A KIND HEART

India’s chaotic and bloody birth in 1947 came wrapped in predictions of its assured failure. Just about 12 percent of the 340 million people were literate, poverty rate was a staggering 70 percent, communal violence had just claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and a million other factors were pulling apart the delicate fabric that held together this vast territory. Concerns if democracy could flourish in impoverished and diverse landscapes came true quickly in Pakistan, and then Bangladesh, which were part of the British Indian empire. However, India held on to its democratic credentials, building modern institutions, carrying out the world’s most complex electoral processes, proudly showing off high quality of parliamentary debates and nuanced laws. It soon became a beacon of hope for most of the developing and under-developed world.

Azim Hasham Premji, the Indian business tycoon and its greatest philanthropist, has an interesting life journey that runs parallel to Indian democracy. He was born in 1945, just three years before India attained Independence, and grew up in the Gandhian values of simplicity and public service. He took over Wipro Limited in the late 1960s and transformed the $2 million hydrogenated cooking fat company into a multi-billion dollar business with massive presence in the technology space and across the world. As Indian economy grew, Wipro grew with it. As India opened up, Premji latched on to fair opportunities, and as the technology revolution swept through he transformed Wipro into a global giant providing IT, BPO and R&D services.

However, sometime in the past two decades, the two—Indian democracy and Premji—began to take divergent paths. India plunged into heightened communal strife, massive corporate corruptions, and large parts of public life was occupied by amoral leaders. Riots targeted at minority communities, mostly Muslims, with state’s active support is now a regular occurrence.

Even as Indian democracy was losing its direction, Premji steadfastly held on to the Gandhian values that were visible in his daily life—economy class flights, office guesthouses, concerns about even the smallest expenses, and never showing off his wealth. Amidst all these, he also built his sprawling business empire.

Ever since Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014, India’s democratic credentials have been under further organised assault. Its social fabric is being torn apart by a series of events, many of which can directly be blamed on the Modi government and agencies under its command. The Indian economy has been significantly damaged by repeated deliberate blows. Its raucous public space has mostly gone quiet. Indian mainstream media is at best propaganda platforms, at worst lynch mobs. There is a disquiet in the society. Fear has taken over the public square. The fearless amongst us now speak over encrypted communication platforms, but most prefer to agitate at the violation of their hallowed democracy in silence. A loud, angry and immoral crowd has taken over public discourses.

Sometime in 2000, Premji announced the establishment of a foundation. Since then he has donated over $21 billion of his personal fortune to philanthropy. Through a group of organisations and institutions—Azim Premji Foundation, Azim Premji University, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives etc—Premji has committed 67 percent of the economic interest in the IT giant Wipro to philanthropy. In 2019, he donated $7.6 billion worth of shares to philanthropy, topping the list of Asians, and become one of the world’s most powerful forces for social good. His foundation now works across several states, trains hundreds of thousands of teachers and is silently making an aggressive effort to uplift the quality of primary education. He has also played a crucial role in starting up a foundation to support independent media in India. Where the government has either gone absent, or is actively hostile, Premji has deployed his own resources.

The media shy tycoon’s silent acts are some of the loudest proclamations about India’s challenges, and their solutions. Take for example the last few months. When India had just about 500 Covid infections, announced a country-wide lockdown on March 24. From midnight, 1.3 billion people were frozen wherever they were. But hunger and joblessness triggered exodus of millions of migrants from cities to the safety of their impoverished villages, a few hundred of them died on the way back, several hundred were raped, and economic slowdown, already underway, picked up dramatic speed. The disruption stunned many, but few spoke up. Writing in the Economic Times, Premji said, “Some kind of a lockdown was necessary to tackle the pandemic, but these deaths are an unforgiveable tragedy.”

Premji would rather like his actions to speak for himself. His foundations and beneficiary organisations plunged deep into the Covid fight. According to the philanthropy, it provided immediate support to 7.8  million people in 467 districts across 26 states and 3 union territories, in the form of food, dry rations and personal hygiene items. They also committed over 202,300 PPE kits and N-95 masks for frontline health workers. The group is also working on enhancing testing capacities, even as it turned one of Wipro’s campuses in Pune into a 450-bed intermediary care COVID-19 hospital.

When Parliament assembled in September, the government said it did not have any data on the number of migrants who died or were injured during the crisis. A new fund created under the Prime Minister’s office did not reveal details of money received or disbursed, and the national capital’s police created an irrational communal narrative about the recent riots in which mostly Muslims were killed.

Premji’s actions have also encouraged, or has been parallel to, several other Indian millionaires, mostly from the IT space, moving part of their wealth into philanthropy. Among them are the Nilekani couple who earned their wealth in Infosys, Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon etc.

Historically, India has had some impressive stories of philanthropy. But since the democracy emerged, more often than not it has been taken advantage of by businesses, which have manipulated laws and acted illegally, and finally passed on their fortunes to select circles in coming generations. What Premji is doing is to light the spirit of philanthropy in a society where selfishness might be the prevailing trait.

What Premji and those like him are doing is also to contribute their might to the improvement of Indian democracy, among the most complex socio-political experiment ever undertaken since modern humans left Africa some 70,000 years ago. Its efforts to bring together such diverse societies under a written Constitution is facing unusual challenges today. Silently, these philanthropists are fighting for its survival, and to strengthen it. Hopefully, the millions of children who come out of those government run schools where the wealth of Premji is deployed will stand up for this democracy, and occupy the public space, challenging those who occupy power with force and run business with little social responsibility.

AUTHOR

Josy Joseph is a New Delhi based journalist-writer, and author of ‘A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India’, an acclaimed non-fiction book on the various challenges facing India. In 2019, he established Confluence Media, a platform agnostic media outfit. Josy is known for his various investigative stories that have had dramatic impact in India and abroad. He is the winner of some of the most prestigious journalism awards in India. His book was selected in 2017 as the best non-fiction book at the Crossword awards.

Josy is presently involved, through Confluence Media, in several large scale journalistic projects that are being adapted into various formats such as documentaries, books, scripted series, movies and podcasts.