Ratan Tata, the leader of Tata Group will be retiring from in December 2012. The time he took over the reins, the turnover of the Tata Group stood at US$5 billion. This year it is expected to exceed US$100 billion. A new Forbes India article researches deep into the social and philanthropic bend into the way Ratan Tata did things.

He has been awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation, is apparently in talks with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a possible collaboration, and has been on the boards of several international philanthropic organizations and trusts.

The development and aid organizations of the world are increasingly leaning towards a model of philanthropy which supports social entrepreneurship encouraging microenterprises and self-sustainability. This solves the problem of a lack of funds, and taps into the potential of emerging markets and base of the pyramid, while leveraging the same for poverty eradication purposes.

The NGO models of aid are now outdated, as can be proved by new statistics which vigorously boil numbers down to ‘impact’, assessed against legitimate parameters. However, this has not found a very large audience in India’s governments and NGOs.

This is where Ratan Tata’s influence, and his exposure to the efficiency of international aid organizations will come in handy. What sets him apart is that he is possibly the only person who can bring about the systemic change that the perception of social enterprise related high-powered philanthropy needs.

The Tata Trusts have been associated with philanthropic engagements historically, but it was apparently Ratan Tata who scaled the number of people involved from 4 to more than 25, ensured that the new entrants on the board of Tata Trusts were development stalwarts like Vijay Mahajan (Basix Group) and MS Swaminathan (associated with the Green Revolution in India) who would help measure the impact of funds and continually change the general grant pattern from grants to NGOs to grants to institutions and social enterprises making impact.

His influence in the field of frugal innovation (the direct product of which was Tata Nano – the world’s cheapest car) prompted President Obama to invite him to collaborate with universities in the US to promote frugal innovation. This form of innovation, as Tata correctly believes is the vehicle to development in India.

What makes the strong philanthropic will of a man who refuses to stay inactive even though he could well afford to rest on his life’s laurels, really count is the fact that India needs someone like him. His expertise in global grant and funding institutions will help weed out the pockets of under-development that penetrate India. As India’s aid input dwindles given its bettering economic status in favour of more obviously poor countries like Africa, it is his resilient leadership that would lead the way to revolutionize the social entrepreneurship and impact philanthropic space in India, as globally (as Tata wants) as we know it.

Read the Forbes post here.