Doc reminds India Inc of social duties

NEW DELHI: Sensing that the unease within the government as well as outside over the economic policy could complicate governance further, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday told the industry that it should be more sensitive to the demands of the common man.

The prime minister, who is conscious of the growing feeling that the benefits of growth are restricted to small enclaves, said the industry should address the demands of the larger society.

“I am reminded of the perceptive words of Lord Keynes on the positive social role of private netrprise. Lord Keynes said: ‘....But like bees they saved and accumulated, not less to the advantage of the whole community...(they) were allowed to call the best part of the cake theirs and were theoretically free to consume it, on the tacit underlying condition that they consumed very little of it in practice. The duty of saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of religion’.”

The prime minister, who asked the industry to be mindful of its wider social responsibility, said the rising income and wealth inequalities, if not mached by a corresponding rise of incomes across the nation, can lead to social unrest. The prime minister probably had in mind the agitations over land in various parts of the country as well as against companies that cater to the well-to-do sections.

While maintaining that the creation of wealth is the only way of addressing the formidable challenges of economic transformation, the prime minister said people should desist from vulgar displays of wealth. “Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged. It is socially wasteful and it plants seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots.”

The prime minister’s speech is significant as it comes in the backdrop of even senior ministers in his team joining those doubting the efficay of the economic programme pursued by his regime. Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar went to the extent of suggesting that if the current course was not changed, the government will have to face the wrath of the aam admi. The Left constituents are in any case unhappy with the economic priorities of the government.

The prime minister, who recently concurred with media comments that most Indian billionaires operated in “oligopolistic markets and in sectors where the government had given them special privileges”, asked the industry to desist from non-competitive behaviour.

“The operation of cartels by groups of companies to keep prices high must end. It is unacceptable to obstruct the forces of competition from having a freer play. It is even more distressing in a country where the poor are severely affected by rising commodity prices,” he said. These assertions of the prime minister were clearly aimed at telling the in-house critics that there would be an attempt to attack the distortions in the economic system.

But his pious intention may not be enough to mollify the critics of the government. There is already a demand from within the ruling side that the regime should walk the talk and unveil measures to show its commitment to the concerns of the aam admi.