Ashish Chauhan, MD & CEO, NSE, says “effectively the Indian corporate ethos has always been about social good and slowly it is also getting formalised in some ways, with the Companies Act 2013 making CSR contribution compulsory for a company beyond a particular size; 2% of the profits have to go for social causes. Nowhere in the world does this kind of law exist and they are being implemented in letters and spirit.”
A lot of times in business life, there is a will but there is no way and we take large projects, they do not come. How to have a strong will? Can spirituality help you do that?
It does and it’s not today, it is continuing from time immemorial. Karna was considered the greatest daneshwar, the person who gives alms even when he is on deathbed. So, effectively we have a tradition during medieval and other ages also, we had Bhamashah and recently also we had a lot of charity like what Kushal bhai is doing or Tatas have been doing for very long, over almost 100 years.Effectively the Indian corporate ethos has always been about social good and slowly it is also getting formalised in some ways, with the Companies Act 2013 making CSR contribution compulsory for a company beyond a particular size; 2% of the profits have to go for social causes. Nowhere in the world does this kind of law exist and they are being implemented in letters and spirit. No wonder so many education institutions are getting helped, so many training centres are coming up, and so many toilets are getting made …
As simple things such as toilets.
For me, Indian business has always been a part of the society in a very intertwined way. It is just that to some extent, we have focussed on some of the aberrations and try to make a big sort of situation out of it. In the same context, in the 2019-20 Budget, honourable finance minister announced the social stock exchange. How do we create that trust back even into social sector because what has happened over 30 years after setting up of NSE and screen-based trading and slowly increasing the corporate governance standards that today India has become pretty much the best in class, in terms of not only the technology part or the speed of execution, but also in corporate governance.
Probably the finance minister thought about bringing it into the social sector, that is why she said these institutions can do well and that is how the social stock exchange she announced in the Budget and then in 2022, SEBI came out with the regulations. We have more than 20-25 NGOs listed and we have to raise some minimum amount. There are structures which have been created and more structures will be created but effectively the social stock exchange is also a very exciting project that is coming up.
I am observing that your views these days are also about the direction the country is taking, not only the economy. You are observing all of that very closely.
In a way you are observing my views probably. They have been the same for last many years
But you are maybe voicing it on social media better or in our chats.
Sometimes people listen to you in a different way. But for me, all my life has been about creating organisations which can scale and create behavioural patterns which are socially desirable and do collective good. That is where the stock exchange comes in that we are able to create trust where a person sitting in Jorhart or Dibrugarh is able to put in her hard-earned Rs 10,000 or Rs 1000 in a company in Salem having complete faith in the country’s governance, country’s parliament, country’s judiciary, country’s administration, regulators and also stock exchange and absolutely for the entrepreneurs. They should be able to believe that the person is going to use the money efficiently and when people like him make profits, they will share with those shareholders.
It is such a leap of faith for a person sitting in a remote corner. Rs 1,000 for her is important and that is where for me it has happened over 30 years, it need not have happened. In a poor country like ours, per capita income is $2,500. There is no other country with a $2,500, $5,000, $10,000 or even $20,000 per capita income which have a similar market. The only exception is China where when markets go down, the government has to buy. In our case society…
Publicly independent.
Right. It has happened because of transparency, increasingly better corporate governance and also use of modern technology and that is why I say that today’s situation will ensure that the societies which adapt to newer technologies will create better wealth and better life for themselves provided they trust each other.
By a quirk of fate, we have become a trusting nation, we trust each other although most times when we read news or listen to news we may think it is the other way around but the entire country is trusting each other. That is why today one-third of India’s wealth is in stock markets and it will increasingly go up.
Similarly, in social areas, we bring in our ancient wisdom, we bring it and distil it to create replication of say Govardhan Eco Village in all districts on their own, it does not have to be a franchise or on that model but people come here, learn, set up their own stuff and my perspective is that is how we create scalable models.
