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By Melanie P Kumar The myth of India Inc spreading its wealth is busted within the precincts of every company, says Melanie P Kumar, supporting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's view that paying large corporate salaries fuels social unrest
Post your views on this debate After letting loose the liberalisation juggernaut and sending it hurtling across the length and breadth of India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems anxious now to apply the brakes. It is hard to fathom whether it is the Congress party’s poor showing at the Uttar Pradesh hustings or a genuine concern at the widening gulfs in India have led to this change of heart. Whatever be the compulsions, Dr Manmohan Singh’s speech at the Confederation of Indian Industry last week, in which he called for curbs on the huge salaries currently being offered CEOs in buoyant corporate India, did seem to reveal more heart than any of his speeches so far have succeeded in doing. One of the important observations made by the honourable Prime Minister is that the rise in wealth inequities could result in social unrest. This observation has been promptly rebutted by India Inc who have said that high salaries have to be paid in order to meet global standards and that the reasons for the poverty in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh cannot be laid at the door of some highly-paid CEO in Mumbai. Whilst the government can be blamed for many of the schemes that do not reach the poorest of the poor including the Right to Education, Dr Singh is certainly within his rights to point to the unbelievably high salaries commanded by the top echelons of corporate India. The corporate sector might defend these pay packets and perks and claim that they cannot be legislated, but it would be interesting to see how far the wealth that a company generates is diffused to the junior staff serving in the same organisation. Barring a few companies like Infosys where even Narayanamurthi’s driver is known to have become a lakhpati (thanks to his ownership of Infosys shares), the fact remains that most companies outsource much of their manual work. Under these circumstances, the wages paid to peons, security and even some clerical staff, who admittedly possess different skill sets, are a relative pittance compared to those drawn by the regular employees of a corporation. So, one does not have to go to a state like Bihar to see the inequity -- the myth of spreading the wealth is busted within the precincts of the very same company! As an executive in a corporation in Bangalore, this writer tried to question the Chief of Finance of a leading Indian company about this unequal distribution only to be told, “Don’t ever mention it again. Everybody does it this way including the big American company, Motorola!” It is ironical that an American MNC based in India should be the benchmark for the lowest salary that can be paid to an employee, just as MNCs are benchmarked for the high global salaries that must be paid to retain the best talent! Another very valid concern from the Prime Minister was the electronic media’s indiscriminate beaming of the lifestyles of the rich and the famous into homes across the country. These programmes also happen to reach poor hamlets and slums causing frustrations in the minds of people. The results are apparent in many ways. The pernicious practice of dowry has maintained its stranglehold even in 21st century India and it seems as if no father of a bride, rich or poor, will ever be rid of this menace. The coverage of the Mittal, Hurley-Nayyar and Abhi-Ash weddings can only compound problems for those who have limited means to get their daughters married and even for those who do not believe in this “vulgar display of wealth” but are forced into it by societal compulsions. The portrayal of the cobblestones of cities as “paved with gold” has led to the Dick Whittington-like migration of villagers and resulted in the creation of bigger and bigger slums. Of course it suits citydwellers to have these slums in their vicinity, as it makes for cheap labour both on the domestic front and for small industry. To date, despite all the talk about the wealth that has been created, the poor domestic worker continues to be a beast of burden with not even a legislation of a minimum wage to keep her at subsistence level. Legislation is sometimes available on paper but often becomes hard to implement in the unorganised sector. In a recent BBC documentary called India Rising, the British reporter asked whether the Indian middle class was not put off by the dust and the filth of the slums. The answer to that should have been that whilst both the world of the employer and the domestic help converge at the residence of the former, there is hardly any interest in how the domestic worker lives her life and in what kind of surroundings. At times when the slums grow too big, as happened in the case of Mumbai two years ago, you have the bonafide citizens crying foul about slum encroachments and the government going into demolition mode, bringing down the constructions and relocating the slumdwellers with no thought for their loss of livelihood or their meagre belongings. Around the same time as the Prime Minister made his statements to the Confederation of Indian Industry, Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Ltd, made some pertinent observations at a national conference on learning titled ‘Equitable Education of an Equitable Society’. Premji spoke about the caste system in education that was “accentuating, aiding and abetting inequities”. He said that though 85% of India’s population studied in government schools, the remaining 15% who could afford something better preferred private institutions “irrespective of their quality”. This has led to a situation where everyone has abandoned their stake in government schools “leaving them to the most deprived and the voiceless, to all those, in fact, who are most in need of an equitable education”. Premji also said that being passive or neutral would only result in more disservice to the cause. It should not come as a surprise that the Prime Minister of the country and a captain of industry should converge on the issue of inequities on two different platforms in two different cities. The problem of inequities can no longer be ignored in India. Signs of unrest and discontent are already becoming visible amongst the have-nots with the increase in crime levels ranging from petty thefts to desperate murders for material gain. The feudal Indian mindset and a karmic acceptance of one’s lot in life may delay but not stop such precipitations. If affluent India and India Inc are not made aware of these inequities, they may find the recent events at Singur and Nandigram portents of future uprisings. It is time to read the writing on the wall. (Melanie P Kumar is a writer based in Bangalore) InfoChange News & Features, May 2007
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