Satyam scam prompts Advani to call for ethics in business
10 Jan 2009, 2035 Hrs

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Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Jan.10 Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and the party's prime ministerial candidate in the forthcoming general elections this year, L.K.Advani, on Saturday said ethics and values are inseparable elements of every business.

Advani was speaking at the global summit of the Jain International Trade Organization (JITO).

Commenting on the financial fraud of IT major Satyam Computer Services,he said business without ethics is a sin.

"Once, Gandhiji (Mahatma Gandhi) had said that business without ethics is sin. Business needs values and ethics and, if a few business organizations indulge in unethical practices, they bring a bad name to the business community as a whole," said Advani. On Wednesday, Ramalinga Raju, the chairman of Satyam Computer Services admitted that about a billion dollars, or 94 percent of the cash and bank balances on the company's books at the end of September did not exist.

The scandal had cast a cloud over foreign investment in Asia's third-largest economy and over its once-booming outsourcing sector, which posted stunning sales growth for years and lavished investors with handsome returns.

According to a party press release, he also called Jainism the most ancient Green Movement in world history.

He pointed out that most people do not often appreciate why Jainism attached such paramount importance to ahimsa. However, two of the greatest challenges before the world today--Terrorism and Climate Change--are both manifestations of violence.

He added that "terrorism is of course the most extreme and inhuman form of violence. But there is another form of violence which the world has been much slower to recognize, and much more hesitant to take firm action against."

Referring to the violence being inflicted on the Earth by our materialistic civilization,Advani said that only "when we reflect on the challenge of Climate Change that we begin to appreciate the enormous contemporary relevance of the Jain philosophy of ahimsa and jiva daya. We realize that Bhagwan Mahavir and the other Jain Tirthankars were great environmental conservationists."

"They taught us that we human beings are merely trustees of this planet. We need to re-learn their teachings in our times." He further added that "eco-friendliness is not a mere fashionable phrase; it has to be interwoven into our development paradigm and also into our day-to-day living," he added.

Terming pollution as another face of violence, he said that pollution has catastrophic implications for human beings and other species on our planet.

"Pollution has caused a big problem in the form of global warming and climate change, and pollution itself is another form of violence, and it is as grave as militancy. It is the duty of the society as well as administration to counter both (militancy and pollution) forms of violence," said Advani.

A recent study conducted by US researchers reveals that the warming climate is likely to put affect crops and livestock and could cause serious food shortages for half the world's population.

In a way "all (of us) have to become adivasis or tribals who know how to exist in harmony with the earth," he concluded.

He promised that in the event of the BJP and the NDA forming the next government in New Delhi, appropriate steps to deal with both forms of violence-Terrorism and climate change would be given the top priority.

He also urged the government to take bold and quick steps to revive the economy out of the recessionary crisis. (ANI)

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