Most of the executives or managers, not only in India, but globally, as a matter of routine, shun personal involvements with important and controversial issues not directly related with either to their businesses or to their respective areas of work. They simply, at times, refuse to acknowledge that such issues exist. As a consequence of it, all nations, including ours, are being deprived of the critical collective insight, experience and judgment of one of our most potentially influential leadership groups.
The case in point is Mr. Ratan Tata’s, the Chairman of the Tata group, alleged statement made in UK while addressing The Times, London, with an oblique reference to a rival Chairman of another Indian business Group’s billion dollar opulent mansion. To be precise: To quote The Economic Times, Mumbai of 22 May, 2011 – ‘The Tata group Chairman was quoted by London’s Times newspaper as having said’, “It makes me wonder why someone would do that. That’s what revolutions are made of. The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him (apparently Mr. Tata was referring to poverty) and [asking] can he make a difference.
“If he is not, then it’s sad because this country needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways of mitigating the hardship that people have.”
As expected, the alleged comment created a huge amount of controversy, at least in India. However, I feel, it was needless to have such a hue and cry over Mr. Ratan Tata’s comment, which was justified. I will come to it shortly.
While corporate folklore has it that we live in an egalitarian society and there is very little doubt that some people in our society are more equal than others. At the least we can endlessly argue that we need opinion of the person existing at the bottom of the economic deprivation to make our Nation healthy and wealthy but, the fact remains that the person existing at the top of the same pyramid will be able to exert much more influence to eradicate poverty, if he or she so desires. And, that is the point where I appreciate breaking of our executive silence.
When elections happen in India or in most of the developing nations, the wealthy and the intellectuals, the economic and the cultural elites, mostly stay indoors and mostly do not exercise their franchise. It is the masses who vote. Executives remain nonpartisan? Or, should I say noncommittal? Or, they could not care less? Whatever it might be it is the symptom of executive silence.
The primary reason, however, why expressions of conscience do not usually flourish with in a corporate environment largely because of the fact that the corporate wants to have a facade of neutrality – as distinct from the executive, who may seriously believe in something strongly and may want to act upon it in his or her personal capacity. The corporation does not any where cherish being identified with subjects which does not immediately and directly impact on its business. Well, given that is what corporations are built of, what should the executive do?
To quote Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (Chapter 6), “Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact, it is silence which isolates.” We have had too much of silence, it is time to speak up.
The problem of poverty will not go away even with the participation of Mr. Tata or his fellow industrialist; we all need to systematically work towards its eradication. However, a good starting point could be breaking the ‘executive silence’ and start discussing those taboo subjects and look at the social good, instead of some self-righteous “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) programme that we publish in our glossy corporate brochure made out of imported art papers; possibly even to give poverty a gloss.
We should encourage the executives to speak more and act more. Who cares who gets offended, if the benefit goes to the society at large.
PR Forum 