At the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Gurgaon, from November 6-8, a prominent player was conspicuous by its absence: the corporation as the hero of India. Sure, Indian companies were present in large numbers as sponsors of the event. But mostly they were there to chide the government on its policies and to lecture India on what it must do. “India needs to do this or that” was their popular and dour refrain. Having taken their business and interest abroad during the good times of 9% growth and more recently the bad times of 5% growth, many acted like the Non-Resident Indians (NRI) they have become, talking about India as a distant country with intractable problems.
How did this dismal situation ever come to pass? Whatever happened to the Great Indian Corporation, the cheerleader of an India seeking its rightful place on the world stage? The initiator of the “India Everywhere” initiative at the WEF at Davos which so captured the global imagination in 2006?
Sadly, that corporation has cut and run, to the U.S., to China, to South East Asia, to Africa, Latin America, to Europe. According to Grant Thornton, a consulting firm, corporate India did roughly 350 business deals abroad, worth over $33 billion, in contrast to the $1.4 billion in outbound deals in 2009. In the last six years, numerous Indian companies have either moved their headquarters or registered offices overseas, or their promoters have acquired NRI status. Their logic: with more business coming from overseas, it’s easier to be resident abroad. Besides, it inoculates their assets from the arbitrary hand of the state – the Vodafone tax matter is one example of it – and from the unfair advantages assigned to themselves by the new politicians-turned-businessmen of India. The predatory activities of the latter have diluted the global reputation of Indian business, and going abroad helps to separate the upstarts from the established players.
From off-stage conversations at the Delhi meet, it was clear that these newly NRI corporations have little sense of loss. They now pride themselves as being ‘global players,’ who are enjoying living abroad, finding a place at the more accessible ‘high table’ where these days money counts more than responsibility or national interest and where India is just another country with a corruption and governance problem. The corruption is more efficient in China, they always point out, and in the U.S. it can be neatly and legitimately outsourced to lobbyists. They’ve begun to invest in the intellectual base of the West, giving to Western universities and think tanks in order to enter the policy conversation there.
The shift of focus also means that they are out of the actual conversation taking place in India, their home market. This was evident at the Delhi meet, where there was much discussion on the governance crisis, lack of transparency and widespread public discontent – but very little of the will and determination of the Great Indian Corporate Hero represented at Davos in 2006, to overcome these problems.
Instead the title of Hero now clearly belongs to those who are fighting for India on-the-ground: the righteous bureaucrat, the NGO worker and activist, and the ordinary citizen who struggles to lead his life decently, against the odds. At the opening panel discussion titled Inclusive Governance: Enabling Capability, Disabling Resistance at the WEF meet in Delhi, the applause and camera lights were reserved for Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Vinod Rai, whose meticulous accounts have exposed the massive mismanagement of the country’s finances, and Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder of Janaagraha, a civic society builder and urban planner from Bangalore who has been pushing for active citizens’ participation in democracy for the last 14 years.
The panel discussion on Inclusive Governance: Enabling Capability, Disabling Resistance
(Click here to view the full video)
Ramanathan pointed to what corporate India has not seen: that India is at an inflexion point in 2012 much as it was in 1991. In 1991 it was economic liberalisation, and in 2012 it is good governance, “bubbling up versus trickling down,” he explained. The 1991 reforms – and subsequent reform talk in fora like the WEF – only focuses on the organized sector, but not on reforms for the poor, those in the micro and small scale sector who are the vast mass of India. For them, says Ramanathan, “retail, every day corruption has eroded their sense of dignity and we need to restore it.”
Just as the 1991 reforms brought India’s corporations to the fore, the battles being fought against corruption today are bringing the ordinary citizen centre stage, to actively participate in national life. “The silent majority is beginning to assert itself, and will work towards a much better society,” said Rai. This transformation, he explains, is piggy-backing on grassroots legislation like the RTI Act, and top-down programmes such as NREGA, the National Rural Health Mission and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which it is now up to society to properly implement.
In 1991, Indian corporations were faced with a choice: swim or sink in the face of competition. They decided to survive, and thrived over the next two decades. Now, the Indian citizen is facing the same dilemma: in the face of corruption and venality, will she/he fight or be defeated? The new heroes of India like Rai and Ramanathan are leading the charge, and placing their bets on India.
Corporate India would be wise to do so too.
Manjeet Kripalani is executive director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.
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