Billionaires in the West are donating most of their wealth to charities, leaving very little inheritance to their children, scream media headlines, prompting the question, “Are Indians miserly when it comes to social causes because they hoard all their wealth for the next generation?”

In most cases where billionaires bequeath their wealth to charities, they themselves or their inheritors are the trustees. We generally do not prefer to shout from the rooftop because when it comes to charity, we believe the left hand should not know what the right is doing.

A common criticism is that the list of the super-rich in India donating to social causes is not as long as the one in the West. The comparison may be unfair as Western countries like the United States and United Kingdom have a long history of financial development, unlike India, which inherited an economy that was in doldrums from the British just about seven decades ago. Most billionaires are of recent origin, particularly of the post-liberalisation era.

Read the full article by M Gautham Machaiah at Deccan Herald