Rhetorical philanthropy
In the recently concluded March 31 fiscal year, the Bangalore-based IT and ITES (IT enabled services) blue chip corporate Wipro Ltd earned a handsome net profit of Rs.3,283 crore on a gross sales revenue of Rs.19,975 crore. Little wonder that Wipro’s equity share (Rs.2 paid up) is riding high, currently quoted at Rs.458 on the Bombay Stock Exchange and Azim Premji, the promoter-chairman of Wipro who owns 86 percent of the company’s issued shares, is arguably the wealthiest individual in the subcontinent. Yet apart from being famous for being wealthy, Premji is also lionised by the media as a champion of primary education. The IT billionaire reportedly donates sums variously estimated by media reporters at Rs.20-50 crore per year for primary education causes through the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) and the Wipro Applying Thought in Schools programme.
Premji’s championship of foundational primary education, and his funding initiatives even if modest, would be commendable, except for the fact that on the net profit of Rs.3,283 crore earned in 2007-08, Wipro won’t pay a penny as corporate income tax. For mysterious reasons IT companies have been exempted from corporate income tax for over two decades until 2010. If Wipro had not been an IT company, it would have had to pay Rs.985 crore as income tax in the recently concluded fiscal year. Nor since dividend tax is payable by the company, is Premji liable to pay income tax on the massive dividend income (Rs.696 crore) which accrues to him as the owner of 86 percent of the equity of Wipro.
In the circumstances, given the huge tax breaks he enjoys, one would have expected this vocal children’s education champion to be far more generous in the matter of equipping abysmally provided government schools with computer hardware, libraries, laboratories, lavatories etc. But one would have to look with a powerful magnifying glass for evidence of such generosity. For the past 18 months EducationWorld has been requesting the company for copies of the annual reports of the APF and WATIS programme, without success.
Quite obviously despite the huge tax breaks he enjoys, Premji’s philanthropy is in inverse proportion to his rhetoric and the numerous encomiums conferred upon him by the gullible media. Disclosure: Three years ago Wipro cancelled a Rs.1.14 lakh per year contract under which 500 copies of this publication were sent on the company’s behalf to headmasters of cash-strapped government primaries to keep them updated about education news and trends. Financial constraints, explained Vijay Gupta of Wipro corporate communications.
Right recommendation
For the past three years the National Knowledge Commission, chaired by the Chicago-based multi-millionaire telecom switching systems pioneer Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, has been recommending that the wings of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) should be clipped. For half a century UGC (estb.1956) and for over two decades AICTE (estb.1987), the apex level bureaucratic organisations, have been supervising the growth and development  and most important licensing  of humanities, science and commerce, and technical (engineering, business management, hotel management, etc) education respectively. Quite eviden-tly with less than conspicuous success. According to Pitroda, higher education licensing and collegiate/university appointment powers should be vested in an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE). As if to prove that these two moribund organisations have outlived their utility, scandals have erupted in both of them, almost simultaneously. Currently UGC is a convulsed house divided over the sudden ejection of Raju Sharma, a 1982 batch IAS officer, from the position of secretary of the commission. According to UGC insiders, Sharma had raised some inconvenient questions about the award of the commission’s ambitious e-governance contract to cover all of the country’s colleges and universities.
Likewise within AICTE the appointment of Prof. R.A. Yadav, hitherto "acting chairman" of the council has been confirmed reportedly at the behest of Union HRD minister Arjun Singh, notwithstanding this somewhat obscure academic having been claiming a pension from Delhi University while earning a salary from AICTE, strictly forbidden by government rules.
Pitroda is right. Never before has an IRAHE been needed as right now.
Rank injustice
Transparency International’s (TI) assessment methodology is flawed. This Geneva-based voluntary organisation which measures the degree of official corruption, i.e bribe taking, scamming, kickbacking etc by government officials in countries around the world, ranks India as the 72nd most corrupt country in the world in a list topped by Nigeria (pop. 141 million) and ahead (i.e less corrupt) of Chad (pop. 10.4 million), Bangladesh (153 million), Kenya (35 million), Paraguay (6 million) and Indonesia (226 million). But if details of the assets/net worth declared by India’s politicians  which they are obliged to do prior to filing their nomination papers after general and state level elections have been notified (one of the most enlightened laws ever passed in this benighted republic)  are even half accurate, the gold medal for open, uninterrupted and continuous corruption cannot but be awarded to the sovereign, secular, socialist, etc Republic of India.
For instance former Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy who declared family assets of Rs.3.76 crore when the assembly election of 2004 was notified, has now declared Rs.49.72 crore. Likewise the family assets of the former Bangalore development minister V. Somanna have ballooned to a Sensex besting Rs.21 crore. On April 22, Karnataka’s Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) Justice Santosh Hegde and his men conducted raids on the homes and offices of eight govern-ment bureaucrats and officials and confiscated documentary evidence which indicates that these officials have accumulated wealth aggregating Rs.32 crore. Among them, Mahesh Shankar Hanumashetty, a lowly Belgaum-based motor vehicles inspector who has an assets portfolio of Rs.22 crore.
No doubt about it. Ranking India above 87 other countries in TI’s corruption index is a grave miscarriage of justice. The national interest demands that an appeal is filed in Geneva forthwith.