The Hindu Business Line : A dose of society and service in good `company'

STORY so far: Water scarcity drives us to explore different solutions. After studying alternatives, I suggest installation of a desalination plant in the company. To know things better, we visit an installation nearby, set up by Troublosky, a foreign company. Much to my shock, the company engineers suggest `negotiation', which could mean hiking the quote and double-hiking kickback.

Episode 78

How does one clean up corruption in business deals? Kamal Anil Kapadia of Price Waterhouse, Mumbai, is not too excited about the question because corruption is everywhere.

"Where would it not be, Swati?" he asks. "In business, you would find dirty games, politics, undercutting, leaking figures in tenders and contract quotations, inflating prices of goods, money-laundering, frauds, espionage and so on — the list would go on and on." How bad! "Mam, we are living in such an age that if one is not into all these practices he is thrown out of the game; and the ones who survive have to do all sorts of corrupting practise to stay in the business. There are plenty to grab the opportunity if one wants to live honestly; he would be thrown out due to his ethics and loyalty.

"People are willing to sell themselves for money! Anything is fair in love, war and business. Business is not what it used to be earlier and times have changed; so do people, their ethics, honesty, and guilt feelings. Everything is benchmarked against money." Sounds as if the word honesty would become an obsolete word!

"Hi Swati," writes in Priya enthusiastically. "To clean up corruption is a Herculean task! There is corruption in almost all business dealings. To sustain in a business one needs to have lot of the so-called `connections'. For what? To get the best of deals, of course. And ultimately to earn more money than the competitors. To put it philosophically, in the words of Lord Buddha, `desire is the root cause of all evil.'

In today's world money plays an important role and the motive and agenda of each person is to earn money. It, however should not transform to greed, which sadly has taken prominence. Solution should start at the grassroots level, that is, a person's conscience. If each and every person feels and proves that one can survive and come up in this world without the support of corruption in one way or the other, then the weeds will slowly vanish. Let us all hope to live in a corruption-free world that ultimately will give us the much needed inner peace and happiness." Interesting definition of grassroots.

"Dear Swati," writes Thangavelu. "Have you ever visited the city Railway Station? Seen a closed mineral water plant near the entrance of platform 4? It was established by an enterprising man with a huge loan from bank. He was supplying pure mineral drinking water cool and clean at Rs 3 per litre. MNC brands were selling at Rs 12 for the same quantity. You will have to bring your own bottle to get filled. Passengers were happy, and the entrepreneur was happy. He was paying 40 per cent as royalty to the Railways.

"The sales of MNC brands nose-dived. They ganged up, sabotaged the project and now the outlet is closed. Poor passengers are the losers, apart from the entrepreneur with a huge bank debt. Now MNCs sell their product at Rs 12 a litre. Water: Do you think you can clean it?" So sickening that mineral water tastes sour.

"Dear Swati," writes Mahadevan. "Corruption is rooted deep into each cell of a greedy human body. It is impossible to wipe out corruption as long as there is greed in this world. By bringing in more and more transparency into a business deal one can lessen the impact of corruption, but it cannot be completely wiped out.

And the fact is that, we are all helpless. We were once given an assignment to do system audit of a private hospital to see whether there is any income leakage and also to see possibilities for reducing costs.

"We took the `pharmacy' section to start with. We could not find anything done out of the way. We submitted our report to the management on `pharmacy' section with our opinion that everything according to our information and explanations given to us, was in order. However, we informally informed the management that the person-in-charge of pharmacy owns two medical shops elsewhere, and also a new car. How was it possible with the meagre salary he was getting from the hospital? How come? Nothing will give you guarantee that a deal is corruption-free."

Is there no medicine in the pharmacy for corruption?

"Well, the basic thing is awareness and self-realisation amongst the people involved," writes energetic Karthik Narayan with `lotsa love'. "Business class should first understand that they are feeding the devils (the underworld and middlemen). It can be stopped by making clear self-resolutions that one will not support the evil and stand up against the cause. It all comes from within, anti-corruption laws are only secondary. It complements good corporate governance. It's for the business people to make us all proud by avoiding shady deals and stem the rot."

Worthy suggestion.

*********

During the week, there was a brainstorming session that I participated in the office. It was unscheduled, informal and real fun. Topic was way out of the ordinary: Whether our company can take up and support some worthy social cause. Send in your thoughts by Friday.

(To be continued)

Swati_CA@hotmail.com

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Please show me the dotted line

Story of a `foundation' that got dismantled

You can't wish away risk

A dose of society and service in good `company'

Exams

Add some finance to your senses

Take a break to breakout