The Tata trusts are at the heart of a unique business model, and custodians of a tradition of philanthropy that touches

and changes countless lives

Intro..

Welcome to the world of the Tata group, and to a rationale quite unlike any other in modern-day entrepreneurship. A company with shareholder base of 3.5 million in India. The most significant of these shareholders, the Tata charitable trusts twothirds owners of Tata Sons, the promoter company of the group are a lot less concerned about quarterly earnings and analyst reviews than they are about enhancing and extending their charity canopy to provide shade and succour to a remarkably diverse spread of people, causes and institutions. About $105 million was donated to support initiatives in health and education, livelihoods and agriculture, human rights and culture, the environment and more, in India and abroad. The total adds up to about 4 per cent of the net profits of the Tata group. ( Including social Development programmes.) It was the central tenet of the trusteeship concept seeded by Jamsetji Tata, the Founder of the Tata group, and cemented by those who followed in his footsteps, most prominently his sons, Dorab Tata and Ratan Tata. Ratan Tata, the Chairman of Tata Sons, in a 2008 interview said "My view is that our expression of social responsibility cannot be measured in terms of profit and loss. It is an enormous contribution to the nation, an enormous expression of goodwill to the communities around us. I would like to think this is the best part of what Tata stands for We really do care.

Dr Irani, a titan who has been with the group for about as long as Mr Tata, says there is more to it than the group having a greater responsibility to display good business behaviour.

Dr Irani is certain that the advantages of being part of the group far outweigh the disadvantages. For evidence, on a lighter note, he tells a story concerning a parliamentarian from Jharkhand, a strifetorn state that has received some of the largest outlays of development funding from the Tata trusts and assorted Tata companies. This parliamentarian once told me that he could not visit his own constituency without a posse of policemen to protect him, but that we Tata people could go about our jobs freely. Our community development programmes are not premised on getting returns, immediate or otherwise, but they help us in different ways. An elemental link in the ties that bind Tata businesses to the people they are involved with is the Tata Council for Community Initiatives (TCCI), a coordinating agency that guides and supports Tata companies with their social development efforts. Philanthropy is about contributing the best way you can to improve the well-being of the people who have been placed in your path, says Kishor Chaukar, managing director of Tata Industries and the chairman of TCCI. Corporate social responsibility, by contrast, is about linking a business or a companys activities to the well-being of the communities it operates within.

 Wisdom dawned on Dr Irani, with time and with the imbibing of what may at first seem like an alien approach, as it has with all those who have become part of the Tata family. Thats how the trusteeship concept influences those in the thick of the business side of Tata, and this holds true for those who work for a group entity in India as much as it does for the increasing number of non-Indians who have come into the organisational fold as Tata companies expand their wings to reach global destinations. Any understanding of how the Tatas function must necessarily begin with knowing that there is a thick line separating the world of corporate Tata from the work that the Tata trusts support. The Tata founders ensured that the groups business operations and the financial benefits that accrue from them had to be in two distinct halves. The trusts really have no obligation to the companies from which they draw their monies, explains Dr Irani. The first of these, the JN Tata Endowment Scheme for higher education, was established by Jamsetji Tata in 1892 its beneficiaries include former Indian president KR Narayanan, scientists Raja Ramanna and Jayant Narlikar and writer and actor Girish Karnad and it marked the beginning of what would become the defining feature of the Tata idea of wealth sharing.

For Jamsetji Tata, Wealth was the secondary object in life; it was always subordinate to the constant desire in his heart to improve the industrial and intellectual condition of the people of this country.
Dorab Tata was an exceptional amalgam of business genius, aesthete and altruist, and it was he who must be credited with giving final shape to the trusteeship archetype. His younger brother, the artistically inclined Ratan Tata, was no less munificent, supporting freedom fighter and social reformer Gopal Krishna Gokhales Servants of India Society . (he donated Rs10,000 annually for a period of 10 years for its welfare work) and Mahatma Gandhis mission in South Africa (between 1909 and 1913, he provided Rs125,000 for this cause). Ratan Tata died in 1918 at the age of 47. A year later, the trust bearing his name was established. The Sir Dorabji Tata and the Allied Trusts is today the largest philanthropic entity in India, committing Rs2.9 billion for charitable causes in 2009-10; club the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the Navajbai Trust with it (Rs1.7 billion in disbursals in 200910), and the combined entity dominates the development funding landscape in India.

