Ethics for wealth creators needed

India, Aug. 19 -- Being an economist, I gave a serious thought to the 15th August, 2019 declaration of the Prime Minister for giving respect and honour to the wealth creators of India, which I welcome with little pinch of salt.

I also believe that it is necessary to create wealth but not sufficient for addressing the challenges of poverty (absolute and relative with income inequalities) and unemployment. To make it sufficient, the wealth creators are expected to spend only 2 per cent under the corporate social responsibility (CSR) vide amended Companies Act 2013 of the average net profit (with a rider of Rs 5 crore or more profit in the past three years).

It is pertinent to mention that the entire

business community has to learn CSR from Mahraja Agrasen, who was a strong protagonist of spending 25 per cent of the incomes on the welfare of living beings in the society. He also made a case for 25 per cent savings for future which is necessary and sufficient condition for coping up the financial crisis of any kind as in present times when quality of life is becoming expensive with inflation. The wealth creators are expected to behave with "Trusteeship" of Mahatma Gandhi.

Sadly, there are number of cases in the public domain depicting unethical behaviour of the so-called wealth creators who use their own NGOs for money laundering. There are number of trusts which are used to give grants and scholarships to the children of bureaucrats and politicians. The irresponsible behaviour of the business community is observed by the writer for evading taxes by all means and not paying even GST as they discourage the digital payments and prefer cash on the purchase by the customers in the name of lesser price.

The conflict of interest deserves to be examined with care. Tax payers deserve to be honoured more than the wealth creators. There is considerable scope to improve the functioning of CSR with ethics flowing from our epics including Gita and Anu-Gita.

Of all the theory of ethics including business ethics, care ethics seems to be the best. This is so because all other principle of ethics has their circumstantial limitations but care ethics has not such limitations. Care ethics is above and beyond any cognitive theory of justice and ethics. According to logic of the utilitarian theory, customer care is justified when cost of care is lower the benefit of the care which is business more than ethics.

We have to create wealth (physical, financial and human) through the accountability, morality and transparency (ATM) which is more relevant than the ATM of any Indian bank. This falls in the domain of ethics.

To move forward with practical solutions, we have to do research with policy implications which needs to be financed by the so called wealth creators who certainly deserve honour but with ethics. Let PM give attention to the observations made on the functioning of the CSR with many abuses. Let PM consider to honour tax payers with some facilities more than lip service by the Government. To fix problems of the Indian economy, we need practical solutions and avoid war of words and blame game.

*The writer worked as Vice Chancellor/ Director/Pro Vice Chancellor/Dean/Chairperson in a university system and lives in Kurukshetra.