Manmohan raps businesses for ethical deficit

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday said business practices of some corporate houses in the country had recently come under serious public scrutiny for their perceived ethical deficits.
Market activity concentrating solely on wealth accumulation without empowering the poor was ethically unacceptable, Singh added.
“Market activity that concentrates wealth without empowering the poor and the deprived is unacceptable ethically. I am sure our business leaders are aware that business practices of some corporate houses have recently come under intense public scrutiny for their perceived ethical deficit.”
Singh said this while addressing the inauguration of India Corporate Week and added that the government wanted to provide a level playing field for private businesses, free from fear or favour.
He said he was aware of the nervousness in some sections of the corporate sector arising out of the powers conferred upon governmental authorities to tap phones for protecting national security and preventing tax evasion and money laundering.
His remarks came in the backdrop of publication of tapped telephone conversations between a leading corporate lobbyist and politicians, bureaucrats, corporate and media personalities in the wake of a huge scam over second generation telecom licence sale.
Some industrialists and entrepreneurs have expressed concern over phone-tapping in the context of privacy.
While the power to tap phones is needed in the world that we live in, they have to be exercised with utmost care and under well defined rules, procedures and mechanisms so that they are not misused, they said.
Singh said businesses, by definition, need to be profitable. “But the manner in which they use natural resources and the extent to which they are sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the common man is also critical to their own long-term survival and growth.”
“Sustainability of business, therefore, includes not merely economic sustainability in the narrow sense of the term but social and environmental sustainability as well. Indeed, financial capital needs human, social and ecological capital to be viable in the long term sense of the term,” he said.