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SATYAGRAHA & SARVODAYA AS KEYS TO GOOD GOVERNANCE & CORPORATE MANAGEMENT (Text of Ambassador (Retd) Alan Nazareth’s lecture at the ‘Gandhi, Governance and the Corporation’ Colloquium at IIMB on October 2nd, 2008)

  In the early 1930s, Britain’s leading economist, John Maynard Keynes, in his book ‘A Treatise on Money’, had  proposed “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not.  Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight”. Though never publicly acknowledged much colonial governance was conducted on this basis. However, five decades later, Peter Drucker enunciated a somewhat different gospel. In his ‘The New Realities’, echoing Gandhi, he wrote : “Because management deals with the motivation and direction of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture. A basic challenge managers therefore face is to identify those elements of the traditions and culture of their workers that can be used as management building blocks. Besides, as everyone like myself, who have worked with managers of all kinds of institutions for long years, have become aware, management is deeply involved with spiritual concerns – the nature of man, good and evil.”

  How would a Government or Corporation applying Gandhian Satyagraha and Sarvodaya principles behave today? It would formulate, adopt and rigorously enforce a comprehensive set of ethical norms for itself and all its subsidiaries and ensure an equitable balance between its highest and lowest paid employees. It would seek to build its distinct corporate image based on these norms and serve as a role model for others. It would ensure transparency and fairness in all its dealings and diligently safeguard the interests not only of its share holders and workers but of all its stake holders including suppliers, consumers and those living in its operational area. It would undertake, or support, social action beneficial to its stake holders and the environment in all the countries in which it operates and function strictly within the laws of those countries. It would also refrain from maintaining secret bank accounts abroad. Sadly, many of India’s corporates are known to do so.

  Gandhi’s innovative Trusteeship concept that “those who own money now are asked to behave like Trustees, holding their riches on behalf of the poor”, sought to give an ethical dimension to economics. It also sought to avert the violent expropriations and killings class wars engender. The 1917 Russian Revolution had shown how brutal this can become. He wrote “It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will itself be caught in the evils of violence…..The individual has a soul, but the State is a soulless machine and can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its existence. Hence I prefer the doctine of trusteeship”.  Pyarelal revealed that for Gandhi, trusteeship was a means for transforming the capitalist order into an egalitarian one by inducing moral transformation among capitalists.  During his lifetime this concept received scant support.  Jamnalal Bajaj and J.R.D Tata were about the only two who adopted it. The latter wrote to a friend “I may say that I have always been in basic agreement with Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship and have throughout my career tried to live up to it. In fact, our group of companies have, to the extent possible, officially adopted it as part of their credo. My only doubts have been in regard to the practical effect that can be given to such a concept, considering, on the one hand, the ethical standards, or lack of them, that seem to prevail today amongst large sections of our business community, and on the other, the dogmatic view of socialism and the resultant hostility towards private enterprise adopted by our government”.

   In recent years, as employee stock-options has begun making “labour” part owner of “capital”, and social responsibility is becoming an integral element of good corporate governance, Trusteeship in some form or the other, is being practiced even if not formally adopted. Infosys and Wipro are good examples of this. Though their founders, Narayan Murthy & Azim Premji are multimillionaires, their personal life styles are remarkably modest and much of their surplus wealth is spent on education, health and sanitation facilities for the poor.

   Rotary International was founded in 1905 but it was only in 1932, a few months after Time Magazine named Gandhi as its “Man of the Year’ and put him on the cover page of its first 1931 issue, that it adopted its ‘Four Way Test’. It reads :

Is it the Truth?
Is it Fair to all concerned?
Will it build Goodwill and Better Friendships?
Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?

   Over a million Rotarians world wide, many of whom are senior and middle level corporate executives, have pledged themselves to follow this simple but vital ‘Four Way Test”. It is the essence of Satyagraha and Sarvodaya and the best formula for good governance of nations and corporations alike. Now that Indian firms are emerging as transnationals they can, and should, show the world these Gandhian concepts inspire and motivate them, and that they are compatible and essential, to their smooth functioning and steady growth.
 
   Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Tata Sons, in a presentation at IIM, Bangalore recently, made the significant point that whereas in the past land, capital and disciplined, well trained labour were a corporation’s prime assets, now they were its “Knowledge assets” but in the next phase would undoubtedly be its “Moral Assets”.
 
   Apple Computers used a seated picture of Gandhi in its 1998 global advertising campaign with just two words below it :“Think different” ; Tata Finance used a back view of him, with the words “Find Purpose, The Means Will Follow”. Ganjam Jewellers of Bangalore bettered both with “Only the Pure will Endure”, a message very pertinent not only to global finance today but to all public and private enterprises, within India and abroad, now and hereafter.  
 
                              

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