The Tata trusts, while providing financial backing to a smorgasbord of individual and institutional initiatives, do not themselves undertake development work. The principal conduit for implementation has always been non-government organisations or non-profits. Time was when the trusts, reticent by nature, stayed in the background and did little more than deliver the resources for deserving non-profits doing development work. That attitude has changed dramatically, Now they strive to set the development agenda, by identifying newer spheres that require backing such as urban poverty, migrant labour and human rights and by seeking out and supporting non-profits of merit.

Given their place in the funding matrix that the trusts operate by, non-profits are critical to the success of any project.
Being part of a large and renowned corporate group such as Tata brings with it a heightened sense of responsibility for the trusts. Working with Tata companies on their corporate social responsibility programmes is another no-no. We maintain an arms-length distance from corporate Tata because it would amount to a curious sort of situation if we were to fund some of these companies and their programmes, says Mr Singh, Managing trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata and the Allied Trusts. The 2010 edition of Brand Finance Global 500, a listing of the worlds most valuable brands, places the Tata group first in India and 65th worldwide. Had they factored empathy into this equation, Tata with its trusts leading the way may well have been in a league of its own. A helping hand, at home and abroad : 1. Tata Medical Center: A state-of-the-art institution for the treatment and care of cancer patients, the Tata Medical Center (TMC) in Kolkata is scheduled to open shortly. Being set up at a cost of $65 million, TMC is a not-for-profit initiative aimed specifically at helping cancer patients from the east and northeast of India and also from Bangladesh. 2. Education boost : In October 2010, the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust joined hands with a clutch of Tata companies and the Tata Education and Development Trust to grant $50 million to Harvard Business School (HBS) to fund a new academic and residential building in Boston, USA, for participants in its executive education programmes.

 The Tata trusts have moved with the times to become

more focused and better able to address the needs of a changing development landscape.

 social development agenda is a perspective that sits more comfortably with their long-term objectives and the changing realities of a country where a little help goes a long way. The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) and the Allied Trusts has for long been the largest development funding agency in India, disbursing close to Rs3 billion in 2009-10. The Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) and Navajbai Tata Trust are not too far behind, committing nearly Rs1.7 billion over the same period. What matters to them is that the money they donate is being put to more focused use, in spheres that they deem to be vital, and through non-profit organisations that share their wavelength and concerns.

The system for rice intensification is operational in 140-odd districts across India, touching some 80,000 farmers. A second programme we have pushed for and initiated is called diversion-based irrigation, which is being implemented in the foothills of forested areas in more than 100 places. said by Sanjiv Phansalkar, programme leader with SDTT.
Theres more happening with such proactive initiatives. Theres a substantial programme that provides basic services to the 120 million people who migrate seasonally in this country, to cities or prosperous agricultural regions, wherever there are employment opportunities.

Another initiative is targeted at conservancy workers, the absolute, desolate bottom of the pyramid, people who clean drains and toilets, most of them Dalits. Then there are efforts to empower domestic workers, help victims of domestic violence and change attitudes on female foeticide and infanticide.

 There have been new projects we have taken up, noticeably a big intervention in Vidarbha [in rural Maharashtra] that is aimed at alleviating poverty among farmers in a region where they are extremely distressed, with suicides, loss of livelihoods and more.

SIR RATAN TATA TRUST: Programme grant disbursals (theme wise): 2009-2010**

Thematic area
Rural livelihoods and communities Education Health Enhancing civil society and governance Art and culture Total

No of grants
124 51 19 19 8 221

Rs in million
1,071.55 154.02 44.23 57.39 14.60 1,341.79

$ in million
24.35 3.50 1.01 1.31 0.33 30.50

** The Figures in the table reflect programmatic disbursals in the financial year.