Rs 9,000 crore share transfer: The human story behind Premji's philanthropy !

Courtesy : http://www.samachar.com/Rs-9K-cr-share-transfer-The-human-story-behind-Premjis-philanthropy-lcggLGgjhgj.html

Ever since Mr Premji announced the irrevocable transfer of shares worth Rs 9000 crores to an endowment, the sole purpose of which is to improve quality of education and development for the underprivileged and disadvantaged of this country, I have been asked hundreds of questions and have received even more messages of encouragement combined with a certain sense of thankfulness.

While this event, which some have called the largest act of philanthropy in India, has unfolded in a few days in the media headlines, I have had the privilege of living through and experiencing the evolution of the thought and commitment that led to this.

I thought it was important to share my experience not to lose sight of the human story behind this big action. The first human story is of the man who made this commitment.

Premji is immensely aware of the fact that over 70% people in our country have an income of less than Rs 60/$1.5 per day. While as a businessman he understands that business has to be run in a competitive manner, at a personal level he chooses to follow the Gandhian principle of waste not, want not.

It reflects in every part of his personal and work life. Even today, he drives himself with a gruelling ninety hour work week. The few vacations that he takes are to some small places in the interiors of our country. Given a choice, he would like to drive only an Indian made car.

Whether it is minimizing the electricity usage or eliminating use of paper napkins, these are all guided by a certain philosophy of frugality in life.

His journey in the development sector was neither accidental nor a part of the CSR fad that was emerging in the nineties. It began with a deeper personal discomfort with the social scene in the country. He was very disturbed with the growing inequities in India.

While the IT services business made a few lakh people richer, the plight of the majority in the country was not changing. He was concerned with the opulence of the rich projected in mass media and the deep divides being created between the haves and the have nots.

He decided to do something deep, something long term, something that would make a difference to the vast majority of underprivileged in India, to our society. He was not bothered about getting short term & quick wins despite being a super successful businessman he knew that the social space was very different and to do something genuine it needed time.

The route to contributing towards change for a better society was chosen to be education. He felt addressing higher education without addressing the quality of school education was not practical.

To understand what organizations working in this space were already doing, he made personal visits to actual scenes of work. He went to slums of Mumbai where a large NGO was doing a great job of initiating disadvantaged children to early childhood education.

He travelled to interiors of Andhra Pradesh to visit a bridge camp carried out by another large NGO to keep children away from child labour and to prepare them to fit into mainstream schools.

In that bridge camp, Premji was moved by the story of a 10-year-old girl who ran away from home when she was forced to marry an older man. When he invited questions from the children , one of the girls asked, “What can you do for children like us?” Pat came the commitment from Premji, “First I will ensure that we don’t employ child labour in any part of Wipro.”

Within a month of our return we made sure through a rigorous process that no child labour could be involved in any of the Wipro establishments, in any way (including vendors/contractors).

All this happened in the late 90s. In the year 2000, at a dinner at his residence, he introduced me to Jack Welch and told him how he was completely committed to improving education in India and how he was going to give a significant part of his wealth for the purpose.

Not too many know that he likes to eat the mid-day meal alongwith the children whenever he visits a school. To me the real thing is that he genuinely likes it, he doesn’t do it as a duty. His human story continues to evolve. The second human story is about the organisation that Premji created.

He did exactly what he is known for. Select good people - empower them and enable them to run the organization in a professional manner. The organization knew of several challenges of working with the government but he fully supported the conscious decision of partnering with the government because that was the only way to reach a large number of underprivileged children in schools.

We did not focus on creating islands of excellence but aimed at helping make fundamental changes in the existing system.

In the organization, we have attempted to combine the good things from all sectors: government , NGO and corporate. We do not subscribe to any particular ideology, but measure our actions only by whether what we do is constitutional , ethical and is in the interest of the children and the society.