Venture Altruism

Bill Gates is, however, not the father of philanthropy, it has existed before him. The Rockefellers and the Fords have done their bit as have the Packard Foundation and the Benton Foundation for ending Digital Divide. The difference is that Gates is practising it at a time when global capitalism faces one of its worst crises after the dotcom bust, with corporate scandals galore and rising global inequality. Second, Gates’s is neither salvaging his conscience not planning back-door market building. There is a genuine concern to rebuild health care and basic education.

In a recent interview he argued ‘‘disease causes poverty,’’ not the other way round. In Joseph Schumpeter’s tradition of ‘creative entrepreneurs’, Gates can be best described as ‘a venture philanthropist’: The vision is more important than the bottom line.

Two years ago, Gates with his pre-Republican postures faced the Democrats’ wrath. Moreover, in a ruling, in tandem with American anti-trust legislation, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had split Gates’s monopolistic Microsoft into two companies: one to develop the Microsoft Operating Systems, the other for supporting Microsoft software and its internet business.

Facing turmoil at home, Gates came to India, but solely as a traditional entrepreneur in search of greener pastures with profits as his bottom line. He came to hardsell his latest innovation Microsoft.Net (DotNET) and the Windows Millennium (Windows Me).

He also came in search of local software allies, like the cost competitive Infosys. Gates did gain but soon the software bubble burst.

Today, although conditions at home are better with his favourite Republicans in power, he faces a different crisis. The dotcom bust at home and the total collapse of the new economy has shrunk global capitalism.

Moreover, US corporate scandals have never hit the ceiling in such an embarrassing manner. The loud and pious demands of American MNCs in the past for an end to corrupt business practices in the third world and implementation of the rule of law suddenly seem hollow and hypocritical in front of the recent revelations.

One CEO after another has been embroiled in accounting scandals that make the fodder scam look like childish pranks. Enron proved to be the most notorious example of American business double standards.

Second, the US dotcom bust had disastrous consequences on the global labour markets. Moreover, 9/11 made labour mobility from the developing to the developed world dramatically worse. While thousands of software professionals returned back home from abroad after losing their jobs, hundreds of thousands of visa seekers — whether students or professionals —were denied entry into the US.

Third, given the global crisis, capital has begun the great retreat from the developing world. According to UNDP Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, the trajectory of portfolio and foreign direct investment in developing markets began showing signs of ‘‘slowing, and indeed withdrawing as a consequence of the global economic conditions.’’ In the lingo of George Soros, capital’s return from the periphery to the centre always takes place during a crisis.

Finally, rising global inequality – between nations, classes and sectors – have made large sections of people sceptical about the go-go doctrine of globalisation. A UNDP report points out that while the richest 20 per cent of the world’s people (majority in the West) end up with 83 per cent of the world’s income, the bottom 20 per cent get only 1.4 per cent.

The global spread of distribution of world income is so gross that it resembles a champagne glass, with a wide shallow bowl at the top and the slenderest of stems below. Further, historian Angus Maddison estimates that while in the 1820s the richest countries in the world were three times richer than the poorest, the ratio today is almost 20 times.

This rising global inequality has resulted in a widespread scepticism about globalisation.

An innovator par excellence, Gates decided to redefine the contours of globalisation: civil society initiatives were to become the avante garde of global digital capitalism, health and education sectors the new engine of growth. The software superstar, India, one of its chief recipients.

The $ 24 billion Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has donated over $4.5 billion towards global health and education programs in the last two-and-a-half years. No doubt, out of the over $ 500 million invested during this trip to India, $100 million has been provided to check the further spread of AIDS in India. This equals the total investment of the US government in fighting AIDS in India.

Compare Gates’s record with that of other philanthropists: according to one estimate while the $ 24 billion Bill and Melinda Foundation spends almost 20 per cent of its assets in philanthropy, the $ 8 billion Packard Foundation spends only $ 1.6 million a year. While most corporate groups in the US reap a windfall 50 per cent as tax break for philanthropy, Gates is known to only take 30 per cent.

Gates is a philanthropist with a difference. After all, he neither inherited his billions nor does he want his three children to inherit them. He is busy redefining the contours of venture philanthrophy by focussing on vaccines, cancer, AIDS and scholarships for poor meritorious students.

If socialism declined with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism seems to be facing one of its worst crisis with the collapse of its new economy. In fact, the Indian software industry, given its tremendous cost competitiveness is the only beacon of hope in this doomsday scenario. Gates is being far sighted by homing on Bangalore and Hyderabad, the hubs of the new techie boom. But he is being a greater visionary in taking the beyond state, beyond market, global civil society initiative. The next time he comes to India all he needs to do is visit Assam, Bihar, Orissa and other boondocks. If Gates is able to build local roots with NGOs and social movements to rebuild people’s livelihoods via public health and education he would have rewritten the trajectory of globalisation.

Moreover, if he ends up spurring corporate social responsibility in this country, only then will the vast masses of India begin seeing private enterprise as Churchill claimed: the ‘strong horse that pulls the whole cart.’ And have you noticed another thing? Even the Swadeshi Jagran Manch isn’t protesting. Must be Windows 98 in their PCs.

Write to ajitkumarjhaexpressindia.com