Bharat Bhushan - Fear factor: Corporates must resist intimidation
An alarming report by the news agency Reuters quotes corporate India to say “everyone is scared” of the Narendra Modi government and does not want to run afoul of it. It reported several industry executives claiming that “a public diatribe against two Indian business giants by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s officials and his ideological allies has unnerved the business community.” The reference was to an article by the RSS-affiliated Panchjanya magazine alleging that India’s iconic IT Company, Infosys, was trying to “destabilise the Indian economy” because of glitches in the Income Tax Portal which it manages. It alleged that Infosys was in cahoots with “Naxals, Leftists and the tukde-tukde gang”.
Earlier, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal had lashed out at the Tata Group for allegedly working “against national interest” by opposing stringent rules for ecommerce and placing profits over national interest. He chose a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to sarcastically chide the Tatas saying, “…may be you bought one or two foreign companies, now their importance is greater than national interest?”
Decoded: Why commerce minister Piyush Goyal is peeved at some in India Inc
A senior member of RSS justified the verbal attacks on corporates in the name of accountability. “Why should questions not be raised, have corporates become a holy cow?” he asked. Corporate India has facilitated the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular. It has continued to flood the election coffers of the BJP by purchasing ‘anonymous’ electoral bonds. But today that does not give it insurance against intimidation.
This relationship of
fear was not always the case. In his earlier avatar as an ambitious chief
minister of Gujarat, Prime Minister Modi was the darling of corporate India.
Sunil Bharti Mittal had declared, “He is running a state and can also run the
nation”; Anil Ambani, now nearly bankrupt, had dubbed him “lord of men, leader
amongst leaders and king amongst kings”; Anand Mahindra had predicted a future
when “people will talk about the Gujarat model of growth in China”; and Ratan
Tata had said that “only a fool would not invest in Gujarat”.
Yet even when he first
took power, according to the New York Times, some of his ministers leaned on
corporate houses to cut-off support to media houses that were critical. Most
corporates remained silent when rank and file supporters of the government
perpetrated acts of violence and rioting in the name of cow protection and
targeting minorities for being “anti-national” and “seditious”. The few who
spoke up, felt the heavy hand of the government.
In November 2015, the
government descended like a ton of bricks on Infosys Chairman
Narayana Murthy when he said that economic progress can happen only if “there
is no distrust, no fear” and “if the majority community doesn’t oppress the
minority community.” The registration of the Infosys Foundation
was cancelled. When Kiron Majumdar Shaw spoke of “tax terrorism” and the
suicide of Coffee Café Day owner V G Siddhartha, she complained of officials
threatening her not to make “such statements". Rahul Bajaj was accused of
spreading a fake narrative when he publicly complained of fear in the industry.
No one knows what the
state of communication between Corporates and the Modi government is. They
still do not speak their mind collectively against economic policies that
favour industrialists selectively. Industry organisations continue to describe
every Budget as “visionary”, ranking it 9 out of 10. However, BJP MP and former
Commerce Minister Subramanian Swamy has cautioned, “Government have (sic) no
business to be in business. But there is an essential implication: Business
have (sic) no business to be in Government. If they do then it is crony
capitalism.”
Corporate leaders have
yet to understand that they have not been targeted specifically. Even beyond
the corporate world, governance routinely relies on fear. A constant and
general awareness of an invisible sword hanging over anyone who does not
conform is necessary to the style of governance by fear. Fear has multiplied
across society with new laws targeting people for the religion they follow,
their dietary habits or speaking out against the government. Anxiety has tended
to push people towards self-censorship.
RSS distances itself from Panchjanya article critical of
Infosys
If Corporate India
wants breathing space then they will have to take a stance against this culture
of governance. They will have to refuse to fatten the electoral purse of the
party in power and spread its electoral investments to promote a healthy
democracy. The open embrace of religious majoritarianism, the deliberate
choking of democratic spaces and the repression of social and economic
movements (the farmers’ agitation is almost a year old now) cannot be ignored.
Corporate India will not remain untouched--indeed, the signs are already
there--by the social upheaval in the offing.
Corporate leaders
funded the national movement challenging colonialism. They had the wisdom to
see the political and economic limitations of colonialism. Now they need to see
that modern authoritarian leaders who come to power through elections, unlike
the Pinochets and Mobutus of yore, can cause equal if not more damage to
societies. The world over the rise of elected authoritarian leaders has led to
the convergence of social, economic and ecological crises. India seems
neck-deep in this morass already.
The current leadership
in India has already let the economy slide precipitously: there is unhappiness
in organised labour, the unorganised sector is on a ventilator since it was hit
by the pandemic and farmers are up in arms. This will increase the
vulnerability and precariousness of ordinary people, wage earners, farm hands
and most importantly, consumers. Is it conceivable that this would not impact
businesses?
Corporate leaders
should consider promoting an expansion of democratic spaces, proliferation of
alternative political visions, encouraging the rise of new political leaders
and speaking up against erosion of democratic rights. They have to recognise
that if freedom for the corporates and repression of the weak are two sides of
the same coin, then a better coin needs minting.
https://www.business-standard.
Naxalites
should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the
Constitution
Some information for Israelis (and the rest of us)
Bharat Bhushan:
It suits the RSS to allow BJP to encourage defections from other parties
Swati Chaturvedi:
It Was BJP Who Made It Mamata vs Modi. Too Far
Anand K. Sahay:
The idea behind capturing power in any kind of way: fair or foul
Society of the Spectacle
/ 'इमेज' - 'Image': A
Poem on Deaths in the Age of Covid
Modi says
Congress committed 'sin' of partition // The Non-politics of the RSS
The Supreme Court, Gandhi and
the RSS
Colloquium: The Disappearing Present:
Reflections on Ideology - October 16, 2020
The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984
Alexandre Koyré The Political Function of the Modern
Lie
The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the
shots in Modi sarkar
