Is it naïve and altogether unrealistic to expect that leaders of business houses, industry bodies and other professional forums speak out against the growing communal divide and other tendencies that threaten the idea of an India enshrined in the Indian Constitution?

Who can or should speak up? Undoubtedly there are risks. Very few can occupy the moral high ground. Authenticity, integrity and morality are not absolutes, and appear on a sliding scale. So, to speak up is to be simultaneously bold and vulnerable.

There is much at stake if you are a CEO or a senior business leader, an industrialist or from a business family. You could have the Enforcement Directorate / Tax authorities / Central Bureau of Investigation squatting in your premises with a retinue of cameramen in tow, sure to find something incriminating. There will be the customary press conference where you will be maligned first and then told that investigations are ongoing. You may need to surrender your passport or flee, depending on whether you defy or make your peace with the government.

There are any number of regulatory and environmental audits and approvals that come in handy when delays must be injected to extract a price, a concession or a simple surrender to the powers that be. In a business environment where crony capitalism is a fact, bestowal comes with acquiescence to the ruling political dispensation. If you are a self-respecting business leader who is reasonably upright, you try and not invite the ire of the Government with utterances that embarrasses or exposes it.

So, if you are a future-focused business leader with a vision for the business, you don’t let your personal discomforts and unease with the troubling context around you come in the way. Maybe you will wash it away decades later with a book where you will argue eloquently that ‘at the time, you did what the business merited’ and that in retrospect, ‘knowing what we know now’, you obviously fell short and hope that you will be judged on balance, favourably, or in the least, sympathetically.

It is common to see a business leader bemoan the lack of infrastructure. That is still in the realm of economics. Very rarely do we hear one talk about law-and-order issues, the infringement of human rights, the growing intolerance and divisiveness, or the growing surveillance that mocks the right to privacy. That would be straying into a critique of governance, a taboo. I think it is widely understood but unstated that anything that smacks of an activist stance is injurious to business prospects.

If you are a business leader habituated to being cosy with the entrenched autocracy or oligarchy and living off a mutually extractive relationship, you are probably preoccupied with enhancing personal wealth, fortune, power and influence. A growing business is the means to bankroll the charade of electoral politics and gain unbridled clout. A social conscience and a humanistic outlook is a fashionable cloak and no more.

A business leader may well believe that it is not his remit to reform or transform society. But the business does impact the socioeconomic status of people, resource use, and the web of relationships amongst people and the society in which it is embedded. It does therefore influence people’s choices and preferences and is thus an active political player, whether with knowledge or unconsciously.

It is worth remembering that a prerequisite for sustainable business is good governance and the rule of law, things that must be insisted on and supported every day. It is moot to say therefore, that business, politics and governance are separate. It will not do to go breathless on television and crowding the airwaves with commentary on the budget proposals and be altogether silent on the burning social issues of the day that eat into the vitals of the nation.

To have a future, one must tend very carefully to the present.  Do we seriously believe that the future we envisage will be born from an extension of the fast-spreading hate and bigotry of the present? It may be a good start to think in terms of the politics that the business would like to foster and the shape of society of the future in which the business will operate.

Sure, there will be a price to pay. But there is honour too. And the opportunity to shape politics and society in a competing arena of political ideas, economic models and principles for governance. Business leaders with privilege and influence don’t do justice to the possibilities if they don’t look beyond their business.  

See: The Fire at Our Doorstep (Part 1)

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