Corporate governance concerns of India Inc
Published: Mar 14, 2017
K Srinivasan, Assistant Commissioner, Chennai
IT certainly is high time that the India Inc took some initiative to restore its lost public image, in the larger national interest. The nation too is made to pay a price when its top businesses and its scions suffer a loss of reputation and clash between them often.
If we are to ask whether the clash comes first or the loss of reputation, it is hard to say which one comes first for it is like asking whether the chicken comes first or the egg. But the fact of the matter is that there can be no smoke without fire.
The ongoing issues of governance in two of India's large and most admired private sector business houses- the Tatas & the Infosys. It should send an alarm to other Indian business to wake up to the call and retrieve the damaged public image of India Inc.
They have all been there, done it in the past. The Tatas and the Birlas, got together with a long-term business and economic development plan for the country and occupied the Centre stage to play the nation building act themselves by example and synergize others into the noble act as well.
A different type of initiative was on in the 90's, when Rahul Bajaj got together with others to form the Bombay Club to take on the economic liberalization impact initiated by the Former PM. Narasimha Rao, at the risk of being called protectionists.
It was not long before the Government itself come forward to confer the nations' highest honor Bharat Ratna on JRD Tata in 1992 followed by H.S. Singhania to be India's first businessman to be appointed ambassador to the US. The late Singhania was unable to assume that office is another thing.
The shocking thing of all this is the latest alleged failures and misappropriation of a larger- than- life personae, Vijay Mallya causing losses to most of the firms that he owned and managed.
This has set up such bad precedence that an explicit tag of identification of them as conman instead of icons of business has come to stay with them for rest of their lives.
In contrast, Ratan Tata and N.R. Narayanmurthy in recent times have managed to put up the Indian tricolor in newer foreign territories of business by building an enviable international reputation and the business footprints they have left will be long-staying to give Brand India its mileage and name in international markets.
What matters most is not the petty quarrels that are going round in Tata-Mistry or Murthy-Sikka quarters but the fact that the organizations that they have come to found are national assets of economic consequence which we badly need to count upon for our economic development.
As an emerging economy, India still has a long way to go to make a mark of its progress in myriad fields of Science, Sports, Culture and business.
All this apart, these scions of business and their behemoths have obligations as larger-than-life personalities and as larger-than-normal business houses to build a national standing by acquitting well before all the investors and the public.
We need to defend and protect zealously the reputation of these large business assets of our country together with its iconic leaders. The organizations are their babies that need the bather water too.