Impact imperialists eye big 'opportunities' in India
Rockefeller Foundation board of trustees member Ravi Venkatesan was formerly chairman of Microsoft India, where he “helped build India into Microsoft’s second-largest presence in the world”. [339]
He was instrumental in creating Microsoft India’s Project Shiksha, a “computer literacy program” which has so far trained over 40 million school children in India. [340]
And he is the founder of the India-based Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, whose funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, his former employer Microsoft and, of course, The Rockefeller Foundation. [341][342]
Venkatesan is also board chair of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, “a collective movement working to unlock green energy access to secure an inclusive and resilient future for all”. [343][344]
Its website states: “GEAPP works to accelerate the green energy transition to end energy poverty across emerging economies.
“We do this by expanding access to affordable, reliable, clean electricity for the hardest to reach communities that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change”.
“Formed in a spirit of radical collaboration, GEAPP brings together philanthropy, governments, development partners, and the private sector”. [345]
And, sure enough, its public-private globo-corporatist partners include not only British, American, French, Dutch and German state agencies, but also the likes of the Bezos Earth Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, The African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Mastercard Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation (of course!) and the World Bank. [346]
Venkatesan has personal experience in the world of banking, in fact, having once been chairman of the Bank of Baroda, India’s second largest public sector bank, which in 2017 was fined by authorities in South Africa for having “flouted a range of anti-corruption and money laundering laws”. [347][348][349]
In 2018 Venkatesan was appointed “Special Representative for Young People and Innovation” by UNICEF.
The UN agency’s statement said he would provide strategic guidance and support UNICEF globally with high-level outreach, partnerships and scaling innovations.
“He will also advise UNICEF on its innovation agenda and assist UNICEF craft shared value partnerships with global corporations”. [350]
Say no more!
Venkatesan is the founder of Social Venture Partners India, a “pan-India collaborative philanthropy organization” which is “working towards an equitable India”. [351][352][353]
This is part of Social Venture Partners International which “brings together individual donors, foundations, and regional affiliates who want to invest in progressive change on a global scale”. [354][355]
Progressive change on a global scale. Marvellous.
The Seattle-based outfit describes its industry sector as “Philanthropic Fundraising Services”, but clearly we’re looking at impact imperialism. [356]
Indeed, Venkatesan is “a partner at impact investor Unitus Ventures”. [357]
This entity is “a strategic partner with Capria Ventures, a leading Global South specialist venture firm, operating under a single brand, Capria Ventures”. [358]
Capria’s 2023 Annual Impact Report for India Funds I and II sets out how its “impact thesis” has created “prosperity”. [359]
It explains: “Impact measurement and management at Capria includes collaborating with our portfolio companies to set five-year impact goals and corresponding impact metrics in alignment with their business strategies and operations.
“In order to ensure sustainable impact, we track progress using industry standard IRIS metrics, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
It says it has “impacted” the lives of 21 million “BoP” people in India – “The population at the Base of the economic Pyramid (BoP) comprises the 1+ billion people or two thirds of the Indian population that lives on an annual household income of less than USD 3,000 (INR 200,000)”. [360]
And the wonderful news is that this resulted in the generation of a $602 million revenue, an increase of 45 per cent from the previous year!
As the sub-heading on the report’s front page brags, India is a country “where the world’s greatest needs meet the greatest opportunities”.
A fascinating insight into who ultimately lurks behind Venkatesan and his extensive networks came while he was co-chairman of Indian Big Tech company Infosys Ltd, “a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting”. [361][362]
When Infosys went public in 1993, its initial public offering (IPO) of shares was undersubscribed but it was “bailed out” by Rothschildian front Morgan Stanley, which picked up 13 per cent of equity at the offer price of 95 rupees per share – the share price surged to 8,100 rupees by 1999. [363]
Today its work in “managing the systems and workings of global enterprises” involves it in 55 countries and it has more than 300,000 employees. [364]
In a 2017 media interview, Venkatesan addressed the controversy around Infosys’s acquisition of a company called Panaya.
He said: “We received a couple of whistle blower emails with a bunch of allegations and amongst those allegations was that there was financial impropriety”.
Venkatesan revealed that Infosys called upon some expert help from the UK and the US and a report was produced which, conveniently enough, “found no shred of evidence whatsoever to substantiate any of the allegations”. [365]
And who were these experts?
The British firm that Infosys turned to was Control Risks, the “global risk and strategic consulting firm specializing in political, security and integrity risk” that has been described as “the privatised wing of British security”. [366][367]
As I noted in May 2024, it was chaired by Irene Dorner, a banker, property developer and trustee of Chatham House who in 2014 was sent to the US Senate by her employers HSBC “to apologise for mistakes that led to a £1.2bn fine for money laundering”. [368][369]
And the US firm that came to Venkatesan’s aid is Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, “one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world”. [370]
It has acted for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Inc, CNN and George W. Bush.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher also notoriously represented oil giant Chevron over the serious pollution it caused in Ecuador and was involved in “demonizing” human rights lawyer Steven Donziger (pictured), as The Intercept explained in 2021.
“Led by the law firm Gibson Dunn, the company’s hot pursuit of the attorney has involved hiring private investigators to track him, creating a publication to smear him, and creating a team of hundreds of lawyers to fight him.
