Limitations of Philanthropy

 Recently the Hurun India Philanthropy list was published giving details about how much the rich in India were donating for social causes. The top few hundred rich people donated around Rs 9000 crores. There was praise all round for this large hearted ness of the rich.

However, this philanthropy has to be put in the context of the profits being earned by corporations. The total such donations annually would be around Rs 20000 crores. Whereas, the total profits of all listed companies is 4% of the GDP which works out to Rs 11 lakh crores. Therefore, the rich are donating a paltry 2% of their profits as mandated by the law on Corporate Social Responsibility and not doing anything extraordinary 🙂.
Anyway the NGO sector which survives on such philanthropy has very marginal impact as far as solving the serious problems that face the multitudinous deprived and oppressed people in this country. NGOs generally wax eloquent about their work in a few villages or slums but unless the Government implements the programmes of the NGOs on scale very little can be achieved.
For instance, NGOs have been talking about the need to compensate women for the unpaid domestic and care work they do for quite some time without making any headway. The Madhya Pradesh Government in one fell stroke has made a massive impact by giving more than a crore of economically deprived women in the state Rs 1500 a month through direct benefit transfer which will amount to an outlay of Rs 20000 crore annually which is the cumulative annual budget of all the NGOs in the country.