Greed is the biggest problem of capitalism: Gurcharan Das

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
July 20, 2009
The former Chairman of P&G Gurcharan Das on the Satyam fiasco: "Greed is an easy answer; there must be more to it..."

“Greed is the biggest problem of capitalism,” Gurcharan Das, author of international-bestseller ‘India Unbound’ and former Chairman of Procter & Gamble (P&G), said while addressing the AIMA 2nd Business Responsibility Summit on July 17, 2009. The author, who took early retirement from P&G to become a full-time writer, is all set to release another book, ‘The Difficulty of Being Good - On the Subtle Art of Dharma’, in August this year.

Gurcharan Das began his AIMA Summit speech on a light note and shared with the audience an episode when a media person called him a ‘management guru’. “People call me a ‘guru’ maybe because it’s there in my name! I was named Ashok Kumar when I was born. But my grandmother, who suspected my mother secretly loved the Bollywood star, got me rechristened as Gurcharan Das. From being a romantic hero, I was turned into a humble servant of my grandmother’s spiritual guru!” he quipped. 

Speaking on the state of business, he said, “India has witnessed tremendous economic growth. Not just in the recent past, but from the last 28 years. It has been a golden period for business and capitalism. But, it brought along the most damaging fallout – fall of trust,” and added, “John Maynard Keynes, the economist who lived during the great depression of 1930s, had said that animal spirits drive businessmen to take risks and when they do that without sufficient knowledge, it creates crisis.”

He said that there should be a balance between healthy and unhealthy competition. “Don’t throw out capitalism, but reform it gently. In today’s era, regulation is needed as it is essential to protect a common man from getting lured by ‘bad’ investments,” Gurcharan said. He also spoke at length on the ‘Dot Com’ burst.

Arun Maira, Senior Advisor BCG-India, praised Gurcharan’s international-bestselling book ‘India Unbound’ at the AIMA Summit and said, “I would call ‘India Unbound’ a seminal, landmark book.” He also read out a few lines from Gurcharan’s forthcoming book: “Prosperity had indeed begun to spread in India, but goodness had not… I met Raju (Ramalingan Raju, Satyam founder) years ago… at that time I looked him in the eyes and saw sincerity… Greed is an easy answer… there must be more to it…”

“No one knows the reason or the full story of the Satyam fiasco, but we feel sad. It causes discomfort because it challenges our definition,” Gurcharan said, and added his next book dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well being. He said we can apply the teachings of Mahabharata to business decisions, political strategies, interpersonal relationships, and to life itself. “What is needed is self-restraint of dharma within us,” he said. Gurcharan Das graduated with honors from Harvard University in Philosophy and Sanskrit. He later attended the Harvard Business School’s advanced management program, too. 

His international bestseller, ‘India Unbound’, is a narrative account of India from Independence to the global information age, and has been published in 17 languages and filmed by BBC. He is currently on the boards of a number of companies and is a regular speaker to the top managements of the world’s largest corporations. His other literary works include a novel, A Fine Family; a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm; and an anthology, Three English Plays.