Bill Gates, the former chief executive officer of Microsoft, was in India recently, and spoke to a group of senior corporate executives in Bangalore. His days, however, of pitching the relationship between the giant company he founded and India’s information technology sector are long past. He was in India, as he has been several times a year in the recent past, to try and persuade India’s rich to give more of their wealth away. India has long been an anomaly in terms of philanthropy; while among the world’s most unequal and stratified societies, its rich have generally shunned the idea that their money should be shared. This is in stark contrast to other capitalist societies. In the United States, since the days of Andrew Carnegie — who famously gave away all the money he ever made as America’s greatest steel baron — there has been a long history of philanthropy, particularly from owners and senior executives of businesses. Universities, libraries, housing complexes, hospitals and schools have been endowed; independently-run giant charitable research foundations and trusts direct and influence policy, and serve as reserves of support for social programmes that ameliorate the harshest aspects of capitalist society. All these run on the donations of those who have benefited from its rewards.
In India, however, philanthropy, such as it is, focuses on closely-controlled family trusts, and is used for patronage more than anything else. Nor is non-religious philanthropy much of a priority. This is not surprising, in a way; in systems where wealth is believed to be created in partnership with society, it will be given away; in societies where it is inherited almost entirely from family, it will be held closely. India, sadly, still is more the latter than the former sort of society. Yet Mr Gates, clearly, believes that something is due for a change. He, sometimes accompanied by his wife Melinda, and sometimes by Warren Buffett, has made it his business to come to India and serve as an evangelist for philanthropy. There are few better than Mr Gates and Mr Buffett to speak on this matter. In spite of the wealth that Mr Gates built up, he has announced that only a tiny fraction of it is going to his children; the rest is being spent on initiatives to moderate the effects of malaria, for example, or to find a vaccine for HIV. Mr Buffett has also said almost all his fortune will be given away — and, in a sign that philanthropy is not about personal glory, it isn’t even being given to a foundation being named for him, but to the one that Bill and Melinda Gates set up.
The consulting firm Bain and Company has been studying, for a few years, India’s philanthropists. It turns out that most of those willing to give away money are below the age of 40 — not steeped in traditional Indian “family-first” approaches. However, they are still concerned about the accountability and efficiency of the NGO sector here. This is where, again, the model that Mr Gates — and Bill Clinton, for his foundation — pioneered is of use. Their foundations have introduced the professional methods of evaluation and management associated with the private sector, and treat donors like shareholders. Like investment banks, they evaluate the best destination for their dollars — where the most effective intervention can be made. Indian philanthropy, one or two examples aside, is still stuck in a previous paradigm.