Who is Corporate Philanthropy for? Arundhati Roy Says It’s Not Who You Think - NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly - Promoting an active an engaged democracy.

Who is Corporate Philanthropy for? Arundhati Roy Says It’s Not Who You Think - NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly - Promoting an active an engaged democracy.: For India, “Trickledown hasn’t worked,” Roy writes. “But Gush-Up certainly has.” And it’s not just Roy’s analysis that makes this piece worthy of your time. It’s also her utterly stunning prose. Take, for instance, this passage: “As Gush-Up concentrates wealth on to the tip of a shining pin on which our billionaires pirouette, tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy—the courts, Parliament as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways they are meant to. The noisier the carnival around elections, the less sure we are that democracy really exists.”

Roy’s analysis moves from the influence of corporate India to the dynamics of the Indian political system, and from the nation’s corporate-serving military apparatus to the topic of “Corporate Philanthropy” (Roy’s capitalization). The latter should be of much interest to the nonprofit sector, be it in the U.S. or abroad.