Subrata Roy was indeed a titan of Indian business, rising from relatively humble origins to become India’s biggest employer in the private sector, presiding over a business empire that sprawled across financial services, real estate, aviation, media and entertainment.
The shock and sense of injustice that most Indians feel at the ouster of a founder from the company he or she founded also gives, in the same breath, legitimacy to founders being held responsible, without limit, for the failure of the company and for its resultant liabilities.
The EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2023, which was released on November 2, has 119 philanthropists who gave away ₹8,845 crore in 2022-23. Philanthropy is welcome, but impact investing would benefit society more.
What is impact investing? It is investing that prioritizes an intentional, measurable social or environmental benefit over maximizing financial returns. Impact investing is gaining traction among asset managers as a superior alternative to vaguely defined ESG integration. They aim to generate decent financial returns while helping achieve identified social and environmental goals. The global hunt for impact investing opportunities is welcome, but Indian entrepreneurs should model themselves on the Omidyar Network rather than chase after an ESG gloss to their returns.
Defiant bursting of firecrackers by some sections, besides fanning debilitating pollution, is a way to fight what they say is curtailing Hindu customs.
The war will have an impact on societies worldwide with a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and generalized xenophobia, weakening democracy in general.
Around 10,000 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been killed, about 40 percent of them children, in Israeli attacks on Gaza so far. The slaughter continues. This will have an impact, less directly lethal but no less malign, on societies around the world, with a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and generalized xenophobia, strengthening conspiracy theorists and extreme right-wing parties, and weakening democracy, in general.
SENIOR officials of the government are certainly very different from quantum particles. Yet, both have a common quality: their state changes when they are observed — the very act of observation induces the change. Now that the Supreme Court has ordered the authorities of north Indian states to put an end to stubble burning, leaving it to them to figure out how, we can expect to see some action. Here are a few suggestions as to how to act on the court directive without creating a conflict with farmers, who need to clear their fields of the crop residue in order to plant the next crop.