I grew up in a middle class family in Mumbai, where my parents taught us the importance of giving back. Our success, they insisted, was meaningful only if it helped others rise. As a girl, I spent most Sundays accompanying my father as he distributed food to those in need. As a young teacher at an elementary school, I learned that the greatest gift a teacher offers is not knowledge itself but the confidence and capabilities it awakens in a child. And, as a mother, I experienced most profoundly that there is no greater joy than nurturing another life.
Mahatma Gandhi taught us that service to others is among life’s highest forms of fulfilment. His ideas have shaped me and my ideas of philanthropy profoundly: sarvodaya, his vision of the welfare of all, and, antyodaya, his insistence on the uplift of society’s most marginalized.
But the highest purpose of philanthropy is to make itself obsolete. To do that, we must turn acts of care and generosity into lasting change by building institutions. Societies shape the future through the institutions they build: universities, hospitals, museums, scientific laboratories, and schools. Every generation has a responsibility to pass on stronger institutions to the next.
Our world is awash in plenty. Yet roughly between two to three billion people, especially in the Global South, remain deprived of nutritious food, adequate housing, clean water and sanitation, quality education and healthcare, secure livelihoods, and protection from environmental hazards. The primary responsibility for meeting these needs rests with governments, multilateral institutions, and businesses. But social transformation also requires philanthropic institutions capable of combining excellence with compassion, innovation with integrity, and purpose with performance.
Across India, I have encountered incredibly talented and dedicated doctors and nurses; teachers and artists; farmers, athletes, and volunteers. Extraordinary things happen when these talented and dedicated people find opportunity and support.
This belief guides my work as chair of India’s Reliance Foundation, on every institution we have built—from excellent schools to a global university still taking shape; from high quality, affordable and accessible healthcare to a cultural center that showcases arts and artists from the world’s great cities and India’s remotest towns and villages; from an initiative that offers dignity and opportunity to millions of India’s skilled craftspeople to an organization dedicated to protecting and caring for animals.
The most remarkable people I have met rarely ask for aid. What they seek is a chance: a chance to learn, to create, and to contribute. When society provides such opportunities reliably and at scale, lives are transformed. Institutions make this possible. They do more than solving the problems of our today; they prepare humanity for the possibilities of our tomorrow.
But building institutions demands patience. Institutions are gifts to those who inherit them; in time, they might create things their founders never imagined. I often think about the world our children, and their children, will inherit. I hope it will be healthier, kinder, more harmonious, more creative, and more com- passionate. I hope it will be a world where every child has the freedom to dream without limits and the means to pursue those dreams with confidence.
The Sanskrit phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam teaches us that the world is one family. I believe that institution-building is one of the purest expressions of this philosophy: it enlarges the circle of care to embrace humanity as a whole. And since all nations, communities, and cultures are branches of a single tree, we share a responsibility to tend it together.
Philanthropic institutions should forge bonds of mutual learning, exchange, and collaboration; partnerships help multiply the impact of philanthropy. Ultimately, philanthropy is not measured by the wealth we give away but by the futures we make possible, by the dreams that become reality because someone built something lasting. Time may dim the memory of who builds institutions, but the institutions themselves must shine on.
