The Tata group has provoked some positive shock and awe with its $50 million (Rs 225 crore) donation to Harvard Business School (HBS), the biggest international gift in the 102-year-old institution’s history. After the collective sense of shame in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games, the news certainly generated a twinge of patriotic satisfaction: a respected Indian corporate brand has attracted worldwide attention for the right reasons. The spin-offs from this donation in building the Tata brand will, of course, be very real and long-term. An academic-cum-residential building on the HBS campus for executive education programmes, to be called Tata House, will ensure sustained brand recall, embedded within the best-known brand in the business education industry worldwide. In one stroke, this donation puts Tata on a par with global philanthropists such as Rockefeller, Buffet and Gates, even if they operate on a different scale. The donation also offers an excellent strategic fit with a group that is rapidly establishing itself globally. Anand Mahindra’s $10 million donation to Harvard’s Humanities Centre falls in the same category.
Although both donations provide intangible pay-offs, it is worth asking why India’s largest corporate group chose to put its money in an overseas institution that is not noticeably short of funds. Obviously, this is Tata trust money and the trusts have the prerogative of spending their money wherever they think fit. All the same, it is difficult to avoid the thought that if they did have $50 million at their disposal, they could as well have spent it on education in the home country, which is in dire need of quality investment in education at every level. At Harvard, investment in an executive education infrastructure may yield some tangible benefits in terms of honing world-class executives, some of whom may find future employment in Indian and specifically Tata group companies. But $50 million could cover the annual running costs of several hundred good primary schools. If those primary schools provided subsidised education for the girl child, the spin-offs for India would be even greater.
Of course, the Tata group hardly needs a lesson in philanthropic investment. Its investment of seed capital in institutes like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Indian Institute of Science has gone a long way in promoting scientific research in the country. Generations of students at the Delhi School of Economics have conducted research in the Tata Library. Way before CSR became a fashionable label, the Tata group, like the Birlas and others, has been a major contributor to a range of quality educational and health institutions.
Meanwhile, it is to be welcomed that businessmen are indeed “giving back” to educational institutions. NRIs like Vinod Gupta and Sailesh Mehta have put money into their alma maters, respectively IIT Kharagpur and IIT Mumbai, as has Nandan Nilekani. The Azim Premji Foundation, Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Foundation and Shiv Nadar have all focused on education, to name a few prominent examples. Still, the Harvard donation stands out by redefining the boundaries of Indian corporate giving. And that may well have been the idea.
