IOD SPECIAL TALKS - CSR in Action: Protecting our Futures

One thing that is very close to my heart, and I keep on saying this, is that we refer to a segment as the power and energy segment. I think as the world is transitioning, I say that the word 'energy' is being replaced by the word 'electricity', and that's where I come from, and the word 'power' is of course associated with political power. So let's leave that out.

Ladies and gentlemen, A very good morning to all the honoured guests on the dais as well as the gentleman, who unfortunately had some other prior commitments, so they had to leave us. Honestly, speaking after so many people and with such erudite addresses, it becomes difficult, I'm sure, for all of you to absorb so much in a short period of time. But let me say very honestly that I am very honoured by this gathering crucial theme that resonates deeply in the corridors of corporate power and responsibility and financial strategy because the landscape is evolving from corporate social responsibility—we are talking now of ESG. To talk about responsibilities, I will borrow some words from William Shakespeare and modify them slightly: We are in a position where either we are born with responsibility, or we imbibe or inherit responsibility, or we have responsibility thrust on us. It is a question that we need to ask ourselves as to what we want. Do we want responsibility, do we want accountability to be thrust on us, or do we want to voluntarily imbibe because we are at the crucial stage? In the world today, it's a fine balance, as one wrong push here and there leads to disaster. To make things a little bit lighter, I will narrate a short story.

Once, there was a traveler who came to a farmhouse. He asked the owner for some water. He saw a dog out there; the dog was whining and crying. He asked the owner, 'Why is this dog whining and crying so much?' The owner said, 'Haven't you noticed the dog is sitting on a bag of nails?' The traveler said, 'If he is sitting on a bag of nails, why is he crying? Why is he not moving away from the bag of nails and coming and sitting in an area where there is no pain? What the owner said is true for all of us; he said, 'The pain of sitting on that bag of nails is enough to make him whine and cry, but it is not enough for him to move away and sit in a safe place'.

We are in a position where either we are born with responsibility, or we imbibe or inherit responsibility, or we have responsibility thrust on us.

If we talk about ourselves, we are all talking about and whining in pain about the environment, transparency, governance, and responsibility, but we are not trying to move to an era or into an area where we can say that there is no pain, or at least try to move to an area where we see everybody prosperous. We talk about social responsibility, and social responsibility is a very big area. Because today, if you have an imbalance in your society, you are going to create something that is then irretrievable. We are seeing a lot of war happening across the world as we speak just now, and one war that has gone on for the last 15 months, we have stopped talking about it, yet there is a war going on. So ultimately, what we need to do is understand—what will lead us out of it? Is transparency the way in which we conduct our businesses? It is not just businesses, but ourselves. A person who stays in shambles at home cannot be expected to go to office, become a great leader, and become well respected. Ultimately, your individual attitude determines your corporate attitude. Your individual thought process determines the corporation's or your team's thought process, especially in the case of leaders. I'm sure most of the people sitting out here are in leadership positions. Now, in the new economy that we are talking about in the world, it is imperative to recognise the interchangeability and interconnectedness of both CSR and ESG. Sustainability, my friends, is not merely an environment. Take sustainability for a government. It is not merely environmental, but sustainability of the government, and if we talk of sustainability as a building and sustainability as a roof, then it has some pillars. Those pillars are transparency, governance, and also ensuring that what you have done is correct; that means you build a strong social network, and of course, one of the areas that I think the government is trying very hard and we need to contribute to skill development. In this new world that we are going to transition into, I think we've already started our entry into it with artificial intelligence, with so much knowledge and technology around us. I had the proud opportunity to be invited to ISRO, the Indian Space Reach Organization, last week. I must tell you that I was really impressed with the technology that we have put into space. Can you imagine signals going out to a station that is about 1.5 million miles away? It takes 22 minutes for that signal to reach and 22 minutes to come back. Chandrayaan 3.0, the mission to the moon, was again an experiment that was very successful.

As we move towards a more sustainable future and a stronger environment, taking everybody along with us—otherwise we create a huge social imbalance and we will have civil wars—I think robust reporting mechanisms are going to be needed. The need for reporting mechanisms is not for the sake of reporting but for the sake of transparency, and that is going to be one of the big areas of success, not just financial success but also reputational success. There used to be one time when we used to be enamoured by rich people, flashy people, and had the thought process: 'Wow, you know I want to drive a car like him'. But today, we are questioning the source of income. Today, that is a person, a gangster, who has earned his money through dishonest means. We don't respect that person, and we don't accept this person into society. It could be a poor person, it could be a poor company, but one who has that responsibility, who has that reputation of being honest and ethical at all times, is far more respected than a company or a person who has earned a lot of money, and that is something that we need to think about and imbibe within ourselves.

Of course, the role of the government is also evolving. The COP 28 event just concluded last week. That event was talking about, and I’ll come back to the original story, but we had, 'You are forced to change either out of fear or out of desire'. So either it is inspiration or desperation. So we have to decide today whether we want to inspire ourselves, leave a better world for the next generations or even for ourselves, or whether we want to live in a world where the past is better for living conditions than the future. You might have more technology, you might have more gadgets, and you might have more food that you can grow very easily, but ultimately, if you're not able to enjoy it, you have to live in a cocooned atmosphere, or you can't find enough water to drink, then I'm sorry, that's not a world that we should live in. The only thing that we need to decide and take a vow today is that this generation, the people sitting in this room, the people today on this planet, are not going to be takers; they are going to be givers.

My closing statement to all of you is that let us today imbibe the lovely topic that IOD has chosen, because again, what do you do as training for people? Because it's not that the people wake up to pack, but they need to be trained. They need to understand that we are in an era today where there is a fine balance; we are talking about Antarctic melting, global warming, the gases that we are remitting, the erosion of the ozone layer, etc. So we have to only decide that we want to be part of this where we start doing things voluntarily, and therefore even for voluntarily imbibing governance or knowledge, IOD plays a huge role in doing that, and I wish that they keep on doing this.

My compliments to all of you gathering in large numbers at 9 a.m. to listen to all of this, which shows that there is something striking in all our hearts. Thank you very much, and I wish the conference a lovely success.

Thank you.

*Excerpts from the ‘Keynote Address' delivered by Mr. Vijay Karia, Chairman and Managing Director, Ravin Group of Companies at the 'Inaugural Session' of the 18^th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, held on December 21, 2023 in Hotel Taj Lands End.