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The Corporation That
Changed The World
THE First War of Independence as the Sepoy Mutiny is referred to in nationalist narratives is 150 this year but the country does not know whether to celebrate it or not. Celebrations mean having to overlook the roles many states played in suppressing the rebellion and helping the British re-establish their control of the country. People, who had no clear idea of nationalism and were inspired by rumours that their religious faith was under threat, led the mutiny. This is borne out by the fact that they installed a doddering old poet on the throne in Delhi. But it signaled the end of the East India Company, which had been lording it over the country for over a century, when the British Crown took administration of India directly into its hands a year later in 1858. The loss of India was a body blow for the company, called John Company, but it continued to exist till 1874 when its assets finally got dissipated. While the grand structures it built like the Writer’s Building and the Fort William in Kolkata and Fort St. George in Chennai remain, there is very little of the company left in London. Nick Robins belongs to a small group that organises walks along buildings and landmarks that were once associated with the company to rouse popular interest in its legacy. Whatever be the fate of the grand museum he plans, Robins has made his contribution to the legacy with this book in the writing of which he had brought his training as a historian and his rich experience in corporate responsibility issues to great fruition. With wife Ritu, who both ‘inspired’ and ‘sustained’ the book, it is but natural that he gives a perspective, which is more Indian than British. Consequently, there is very little on the positive contributions the company made, which even Karl Marx "who thought of all Britons in the East as so many Clives and freebooters", had magnanimously enumerated in his writings.
The company came to India to do business, i.e., to earn profits but in the course of doing so it found there was greater profit in controlling land and all that came with it. The Battle of Plassey is rightly described as a turning point in the history of the company and the country as it helped establish its control of Bengal, the most precious in the Moghul empire, and described as a "paradise of nations". Allowance has to be made for the fact that the tiny British force – 3,000 in all against the 50,000 of the Nawab — would not have succeeded even through deceitful means if the caste system had not prevented people, other than from the so-called warrior castes, from taking up arms against the invaders. Nick Robins’ analysis of how the company destroyed the indigenous textile industry — about which David Landes (in his celebrated work The Wealth and Poverty of Nations) says, "even in cold climes, the suitability of Indian cotton for underwear transformed the standards of cleanliness, comfort and health" in the West — is quite insightful. And so is his analysis of the role the company played in worsening the famine situations in the country. In a perceptive observation, he says "British control of India started with a famine in Bengal in 1770 and ended in a famine – again in Bengal – in 1943". While his wholesale condemnation of the company will gladden the hearts of many, he does not explain why and how Indians, who had a great seafaring tradition, had established trade links with most of the outside world and had mastered metallurgy much before the Europeans learnt the art, lost all their advantages. Religious taboos came in the way of crossing the seas and encouraging the artisans who came from what is today called the Dalits. India was never poor. The annual revenue of Aurangazeb amounted to $450,000,000, more than 10 times that of his contemporary Louis XIV. However, there was never any correlation between the extravaganzas of the rulers and their subjects and the company exploited the situation. Merchants and civil servants welcomed their inadequate salaries as a pretext for private enterprise and venality. Young, ambitious men paid money for appointment to company service. Members of Parliament and people of influence sought jobs for friends and relations and paid for them in their own way. It is a different matter that this sounds very similar to the situation in India of the 21st century. Robins’s book overlooks the campaign forces represented by Charles Grant and William Wilberforce carried out to transform the company based on the inputs provided by such noble souls like William Carey. Ultimately, he reiterates the point they made: there has to be a code of ethics for transnational business. Profit alone cannot be the motive. Nor are business houses accountable only to their shareholders, who look only at the balancesheets. They have to address the larger public good, which in an earlier era governments sought to enforce through controls. It is all very well for big companies to merge to form bigger companies but if it leads to exploitative situations or monopoly, it can indeed be dangerous. When a Press baron controls most global newspapers or when two big newspaper companies of Delhi decide to start a new newspaper with an eye on profit alone, public interest becomes a casualty. It made perfect business sense when the Tatas increased the price from Rs 45,000 crore to Rs 53, 361 crore to clinch the Corus deal. But the same company is adamant that it will not pay more than Rs 150 crore for 1,000 acres of prime agricultural land in Singur. In Africa, a Chinese company is accused of exploiting the local mine workers to maximise its profit. The East India Company now exists only in memory but its practices are, unfortunately, followed even to this day, a bit more cleverly.
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Also,
it is debatable how justifiable it may be to use modern yardsticks of
business and governance to judge the conduct of those who were inspired
purely by the strategy, "buy cheap and sell dear", to borrow
an expression from St. Augustine. They should be judged by the standards
of the time when seafarers were hardy men, who plundered or were
plundered.