IT professionals are well paid, they should give more to charity: Premji

"Wealthy Indians don’t give as much as Americans because they believe they must leave their wealth to their children," says Wipro Chairman Azim Premji.

People who are serious about philanthropy need to set up an organisation, institutionalise it, and commit an irreversible endowment Wipro Chairman Azim Premji’s inspiration for philanthropy came from his mother, who set up a hospital in Mumbai at the age of 27 and ran it for over 50 years.

Premji has pledged over Rs 55,000 crore (Rs 550 billion) worth of his shares to charity and tells Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson of Biocon, in a fireside chat his biggest regret is he started giving late.

Edited excerpts of the interaction:

What prompted philanthropy?

I always considered wealth as a fiduciary responsibility and the reason I gave away my wealth is that is the right thing to do in a country with so much poverty, so much misappropriation of funds, and so many people who are disadvantaged.

My biggest regret is I started late. We started 15 years ago in a small way in the area of education and government schools.

We have really demonstrated scale in the past five years because we felt a strong need to uplift the quality of education in government schools.

Should people be told about philanthropy?

Most people are well aware of the social responsibilities.

Wealthy Indians don’t give as much as Americans because they believe they must leave their wealth to their children.

I think the more generous part of the country is south India.

How to get the message across?

One needs to give examples. One has to keep on persuading and, hopefully, one day you have a breakthrough.

It is a drawn out process. The people who have to convince are the wives because they are socially more sensitive.

They have more time to lead initiatives of philanthropy. The husbands are much too busy making money.

Alma mater funding.

I have not given back to the alma mater. It is a matter of individual choice.

Most universities of the world are significantly financed by their alma mater. In all outstanding universities, the cost of education is four to five times the cost of fees.

They have to be funded and their income is from their endowments.

Are employees inspired by founders’ charity?

My experience is mixed. When there are national calamities, you ask for contributions from employees and the companies contribute an equal sum.

They are very forthcoming in terms of time, but disappointing in the amount of money they give.

Software professionals are well paid and they can afford to pay significantly more than what they do.

Building leadership for philanthropy.

People who are serious about philanthropy need to set up an organisation, institutionalise it, and commit an irreversible endowment. It is important to do this actively, rather than passively.

Build a foundation with one of your really trusted people who has demonstrated leadership and commitment.

Do you see a dichotomy in CSR by tobacco companies?

Maybe you should triple their CSR.

Views on social impact funds.

I have unpopular views on this. Either you are a philanthropic organisation or you are profit-making organisation. If you are a combination of both, you are neither fish nor fowl.

Measuring the impact of philanthropy.

We are a measurement-driven organisation coming from the technology industry.

It is very difficult to measure the impact of primary education, where we work with the government.

We do measure it on broad frequencies and our measurement is not effective enough. 

As far the philanthropy initiative is concerned we have very definite measurements. We expect our money to be used for certain programmes and these have pre-defined milestones.

The vast majority of people are doing a honest and credible job. You basically have to trust people.

Giving is an inefficient industry.

The biggest challenge you face is the size of the problem and the sense of frustration that however large an operation you set up, you are just touching a small proportion of the problem.

It is frustrating because you don’t have the bandwidth even if you have money.

We do rely on the government machinery. We rely on it significantly, which is slow.

You have to keep at it and have to hope transfers take place in government departments and education departments every two or three years.

Talented people in Parliament?

We definitely need to encourage talented people to join government and politics. How do you raise the standard of politics and the standard of governance unless you have the right leadership?

Why are you not in politics?

I think it will kill me in a couple of years. You require a very cultivated sense of insensitivity to be in politics. 

Mandatory CSR spending by companies.

I don’t like mandates. I would object to a 2 per cent mandate. That is now a fait accompli.

What is good is that the government has left it to the companies to decide use of funds.

All one can wish for is that companies use these funds honestly and do not substitute personal charities with company funds.

Why primary education?

Because it represented the maximum reach. Because the child is the future citizen.

The side benefits: with the girl child being more educated, she runs a smaller family.

This correlation is incredible, you can see that in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The third advantage is that with the girl child better educated, the draw upon funds for primary health care is much better.