Opinion Charity at home?
Indian capital can create world-class universities by philanthropic efforts
Recently two items signalled an increasing trend in Indian philanthropy: investment in institutions of higher education abroad. Ratan Tata announced a $50 million gift to Harvard Business School and Anand Mahindra has provided $10 million to a humanities centre,which follows Narayana Murthys $5 million gift to Harvard for the Clay Sanskrit Library. Recently,several American universities have been the beneficiaries of Indian philanthropy: Cornell,Penn,Stanford,Yale,just to name a few,have been the beneficiaries of Indian largesse,as have several American think-tanks. The scale of these donations is staggering. What does it portend?
It would not be appropriate to comment on the motivations that drive particular individuals. But there are larger trends that call for attention. Obviously,in several cases,alumni are expressing gratitude to their alma maters. But the sad fact is that in the coming years the identification of Indias elites with institutions abroad is only going to deepen. As any fund raiser at an American university will tell you,the most propitious time to target any philanthropist is when their children are about to enter college; and all the trends are indicating that Indian elites are more likely to send their children abroad rather than less. There is also the simple fact that the top echelons of Indian capital are becoming increasingly global,jockeying for access and influence. What else explains why CII was so keen to donate to the Clinton Foundation,when its discharging of its own commitments in India has been,at best,very reluctant? So,some of this giving will be an inevitable corollary of the character of Indian capital. But there is still something discomfiting about what the shape of Indian philanthropy is revealing.
To be fair,several new entrepreneurs have invested in Indian institutions as well. IITs,in particular,have been beneficiaries of IT entrepreneurs like Nandan Nilekani and Narayana Murthy amongst others; as have ventures like the New India Foundation which promotes the writing of current history. There are initiatives to set up universities here and there,but frankly,none has displayed the kind of ambition India is capable of. There are at least 20 to 30 Indian entrepreneurs who can singlehandedly create world-class universities by philanthropic efforts of the right scale. But even the ones who have ventured into this area have done so on a modest scale. They have created world-class companies. But they do not ask how their philanthropy might create world-class institutions in India.
Even by historical standards,contemporary Indian philanthropy in Indian higher education is falling short. It is simply false to claim that India had no tradition of professionally oriented philanthropy. Anyone who knows the history of all our early great universities,Delhi,Calcutta,Annamalai,Madras,knows the serious role that philanthropy played in their creation. And the social base of this was wide. It included the exemplary Tatas,but also drew in communities such as the Chettiars and Marwaris. Gujarats industrial prowess has a lot to do with the extraordinary philanthropy that grew around Ahmedabad. The brilliant research structure at Calcutta University,for example,was sustained largely by private endowed professorships,such as the Palit Chairs,whose first two incumbents were C.V. Raman and P.C. Ray. Even by the benchmark of our own tradition,philanthropy in India is not scaling heights it did. Indian capital has the resources to transform Indias higher education and research space,if it shows a genuine philanthropic commitment.
Second,all of us know the difficulties of operating in the Indian environment: the institutional hassles,the difficulty of finding the right people and so forth. But there is a danger that we are letting this argument become a self-fulfilling one. The fact is that if resources were available,in the right kind of way talent can be attracted. And the reverse is also true. We are letting brand names become a self-fulfilling signal of quality. Some of the universities to which Indian gifts are going are exceptional. But many of the programmes they are subsidising are of dubious intellectual value,products of a trendy fashion in academia rather than programmes of lasting value. In short,there is in the way we approach brand names in higher education,a little bit of herd behaviour that often overlooks genuinely promising work at the expense of pedigree. This will put Indian institutions at a disadvantage.
Third,we know knowledge knows no boundaries. But we also know that knowledge is a stratagem in the creation and maintenance of power. And we also know that the questions we ask,if not the validity of the claims we advance,are shaped by context and location. India has two challenges. It must move from being a mere consumer of knowledge produced elsewhere to a producer of knowledge. And its self-image needs to be constituted by a confident free-flow of ideas internally. But ironically,just at the juncture at which Indian capital is ready to shape the world,Indias sense of itself,its own history and past,its own problems,is even more likely to be shaped by knowledge produced elsewhere.
Fourth,as a businessman there is some value to appreciating the marginal return on investment. To put things in perspective,typically endowing a single chair at a top American university costs between $7-15 million. The intellectual return on that money,properly invested in India,will still be considerably higher. Just to dramatise the point,the total annual budget of Indias leading institutions in the realm of culture,whether it is the Sahitya Akademi,or Lalit Kala Akademi,or Sangeet Natak Akademi,is close to what it takes to endow a single chair in the humanities in the US.
Some might think that there is a form of poetic justice in Indian philanthropy going abroad on a large scale. The latest figures show that FCRA contributions to Indian education (as a whole,not just higher) are somewhere in the range of Rs 500 crore. If that is so,India is giving almost as much as it is receiving! But it makes it even more a scandal that Indian research institutions have to rely so much on foreign funds,because genuinely philanthropic funding is domestically still scarce. And there is also the curious phenomenon of why we continue to think that universities with endowments in the tens of billions of dollars need more money. Indian capital is poised to transform the world; it can also transform the philanthropic space in India,if it only tried.
The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi express@expressindia.com
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