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Anand Giridharadas named to TIME100 Philanthropy list
Other Indians featured in the TIME100 Philanthropy 2025 list include Mukesh and Nita Ambani, Azim Premji and Nikhil Kamath
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Malvika Choudhary - Wed, 21, May 2025
- 17:33 EDT
- 12
Anand Giridharadas / anand.ly
Indian American journalist and author Anand Giridharadas has been named to Time Magazine’s first-ever TIME100 Philanthropy list for 2025.
Named under the Innovators category, Giridharadas is recognized for his influential critique of elite philanthropy and his continued advocacy for systemic reform in how societies approach generosity and wealth redistribution.
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Giridharadas rose to prominence with his 2018 bestseller Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, in which he argued that the ultra-wealthy use philanthropy as a tool to reinforce the very systems that enable inequality. The book sparked a national conversation, questioning whether billionaire giving genuinely solves societal problems or simply preserves the status quo.
Seven years on, TIME notes, Giridharadas’s thesis has only grown more relevant. “I want to thank the billionaire class for making a case for what I was trying to argue much better than I ever could,” Giridharadas said, pointing to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos as examples of how extreme wealth can distort public priorities. “They have staged a play in public for why this level of wealth is dangerous."
Instead of relying on billionaire benevolence, Giridharadas advocates for a model in which governments — empowered by fair taxation of the rich — make decisions based on democratic mandates. “The better alternative to billionaire philanthropy,” he argues, “is a democratic system where the ultrarich pay their appropriate share of taxes.”
Despite the weight of his critique, Giridharadas expresses optimism about generational change. “Gen Z, they get it,” he said. “I feel like they're the first generation of Americans in my lifetime to not be brainwashed by the story of the billionaire hero.”
A former columnist for The New York Times, Giridharadas is now an editor-at-large at TIME, an MSNBC political analyst, and a visiting scholar at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His body of work includes India Calling (2011), The True American (2014), and The Persuaders (2022), reflecting his wide-ranging interest in democracy, power, and justice.
Other Indian names in the TIME100 Philanthropy 2025 list include billionaire couple Mukesh and Nita Ambani for their wide-scale empowerment initiatives, and Azim Premji, for his long-standing contributions to education in India. Entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath is listed under the ‘Trailblazers’ category for his unconventional philanthropic ventures.
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