The Hindu Business Line : Pressure tactics

The tactics adopted by Tata Motors at Singur in West Bengal have brought down by several notches the esteem in which I had held Tata’s corporate persona, especially its penchant for social responsibility. First of all, the company’s threat of taking the project somewhere else, peeved at a section of the farmers resorting to a sit-in demanding the return of lands which were allegedly acquired without their consent, was tantamount to blackmail. It should have had the empathy and compassion to understand the attachment of farmers for their land, and energetically joined in the search for a solution by negotiations.

Instead, the Tatas rode the high horse, and kept aloof. Even when the Governor of West Bengal, Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi, took the laudable initiative, going beyond the call of duty, to bring to an end the face-off involving the State government, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Tatas, the company turned its back on the discussion, taking the untenable stand that it was a matter between the Government and the TMC. This was an entirely unjustified rebuff to the Governor who did the best he could to work out a settlement acceptable to the participants who responded to his invitation.

Having thus spurned the opportunity offered, Tata Motors has now gone to town expressing its “distress at the limited clarity on the outcome” of the talks. The thought of the distress of the farmers never came to them. They have in effect declared a lock-out, even though the TMC has called off its dharna at the site. How public-spirited it would have been if, without claiming their pound of flesh, they had respected the feelings of people less fortunate than they and made adjustments in their project design on aspects such as location of mother plant and ancillaries within the four corners of the settlement.

Greedy gargoyles

Meanwhile, the Human Resources Director of Infosys, Mr Mohandas Pai, has threatened a rethinking of its proposed investments in West Bengal in view of the “scary” situation there. Amplifying what he means by scary, Mr Pai says that the ‘fear element’ is high in the State: “People are scared, employees are scared. It is causing a rethink at this point of time, as is for all companies in India.”

India Inc should guard against being seen as an insensitive, self-centred gang of greedy gargoyles out of sync with basic needs and expectations of the people. Without an India which is internally at peace with itself, where all categories of players (government, corporates, civil society, common folks) and all sectors (private, public, rural, urban, organised and unorganised) live in harmony, India Inc itself will come to grief. It should remember that its first and foremost obligation is to reinforce the efforts of elected governments to ameliorate the lot of the poor and the downtrodden, and that it should hold its wealth in trust to this end.

It should not lose its head simply because some fat cats have made it to Forbes and some mergers and acquisitions here and there have made it feel great. What are all these laurels worth if, like an elephant before the mouse, India Inc gets into a panic at people in a democracy giving vent to their legitimate concerns or runs away from problems without boldly solving them?

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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