A dig at World Economic Forum(WEF)

It was equally shocking and surprisingly refreshing to see a head of a corporate looking down upon one of the forums of the corporate elite where they join together annually to showcase the unity and of course, the strength of the corporate honchos once a year at Davos in Switzerland. Rajiv Bajaj, CEO of Bajaj Auto and son of the Bajaj group patriarch Rahul Bajaj, in a recent interview is reported to have mentioned that he thinks that “ half of the world’s problems start from the World Economic Forum”(Global woes start at Davos summit, feels Rajiv Bajaj, The Hindu, Jan 4, 2012).He also mentioned that “Everybody has a position in life, my position is anti-management position”. I wholeheartedly congratulate Mr.Rajiv for voicing his opinion from inside the ring because very rarely people try criticize systems when they are they are part of the systems.

Does this comment indicate that all is not well with the Forum and there may be dissenting views about it in the days to come. Outsiders like us always knew that, while the official website of the forum describes it as an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas, it was nothing but a CEO forum to further corporate interests and should have been named “World Corporate Forum “ or “World CEO Forum” as very rarely they discuss issues beyond business. It was one more forum covering the world to assert the role of corpocracy, to use the term coined by Robert Monks, like the Business Round Table(BRT) which is confined to the US.

I was expecting Mr.Rajiv not to mince words during the recent ET Corporate Excellence award function(where he was awarded too) and voice his concerns about the discussion that preceded the event: The Agenda For Renewal. A few high profile corporate helmsmen like Deepak Parekh, Narayana Moorthy, K.V.Kamath, Ashok Ganguly etc gave a number of suggestions to the government. A few of the corporate-friendly ministers attended the function and gave their responses to the various suggestions. I also happened to witness the TV coverage of the award function. What was disgusting about the whole thing was that while the theme was a broad one”Agenda for Renewal”, which should have covered all economic aspects of the nation, it turned out to be “An Agenda for Renewal For The Corporates”. Nobody from outside the industry could be spotted attending the award function.

I feel that Occupy Wall Street movement will soon get extended to India in the form of Occupy Dalal Street since corporate have been taking a very narrow view of economy, ignoring everything other than industry.