Nitin Pai, on the Indian Economy Blog:
Of course, corporations, like citizens may want to do good for the society they are a part of. But they have no moral or legal obligation to do so. In a country where a communal socialist government is not only unwilling to do the needful to unshackle restrict labour laws that hurt both employers and employees but is also attempting to impose community-based quotas on private companies, the use of the word obligation must be treated with extraordinary care.
I am glad to announce that as long as free market fundamentalists like the jokers of Indian economy blog are there in our country, socialism is going nowhere. If they really want India to adopt capitalism, they better throw away the kinda attitude the author exhibits and work towards achieving a society where equality, not e-quality, is present.
Go check the lively debate over at Krish’s blog – what I liked best was Yin’s contribution to the debate:
A society without a healthy sense of social responsibility is a sad and lonely place.
And I do agree with Pai that India’s socialism has been communal – would this debate have happened if the outcomes hadn’t been cornered, or routed by our socialist rulers, along communal lines in the first place?
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Fortunately, some businesses seem to be moving towards socially resposnsible business practices. One commentator in the ‘questions and answers’ section of Kishore Mahububani’s lectuoe at CASI (available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/publications/papers_chrono_1.htm) says:
” I have been very struck by something that I think is emerging in India in conversations that I’ve had with business leaders and social leaders over the last year. I think it is very interesting to look at the politics of inclusion that you were just talking about and the necessity of inclusiveness in the institutions of global order. India has been one of the champions of pushing for that, whether it’s in the WTO or the United Nations. Across the board India has been a leader of the nonaligned movement in previous decades, but domestically the politics of inclusion and a paradigm of inclusion have become very current in India. I can’t tell you the number of leading CEOs that I have spoken to recently who have talked about the importance of equity and of making sure that India’s economic takeoff includes all of the population. As Mukesh Ambani said to me, we have to do something that no one in the world has been able to do, and that is to grow equitably. ”
There are similar ideas expressed in Madhukar Shukla’s posts in Social Enterpreneuership; seein particular his post commenting on
Mayank Krishna’s post on ‘Future of Business: Socially Oriented Capitalism.’ There are interesting comments on Sen’s talk and ensuing discussions in salon.com.
swarup garu,
what’s social entrepreneurship?
That is a new blog of Madhukar Shukla. The link is in his blog ” AlternativePerspective”. Recently, there are several posts and discussions in Mark Thoma’s blog.
swarup garu,
my question should have been – why social entrepreneurship? because i loosely understand the term already.. the way i see it – the poor need the same things, more or less, the other sections of society do – to name a few, education, health, security and steady incomes. the state in india, like many progressive states in the west and the rest of the world, had taken on the bulk of the burden of providing the goods serving the first three needs. but political wisdom had always fostered this idea that the more serious business of government is to …create incomes. so the left mostly failed to attach the same importance to the failure of states and the centre to provide adequate attention/resources to serving the first three needs as it did to the failure of governments to control the economy. the right was okay with this. looking at this from a caste perspective : the lower castes got substandard or no education, worst kind of health attention and bore the brunt of discrimination and violence because the justice system too failed to deliver. a part of the ‘incapabilities’ of the lower classes/castes in india can be attributed to the failure of the govt to serve those three needs. and i believe those classes/castes would have/will played/play a more assertive role in the economy if those three needs were/are adequately attended to.
now, speaking again from a caste perspective, the conflict over whether the government should control, and to what extent, the economy was largely played out between the diverse upper caste/class interests in india. it should be borne in mind that none of these groups were free from the traditional paternalistic attitude of the upper classes/castes of india. and the conflict mostly arose over who should get more power. and it is still being played out… any ‘new ideas’ should be seen against this bacxkground, in my view.
Kuffir: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I keep forgetting caste (advantage of living abroad. I notied that caste feelings exist among NRIs too but I meet only one Indian once a week.) I can only say with Gandhi “Caste has to go”. Probably there is a better chance in India since ( I think) castes are not physically distinguishable. I was only pointing to some recent trends of influential CEOs and business people talking of equotability instead of saying “our duty is to the shareholders”. It is possible that these may be just sops.