Deccan Despatch (January - April 2010) - CII

A call for good governance,transparency, accountabilityTalking about ‘Corporate Governance– The Leadership Challenges& Opportunities’ at Innovision2010, Mr Salman Khurshid, UnionMinister of State for Corporate Affairsavnd Minority Affairs, said that corporategovernance had evolved – from controlto regulation and now, to lightenedregulation. Mentioning the specialsense of purpose, accomplishmentand determination he had felt whenhe arrived in Chennai, Mr Khurshidto bring it out from obscurity, makeit explicit, stark in black and white,”he said. Touching upon the aspects ofaccountability, transparency, disclosureand participation (voting in elections)Mr Khurshid said corporate governancehad to be about enhancing democracyand protecting minorities, partly bygiving them greater say.Moving on to the aspect of independentdecision-making, the Minister was forcoming together of corporate governanceand corporate social responsibility (CSR)and inclusiveness, in terms of greaterparticipation of the average Indian. “Weneed to talk in a language the averageIndian understands. This is not justfor some people in a hall who are wellversedwith all this. For example, thelink between corporates and farmersmust go beyond contract farming. Weneed to bring the Indian farmer into thecorporate way of thinking. That will bethe real success.”felt that corporate governance in its‘lightened regulation’ form was essentialin a free society. “We cannot dictate;in a liberal society we have to have atheory of mistake as well. But correctivemeasures have to be taken and societycompensated for mistakes made. Eventslike this will help us refine our thoughtprocesses,” he said.Corporate governance, Mr Khurshidstressed, was no different from goodgovernance in society. “The RTI Actis embedded in our Constitution, notnecessarily explicit; like Article 21, theRight to live with dignity. We are tryingcreating a gene pool of independentdirectors, people not beholden to anybody.“There is no standard formula applicableall over the world. Families have foundways of institutionalising corporategovernance,” he said. He pointed tonomination (of directors), remunerationand audit as three areas that neededindependent and objective assessmentwithin the company. Indirectly referringto the Satyam disaster (of governance),he said: “Government and industry haveto find solutions with an open mind. Weare not influenced by one black sheep.”Earlier, Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, DeputyChairman, CII (Southern Region), saidcorporate governance was a cause CIIhad been championing for long – from1998. CII, he added, had released a setof recommendations in November 2009,building on which the Ministry hadalso released guidelines, the followingmonth. He was of the view that discourseand debate were needed for voluntaryadoption of better practices. “The Satyamfiasco led to concern about IT practices.Infosys, with CII and NASSCOM, quicklyput together a code of conduct for theindustry. Satyam was seen as a one-offthanks to corrective measures taken andproactive government intervention,” hesaid.This article has been brought out by CIIbased on the deliberations at Innovision2010– A session with Visionary LeadersMr Khurshid also spoke about the held in Chennai on 27 March 2010 21