The corporatization of greed

The corporatization of greed

 

SANTOSH DESAI

 

   Could the global economic crisis be an inflection point of some? Is it possible that what global warming could not do, the global meltdown will manage- make us re-think not just our regulations and our institutions but the path that we are choosing to walk down? For India, in particular, standing as it does at the threshold of economic resurgence, is this an opportunity to ask what its destination should be, instead of being thankful that it is relatively protected on account of its regulated past.
   It appears that one of the biggest lessons learnt in the current crisis is that the financial system cannot regulate itself and that left to its own devices it will push outwards without regard for risks. And given the interdependent nature of the world economy, it will suffice if even a couple of large players go for broke and succeed. The idea that selfinterest will create energy that will propel us forward while our institutions act as checks and balances to ensure that this self-interest does not become self-destruction, is a theoretically sound one but one that has been deeply compromised in practice.
   At a more fundamental level, the growth-centric nature of the economic system creates accomplices out of the institutions meant to control it. The regulatory bodies, the experts, the business press all become shrill cheerleaders for growth and implicitly push the case for more growth while muffling other voices. We have seen this in India in the last few years, with a conspiracy of cheer that brooked no bad news. The India story had a momentum of its own, taking on a reality of its own making. We cheered when 4 out of the top 10 richest people were Indian, not asking if there war something deeply wrong with this. In an article written in this column in March of this year, it had been pointed out that it is interesting that we have begun to embrace the riches of a few as our own while shunning the penury of many as belonging to them. The poor today are an electoral fabrication, vestiges of an India we are eager to leave behind.
   The idea of the economy has been exceptionally well marketed; so much so that we conflate our notion of the business sector with that of the Indian economy which in turn in an act of implicit compression becomes shorthand for India. What we call the economy is an abstract construction, a virtual presence with boundaries marked by the self-interest of those in charge of running it. The interests of the millions that lie outside this definition of the economy are a struggle to accommodate and often when steps are taken in this direction, they are labelled populist. So it was wrong to waive off loans for impoverished farmers but it is all right to look sympathetically at the airline industry’s demand for a bail-out. Somehow, the threatened impoverishment of messieurs Goyal & Mallya makes us readier to act than the suicide of a few thousand farmers.
   The idea that the market can be selfregulating has been exposed as being false. The nature of the joint stock corporation makes it uniquely suited to drive a growth-at-any-cost agenda. Structurally, it atomises ownership, accountability and conscience. The widely held joint stock company in its purest form has no single owner, no one human source that we can attach consequences to. Theoretically, everyone has a share and no one is eventually responsible. The goals of a corporation, the driving ambitions that it nurtures are those of a self-sustaining organism. The corporation is its own justification. The idea of nameless and fragmented shareholders whose interests seemingly drive it, allows the corporation license to drive an agenda divorced from any larger social context.
   The reductive nature of the corporation allows it to multiply endlessly- without any sense of the consequences of its actions. The corporation cannot say no, unless the law explicitly requires it to say so. The owned by no one nature of corporations allows a culture to develop where actions do not need to conform to any rules but those developed internally. People can be fired overnight, fantastic exaggerations can be told about the products that it sells and its financial performance can be window dressed without any great self-doubt. The corporation gives a license to people to behave in ways they never would in their personal lives.
   The corporation cannot be trusted to balance larger needs for it has not been designed with that goal in mind. It is like a software program, with its own in-built heuristic, which it gives it great facility in some areas and very little in others. To depend on it to regulate itself is to expect too much from it.
   The opportunity today is to take a hard look not just at how to make the system work better but to ask as to whether we should be working to build a new system altogether. For the current system is not only unstable but unsustainable. But that would need the courage to detach ourselves from the wisdom of others and to try and find our own truth. It will mean making our own mistakes rather than the paying the price of the mistakes of others. I am not sure we are ready to do that just yet.
   santoshdesai1963@indiatimes.com