Pvt sector urged to align profit with nation-building

Taking a leaf from the economic transition of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the erstwhile West Germany, India’s chief economic adviser (CEA) V. Anantha Nageswaran in the Economic Survey has called on private sector players in the country to “marry commercial dynamism with conscious contribution to nation-building”.

- Jocelyn Fernandes & Nehal Chaliawala

The CEA and team have called on business leaders to be comfortable with global competition.

The document noted that the sector must recognize its role in shaping social trust and institutional credibility and called for firms to become “institutions embedded in a national project and willingly accepted constraints, risks, or long-term horizons”.

What stood common across the international instances, the survey “is not uniform policy design but a shared moral framing of enterprise,” the Survey noted adding the shared goals delivered well for the countries. “Business leaders viewed their firms as institutions embedded in a national project and willingly accepted constraints, risks, or long-term horizons when these advanced collective goals, such as reconstruction, technological upgrading, export capability, social stability, or geopolitical standing.”

“Profit and national interest were not seen as antagonists to be reconciled after the fact, but as dimensions of the same vocation,” the review document added.

A business leader agreed with the intent in the Survey document. “Nation building is a joint effort between the State and private enterprise,” said Anant Goenka, vice chairman of the RPG Group. “As enterprise, we need to think long term, have global ambition, scale, and invest in R&D and building brands.” Goenka is the current president of industry group, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.