One of the keynote speakers at this year’s AVPN Conference was Ajay Piramal, Chairman of the Piramal Group and the Piramal Foundation. Is he wearing two hats, a corporate one and a philanthropic one? Not really. He explains to Andrew Milner that what he attempts to do through his businesses is not fundamentally different from what he does through his philanthropy – and how, in his view, a spiritual element underlies them both.

AM: I think one of things I picked up from you is the relationship between business and philanthropy. From what you said in your keynote,  it seems you don’t see any sharp distinction between the two.

AP: It’s like a human being. How can you separate out your values from your professional life? So its the same with business and philanthropy. They certainly have the same purpose in our group; ‘Doing Well And Doing Good’ to make a positive difference. My belief is that business, if it’s done in the right manner, is a force for good. Profit is the oxygen which makes the world go round, but just consuming oxygen is not the only purpose of life, it’s more than that, and therefore you have to make money but you have to do good. For instance, look at financial services, a business which we are in. Large numbers of people all over the world, especially in India, don’t have access to debt but we know that you need debt to grow so people in smaller businesses, smaller households may sometimes pay enormous amounts of interest, 40 or 50 per cent per annum. If you can give them access to debt at the right cost,  you make money, but you’re doing charity by giving them what they need at a much lower cost. So that is business as a force of good. That’s what conscious capitalism is all about. So what are the differences if it’s doing good and profit is used in uplifting and serving people? But in philanthropy, you can’t just say ‘I’m doing good.’ You have to measure every rupee or every pound or every dollar and it has to show impact over a longer period of time.

We make bold, courageous decisions in business. Why can’t we do the same in philanthropy? India is a large country, and to make change, it has to be done at scale

You talked about compassion this morning. Do you see a tension between a calculated measurement – we got so much return for so much input – between compassion and measurement?

No, because it begins with the heart. You have to see the pain of the other, then feel it, and then give where you think you can alleviate the pain. Then the impact will come. Take a different example, education. Teaching someone to read, the impact is obvious. My whole life changes around me. Not only my life, the life of my family and all the people around me. You feel that pain when you see that somebody else is being deprived of something which you have. That’s how it begins.

Talking about education, you mentioned other focus areas which I think were health and water. How did you come to those three main areas?

With education, me and my family are privileged and if we can get the best schools in the world just because we were born where we were, why should someone who was born on the street, or was born in a very low-income family and can’t afford to go to school – why should they be deprived? So that’s how education began. As far as health is concerned, again, we were in the pharmaceutical industry and we’ve seen how access to medicine can change the lives of people, so why should some people not have access even to basic hygiene that we take for granted. The same with water. It depends on what you empathise with.

So the real guide is empathy, rather than looking at data and deciding where the needs are?

In India, there are innumerable problems and therefore, when you have empathy, what you do is much more effective. I talked about the Indian way of serving, what I said about Sewa^[1] is true. When a mother feeds her child, she not doing a favour to anybody, she is receiving much more than she gives. Actually, giving is not the right word, it is really sharing. Giving means I am on a higher level, and I’m giving to somebody who is in need of something. It’s not that, it’s sharing the resources that we have.

But the need is as much on the side of the person who’s sharing?

Absolutely, it satisfies a need for us and a need for the other person. In the image I used, it satisfies the child’s need for nutrition, it satisfies the need for the mother because she gets the love of the child.

Obviously your philanthropy is very much values-based. You talked in your speech about drawing on the Bhagavad Gita. Could you elaborate on that a little?

I was born into a family which is relatively well off. What have I done to deserve that?  It’s therefore our duty to share some of this with the underprivileged. The Gita talks about this concept of Trusteeship. What is Trusteeship? When you form a trust, the role of the trustee is to look after the wealth of the trust for all the beneficiaries without any personal gain. So, the Lord says ‘I have given this wealth and you are responsible for seeing that you get the best out of it so all can gain.’

There’s so much collaboration that’s possible across very many large foundations. And it is also giving a context to the way Asians think of philanthropy, which is not the same as how the developed world thinks of it

At the Piramal Foundation, you have this concept of bold philanthropy in action. Could you explain the idea? Is it a change of direction or have you always worked on this principle?

