BOOK
REVIEW
TITLE:
BALANCE-RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
AUTHORS:
NAMRATA RANA and UTKARSH MAJUMDAR
PUBLISHER:
WESTLAND, 2018
PRICE:
HARDBACK,Rs. 799/-
Balance
Needs To Be Created
“Global wealth stood at $ 280 trillion by mid 2017,” starts
off chapter 1 of Balance. How much of
this is used to preserve the earth from extinction by human negligence, the
entire book that follows seems to be asking.
“Sustainable Growth” is the answer, and not just GDP pump-priming,
according to the authors. It calls for an “integrated approach to development
and future planning”. What the authors call “Systems Thinking”.
Unregulated, irresponsible human progress and prosperity
from the dawn off the Industrial Age to the end of the second decade of the 21st
century, is now destroying the earth. Plus, wars for territory that used to
kill millions, periodic plagues and epidemics that also carried off many, are no longer doing so, leading to a world
population explosion, and resultant stress on the earth’s natural resources.
Effluent discharges from industries, plastics that don’t biodegrade,
trees that are cut and not replaced, human sewage, noxious vapours destroying
the air, and effluents polluting the water in lakes, ponds, rivers,
seas, oceans, are denuding them of all
life forms.
The toxins also leach into the earth, poisoning arable land
where crops are grown, and destroy
drinking water sources. Global warming is changing the climate, triggering
natural disasters.
There is no way out but collective action to regulate how
we treat our environment, or future generations will find it difficult to
survive, even as mutants are born and new forms of incurable disease grow to
epidemic proportions.
And yet very little is actually happening.
This book, Balance,
seeks to tell the story via a tour of the main markers. There are “externalities
and their implications” meaning the impact of a given commercial or industrial
activity on others.
The “Social return on investment (SROI)” is a formula for measuring the social profits against the
investments made, controversial as it may be in terms of accounting principles
adopted. But it does set up an index for comparing scores.
One of the most interesting explorations in this book are
on the “frictionless” uses of Blockchain Technology. It could, say the authors,
“support green supply chains, measuring water use, emissions management,” and
can support the “sharing economy”. Cryptocurrencies are already legal tender in
Japan.
There is an urgent need to understand climate change
better. The World Economic Forum
projects that by 2020, which is almost upon us, “about $5.7 trillion will need
to be invested annually in green
infrastructure”. This is definitely a tall order, given that most of the
investment has to come from a concept called “climate financing,” a kind of
World Bank for climate change mitigation by adopting projects and programmes.
Again, there are controversies of what kind of project qualifies.
There is a need for instruments like “Green bonds” and “Catastrophe
bonds” and qualification on the basis of “impact testing”. The whole caboodle
is commonsensically very difficult to get started and flourishing, as the
tangible short term returns are negligible. However, the importance of doing
something, almost anything, cannot be denied.
There are UN developed Sustainable Development goals (SDGs),
some 17 in number, and extremely macroeconomic in scale. They list, for
example, “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full
and productive employment, and decent work for all” and “End poverty in all its
forms everywhere”.
And then there is corporate
social responsibility to do things in an ecologically friendly way that makes
for sustainability. Broad Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) norms are
increasingly mandatory, but is this enforced around the country and the globe?
India only mandates a 2% of turnover spend on CSR, but a survey of its
top 166 companies in 2016-17 clocked just 1.88%. And about 45% of this was used
on health and education, while the list includes poverty alleviation, water,
energy, capacity building and many other heads. Still, the CSR spend has risen
from about 1% before it was made mandatory.
Of course, this CSR approach is going to stay largely
cosmetic, given the size of the problem and its overhang that threatens to
engulf us all. However, to get the largest economies to take on extra here-and-now
costs, which are far from negligible, to fuel a cleaner, more sustainable
future, is a difficult task.
Much of the clean-up therefore has to be undertaken at
government expense, as in the sewage processing stations and other effluent
management infrastructure being developed in the Namame Ganga projects. However,
these are showing good results in short order, after years of trying to tell
municipalities and industry to do something about it failed.
The book lays out case studies taken from a number of
companies in different fields such as Kirloskar Motors, Toyota Motor
Corporation, Yes Bank, Ambuja Cement,
ITC and Dr.Reddy’s.
It reviews the challenges faced by various and diverse
sectors such as cement, automobiles, oil and gas, telecom, mining and metals, banking
and financial services, information technology, towards not only controlling
and sanitising effluents and emissions, but even toxic electronic waste.
Laws play their part, as does enforcement or lack of it.
India has quite a few laws in this space- Waste Management Laws, Environmental
Protection Acts, Bio-Medical Waste Management and Handling Rules, Batteries
Management and Handling Rules, Hazardous Wastes Management and Handling and
Transboundary Movement Rules, Plastic Waste Management and Handling Rules, E-waste Management and Handling Rules, Solid
Waste Management Rules.
Data is another great frontier that has got its European law
even as India is starting to enact its own. The General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) is applied in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA) towards data
protection and privacy for individuals. How privacy of personal data impacts
sustainable development however is unclear.
The authors of this book are Namrata Rana, who works in the
area of strategy and brands at Futurescape and is visiting faculty at IIM
Udaipur, and Utkarsh Majumdar, who teaches at leading business schools and
writes on sustainability and business responsibility.
This volume covers a lot of ground, but the authors are
probably most comfortable with the growth and improvement matrix for a responsible
corporate sector, where both authors display the confidence of domain
knowledge.
Many of the global initiatives described however have
failed to touch many lives, even as they have underscored that efforts are
indeed underway. But will the answer to a cleaner world eventually come from
inexpensive new technology adoption that renders older, polluting ways obsolete,
and too expensive to carry on with? The history of the industrial revolution,
now apparently in its 4th wave, as
well as the socio-political advancements we have seen over the last
century, seem to suggest as much.
(1,094
words)
For:
The Sunday Pioneer AGENDA BOOKS
March
7, 2019
Gautam
Mukherjee
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