I feel that a certain level of
involvement of government in every business is very important. And as a
business grows and expands its customer base, involvement of government becomes
that much more essential in order to protect the interests of the customers of
the business/company. However, it is very difficult to quantify or measure this
involvement of governments.
We have seen during the economic
recession of 2007-08 (as per some analysts and economists, this recession has
not yet got over. Hence, as per them, I must write recession of 2007 till
date), companies like Lehman brothers lost money and their business and in the
process made several of their customers poorer. The economic recession of
2007-08 hit the financial institutions of most of the developed and developing
countries like South Africa, China, Brazil, etc. However, the effects of the
recession were very limited in the case of financial institutions of India, a
fast developing economy of the world. Financial analysts and economists say
that this was due to the adequate involvement of the Indian government in the
functioning of banks and other financial institutions of the country. The
regulations and policies which the government of India has outlined for its
financial enterprises helped them wave through the period of recession.
The irony is that the same companies
which do not want any kind of governmental involvement or interference, as they
would like to call it, ask the government to get involved in their business
when they see bankruptcy looking into their face. Hence, Lehman Brothers and
gigantic companies like General Motors, General Electric and American Express wanted
the US government to get involved and bail them out of the mess which they
created in the absence of any governmental regulations. In India, Kingfisher
Airlines, an airline company owned by Vijay Mallya, a business tycoon who owns
a Formula One racing team and the United Spirits Ltd, the largest spirits
company in the world by volume, is also facing the prospect of going bankrupt
and hence wants the Indian government to bail it out using public money.
Governmental involvement is necessary
since a government runs by public money, money collected through exorbitant
taxes. And since, in most of the businesses that we are talking about here,
public money is involved in some way or the other, I feel it is very justified
that the government, which is a representative of the public by virtue of
thriving on public money, is involved to make sure that the business does not
cross lines of ethics, accountability and responsibility towards public or even
the environment.
This takes us to a very important
aspect of business which was hitherto not given much due by businesses across
the world. Most of the times, in order to make money, businesses do not heed
their responsibility towards the environment. Cases of dumping toxic materials
into water bodies and contaminating the environment with toxic waste or gases
abound across the world. In India, one such incident happened in 1984 when an
act of irresponsibility by Union Carbide took lives of thousands and thousands
of local people in the adjoining areas and impaired generations of people in various
ways. Nowadays, there have been instances of e-waste being dumped by
multinational companies near the shores of third world countries. Such acts
lead to deterioration of health of huge masses of people, as the e-waste gets
into the ecological system. In order to avoid such instances, governments
definitely need to draft policies and regulations and they need to make sure
that these policies are being followed diligently. Some kind of honest auditing
by the government is absolutely essential.
Hence, I feel government involvement
is absolutely required.
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