No, that has always been the case. We make bold, courageous decisions in business. Why can’t we do the same in philanthropy? India is a large country, and to make change, it has to be done at scale, so you have to think beyond what you normally think and take on challenges which have not been addressed before. So, we are working in areas we have not done before. We’re working in the so-called aspirational districts. These are the most underdeveloped districts, whether that’s because of remoteness or lack of infrastructure or whatever. The government has spotlighted them, and we have started working on them. Again, with tribal areas, those were previously neglected. So, 10 per cent of the population lives in these areas, but only one and a half per cent of the CSR money goes to them, So these are the bold initiatives.

Obviously, as you mentioned, government’s a key player if you want to achieve scale. Are there challenges of working with them?

To say that there are no problems would not be true, but there are problems if I work with another foundation, in fact, there are more problems. My experience has been that many foundations talk down to government: ‘you don’t know anything, you’re lazy, you’re inefficient.’ That’s wrong. We go with the mindset that the government knows much more about the problems than we do, and together, we will solve them. They have a lot of plus-points, we have some, so we work together and we put the government officials in front. I don’t want credit, I want the government officer to get credit.

And have they always been open to working with you? 

Yes, in fact they encourage us to do more. When the Aspirational Districts Programme started, they called us up and asked to work with us. There are 112 districts, and we said we can’t go up to more than 25, we don’t have that many people. They reluctantly agreed to 25, but then they encouraged and supported us to work in all 112 and every rupee that we bring in has the capacity to unlock two times from other donors and five times from state funds.

When I meet the founders of many of the foundations here, there’s humility and everybody is collaborating. So there’s a lot of commonality.

Do you fund the Piramal Foundation through an endowment or do you make regular contributions from the companies? 

It’s a combination.

How much does the foundation spend a year roughly?

A lot. But it’s not enough.

There’s already been a lot of discussion of the sustainable development goals at the conference. What’s your view of them?

The sustainable development goals were the reason these aspirational districts were actually identified, because if these districts, were a country they would rank amongst the poorest countries So to achieve the Goals, we have to work in the aspirational districts. But whether we manage to achieve the Goals or not, we have to achieve much more than we are doing today as a country. There are basic things that have to be done – infant mortality, maternal mortality, education – these are fundamental things and that’s where our focus is.

Is this your first time at an AVPN Conference? 

Yes.

How are you finding it?

I think it’s been very good. There’s so much collaboration that’s possible across very many large foundations. And it is also giving a context to the way Asians think of philanthropy, which is not the same as how the developed world thinks of it. We have to also recognise, for instance, that many of these countries are former colonies. In those days, there would be a few officers at the centre, maybe 100 or even less who would control the whole country. Today, we are a democracy with 1.4 billion people, but some of the systems still remain the same. How do we empower people to work in the common interest when they are used to having solutions provided from above? And there are different perspectives. When we talk about giving as we understand it, that’s not a western concept. Humility, that’s not a western concept. When you talk about collaboration with government, normally in the west, you will see government as separate. So these are differences, and we have to recognise where we are in Asia.

Do you see commonalities across borders in Asia, which is a huge region? 

Yes, you can see that here. Everybody’s talked about government and foundation partnerships today. When I meet the founders of many of the foundations here, there’s humility and everybody is collaborating. So there’s a lot of commonality. As I say, it is my first experience, but I think they’re bringing good people together, good foundations at every level from founders to the professionals and people are talking in an atmosphere of trust. That’s the most important thing. And brilliant thing about the whole environment is that you want to learn, it’s not that I’m going to teach you, I’m going to learn as much from you as probably I can share with you my experience.

The conference title is global problems, Asian solutions. That implies that Asian societies can model solutions for the rest of the world. Do you think that is the case, or is that too ambitious?

I think if the west can do it, Asia can do it.

That’s a good answer!

If we are open-minded, we have to put the solutions what we think can work, then it’s up to the world. If they want to take it, they should take it.

Andrew Milner is Features Editor at Alliance