MA in Economics

Azim Premji Foundation

• Contributing to a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society.
• The Foundation’s vision is to contribute towards a more just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. Its work is focused on India.
• Azim Premji set up the Foundation in 2001. Over the past years, he has irrevocably donated most of his wealth for philanthropic purposes and created a philanthropic endowment valued (as of Jan 2023) at approximately USD 29 billion (INR 2,40,000 crore) to fund the work of the Foundation. As part of this endowment, along with other assets, 66 percent of the economic ownership of Wipro Ltd is with the Foundation.

Foundation ​‘on-the-ground’

• The Foundation does extensive and deep ​‘on-the-ground’ work across the country – both directly through its own operations and through partners. The work spans education to other important areas of equity and human well-being.

Foundation’s Field Institutions:

• The Foundation works to improve the school education system in India, with a focus on the more disadvantaged areas of the country. The work ranges from teacher capacity development and leadership development to matters of policy and curriculum, including a significant contribution to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and National Curriculum Framework (NCF)— National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022 and National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023.
• The Field Institutions are spread across 7 states with over 3,50,000 schools. In addition, the Foundation also works deeply with 7 states in the northeast of the country to help improve the equity and quality of the state school systems. Currently, there are 59 institutions in the field. The Foundation also runs 9 schools that strive to provide quality education with an emphasis on instilling constitutional values.
• The Foundation’s own team of 1,500 people is spread across 250 locations. The Field Institutions are in some of the most disadvantaged districts of the country, each staffed with 10 – 60 members. The Foundation also runs 270 ​‘Teacher Learning Centres (TLCs)’, in these districts.
• This deep institutional presence is now being leveraged by the Foundation to work on Health and Livelihoods, starting with a few regions and then expanding.

Partners:

• The Foundation supports with multi-year financial and corpus grants, 1,550 other not-for-profit organisations (NPOs) across the country, which do deep ​‘on-the-ground’ work across a range of issues — supporting people who are severely disadvantaged and marginalised with immediate care, access to essential services and the possibility of a dignified future.
• Some of these vulnerable groups are urban poor, persons with disability, women facing violence, adolescent girls at risk, children at risk, homeless, elderly poor, manual scavengers, migrant workers, farmers with marginal landholding, particularly vulnerable Adivasi groups and water-deficient communities.
• This also involves collaboration with state governments and groups of NPOs to address issues systemically beyond immediate care and support. Some such collaborations are: in Odisha, an effort to improve nutrition and hygiene; in Andhra Pradesh, improving the livelihood of small and marginal farmers; in Tamil Nadu, setting up centres in district hospitals to rescue, treat and rehabilitate mentally ill homeless individuals and a multi-state programme to strengthen local governance and Panchayati raj institutions.

Universities

• The Foundation is building a network of universities to contribute to capacity development and research for the social sector.