“As a result, Donziger, who spent decades fighting for Indigenous communities and farmers grappling with the pollution resulting from oil extraction, now faces exorbitant fines and legal costs.
“He has also lost his passport, his income, his law license (though he’s fighting the decision), and his freedom”. [371]
Law students wrote a letter of protest to the company, noting: “Gibson Dunn’s pattern of representation suggests that there is no ethical standard guiding its work, with profit consistently overriding pressing issues of justice”. [372]
Sounds very much like the global mafia as a whole!
Then in November 2023 Gibson Dunn was among the big law firms that smeared campus protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “anti-semitism”.
They sent a letter to top law school deans warning them that they would not be hiring students who voiced criticism of the Zionist entity and its mass-murdering activities. [373]
The American Lawyer reports: “In addition to signing the letter, organized by Sullivan & Cromwell, law firms such as Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius have partnered with pro-Israel organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel International and Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law to operate a helpline for Jewish students experiencing antisemitism on campus”.
It quotes Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder as saying: “This is squarely in our tradition of using our platform and our talent to assist people who are being marginalized or discriminated against in our country”.
And it adds: “While Gibson Dunn would be open to representing Muslim students experiencing Islamophobia, Snyder said, the current helpline is not set up to assist them”. [374]
The above article is an extract from my new 100-page booklet, The Single Global Mafia: The Rockefeller Foundation’s multiple links to Zionism and military-industrial-financial neo-imperialism, which can be downloaded free here for reading, safekeeping and the widest possible sharing.
[339] https://massentrepreneurship.org/the-team/
[340] Ibid.
[341] Ibid.
[342] https://massentrepreneurship.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/GAME-impact-report-November-2022.pdf
[343] https://energyalliance.org/powering-people-planet-2023/about-us/who-we-are/ravi-venkatesan/
[344] https://energyalliance.org/
[345] Ibid.
[346] https://energyalliance.org/partners/
[347] https://massentrepreneurship.org/the-team/
[348] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Baroda
[349] https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/fic-fines-bank-of-baroda-for-flouting-anti-corruption-laws/
[350]
https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2018/Sep/28/ravi-venkatesan-appointed-unicefs-special-representative-of-young-people-1878383.html
[351] https://svpindia.org/people/ravi-venkatesan/
[352] https://svpindia.org/
[353] https://svpindia.org/about-us/
[354] https://www.socialventurepartners.org/find-an-affiliate/
[355] https://www.socialventurepartners.org/about-svpi/
[356] https://www.linkedin.com/company/social-venture-partners
[357] https://massentrepreneurship.org/the-team/
[358] https://unitus.vc/
[359] https://capria.vc/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Capria-India-Impact-Report-2023.pdf
[360] Ibid.
[361] https://massentrepreneurship.org/the-team/
[362] https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/infosys-a-top-3-it-services-brand-globally-leads-the-it-services-industry-with-the-fastest-cagr-in-brand-value-over-5-years-101705467454439.html
[363] https://web.archive.org/web/20130722234644/http://www.in.com/infosys-technologies/biography-1818.html
[364] https://www.infosys.com/
[365] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/founders-identify-deeply-with-the-company-they-build-ravi-venkatesan-co-chairman-infosys/articleshow/60004525.cms
[366] https://www.controlrisks.com/who-we-are/leadership/board-only/irene-dorner
[367]
https://www.nickdavies.net/1987/06/16/control-risks-the-privatised-wing-of-british-security/
[368] https://winteroak.org.uk/2024/05/15/power-and-corruption-the-public-private-imperial-mafia/
[369] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/16/irene-dorner-hsbc-banker-retires-us-senate-apology
[370] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Dunn
[371] https://theintercept.com/2021/04/07/chevron-steven-donziger-law-gibson-dunn-boycott/
[372]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10UKdxCBVOQjKmHsZZQEFI0KrdeMPzQfrjnzOWQ6uYB8/edit?tab=t.0
[373] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Dunn
[374] https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2023/11/13/law-schools-begin-discussions-with-law-firms-after-open-letter-on-antisemitism/
Hi Paul, thank you for your great work in waking so many of us up to the truth. Your message reminds me also of Dr. Shiva Ayyardurai’s relentless educational work in helping all of us who were not hitherto aware, to understand how these malignant ‘systems’ work. Also the wonderful Dr Vandana Shiva whose forte is to expose the criminal cartel of whom one Bill Gates is first and foremost, in enslaving Indian farmers to genetically modified sterile seeds which means farmers in India are forced to buy seeds year after year from reprehensible Companies like Syngenta and at vastly inflated prices rather than being able to use their own seeds from their own crops as they have done for countless generations, leading to hundreds of suicides of farmers in these regions. Dr. Vandana is an incredible force for promoting Nature and growing our own seeds and also a force for justice in a works full of human vipers
“Law students wrote a letter of protest to the company, noting: “Gibson Dunn’s pattern of representation suggests that there is no ethical standard guiding its work, with profit consistently overriding pressing issues of justice”.” — Not so! There is indeed an “ethical standard guiding its work”; that ethical standard is to be resolutely UNethical.
“It quotes Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder as saying: “This is squarely in our tradition of using our platform and our talent to assist people who are being marginalized or discriminated against in our country”.” — Hypocrisy so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw.