Brand Dalai Lama is worth more than just the sum of money that flows into his charitable institutions.
| THE CENTRAL TIBETAN ADMINISTRATION (CTA) OR TIBETAN GOVERNMENT IN EXILE (TGIE) WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM |
VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTION
Refugees in India
- Rs 58 basic, sum for those not permanently employed
- The salaried pay Rs 58 plus 2 per cent of whole consolidated pay or 4 per cent of basic pay, whichever is higher
- Cooperative societies and businesses, if profitable, pay 15 per cent of the profit
Refugees abroad
- $46 basic, the sum for those not employed
- $96 per year for the salaried
Income level of Tibetan refugees
(As calculated in 2004)
- 10 per cent below poverty line (earning less than $1 per day)
- 35 per cent earn above Rs. 8,000 per annum
- Average individual income Rs. 13,000 per annum
Green Book benefits
- Students at monasteries between the age of 6-25 get Rs 200 per month as stipend
- Education upto class XII free of tuition fees
- Scholarships for higher studies, especially professional courses
- Free primary healthcare and absorption of costs for major medical interventions for low-income groups on a case-by-case basis
FOREIGN DONORS
- US State Department contributes almost $3.5 million annually
- Norway, principally the Norwegian Church Aid, provides $0.5 million
- Organisations and individuals from Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, India and other countries
- The Indian government’s support is the land leased for settlements and sums spent to settle initial refugees
How the money is channelled
Donor funds are channelled through many registered charitable trusts. The government-in-exile draws the money from these and expenditure is accounted to them
- His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s Charitable Trust
- Tibetan Administration’s Welfare society
- Social and Resource Development Fund
- Central Tibetan Relief Committee
- Tibetan Children’s Welfare Education fund
- Tibetan Volunteer Health Association
- His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s Religious and Cultural Society