The latest whistle-blower revelations of multiple shenanigans at global ride-hailing app Uber, coming thick and fast after serial exposes of various dodgy practices at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google in the recent past raises uncomfortable questions about India Inc. If the FAANGs, Twitter and Uber can be guilty of multiple and diverse transgressions what’s happening in Indian corporations?
It can be nobody’s case that India’s largely family-owned and —managed private sector is a beacon of transparency or best corporate governance practices, bolstered as it is by an informal omerta among employees, managements and even boards. In fact, in the light of the flood of insider revelations in western corporations, the lack of whistle-blowers in Indian corporations is striking. Domestic corporate scandals of recent vintage, such as Global Trust, Satyam, IL&FS or YES Bank, to name a few, have all been the result of implosions rather than employee revelations.
One prominent whistle-blower incident involving a deal concluded by Infosys was treated with such extreme confidentiality that it is impossible to tell whether it was handled well or badly. After many public complaints by one former founder, the controversy resulted in the departure of the IT giant’s first non-founder CEO and the return of another founder as non-executive chairman, who has been there ever since. In another involving Ranbaxy, the whistle-blower was a US citizen,...
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