The Hindu : New Delhi News : Call to bridge growing disparity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Call to bridge growing disparity

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, NOV. 8. Expressing concern over growing disparity between the poor and the rich in India, the president of the World Council for Corporate Governance, Madhav Mehra, has emphasised the need for building up a rural infrastructure and educating the villagers to bridge this divide and ensure rapid development of the nation. Mr. Mehra, a management guru and thinker-turned-social entrepreneur, has come up with an alternative model to the consumer-based economy called Poor-Oriented Innovation for a Substantial and Eco-friendly Development (POISED).

Mr. Mehra will be presenting his model as well as sharing his other concerns while addressing the first National Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility to be held here this Tuesday. The conference, being organised by the Centre for Social Responsibility, will discuss topical issues pertaining to corporate social responsibility and will also addressed by the former Chief Justice of India, Justice P.N. Bhagwati, the Chairman and Managing Director of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Subir Raha; and the Deputy High Commissioner of Britain, Mark Runacres.

Mr. Mehra, who has been actively involved with issues like corporate social responsibility in India and has been continuously shaping various opinions and policies for the same, believes that POISED is the only cure for immediate catastrophes -- global warming and widening disparities -- which could be achieved through 11 simple steps. "We need to build private/public partnerships for innovating eco-friendly poor-oriented products besides achieving radical increase in resource productivity and minimize intensity of energy and material use. Then we need to find hybrid solutions to every problem that should be blend of traditional and emerging technologies which should be scalable and transportable."

Advocating the need for the corporate sector to understand that the poor people in society could be key drivers of their success in business. "Most poor are only capital poor but asset rich. Developing a market economy based on enforcement of commercial contracts through transparent governance structures can convert their hidden assets into capital. Even on the existing capital base poor offer a huge market. So the collateral social and economic benefits of extending the market economy to poor can be colossal," he added.

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