কোলাকথন (ভূমধ্যসাগরের কোন বিন্দু থেকে)

Good Day Paran Bandhus and all readers of Thekopanjee!

This mail is in endless praise for a Man ....the one and only "Azim ফremji". Read this:
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In the season of scams and sleazy tapes, human compassion has blazed like a meteorite. Wipro চhairman Azim Premji’s $2 billion donation to Indian primary education could become a turning point in the relationship between rich and poor in post-Independence India. Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra and NRNarayana Murthy may have given millions of dollars to Harvard University, but Premji has donated over R8,000 crore to primary schools in rural India.

The biggest donation ever in the history of philanthropy has not gone to business schools or to religious establishments or to higher education. Instead it has gone to the youngest Indian citizens and called on them to dream the impossible dream. It is a donation that has invited tiny feet to abandon the slushy dirt tracks and run to school and then climb the staircase of destiny. Premji’s donation will fund 100 schools over the next five years, train teachers and invest in technology to create quality modern education at the lowest levels of development. Premji has promised more money in the future. Let the jingoists shriek all they want, but here is a Muslim corporate leader who has made India the holy land of his mission and his endeavour.

Premji’s act has brought philanthropy to the centre stage . In the heady era of the ‘I-don’t-চare-I-want-to-party’ mindset, India’s philanthropic and charitable traditions have fallen by the wayside. While western pop icons like Bob Geldof, Sean Penn, Madonna and Angelina Jolie are distinguished by their commitment to sharing wealth and becoming voices of the disaster-struck, India’s popular icons are marked by their endorsement of brands and jockeying for IPL teams. There are notable exceptions like Shabana Azmi’s recent support to the Ek Jodi Kapda campaign or Rahul Bose’s work among tsunami victims. But its difficult to find a Bollywood star who would lend his services as passionately and as self-effacingly to a disaster- struck area as perhaps actor Sean Penn’s humanitarian work for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.


In the 1950s and 60s, the Birlas and Tatas led the way in the setting up of many educational and cultural institutions. But today’s prevailing culture of unabashed display has meant that the elegance of the old wealthy families, where money implied low key taste and discreet good living, is hardly practised. The Ambani billion-dollar home, valued at R4,000 crore or Lakshmi Mittal’s famous $60 million wedding for his daughter are, at one level, signals of the arrival of Indian business on the world stage, but from the point of view of the aam aadmi, they stand out as symbols of flamboyantly displayed wealth, wealth as shock treatment rather than wealth as healer.

But Premji has done what hundreds of billionares disbelieved even in their dreams.

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