Corporate should broadbase shareholding: Vice President

New Delhi, Mar 8 (UNI) Vice President Hamid Ansari today called for the need to broadbase the definition of stakeholders in a corporate enterprise, saying it should fullfil their obligations towards the society ''at the same level as towards their shareholders''.

''One notices a trend to consider corporate governance and corporate social responsibility as two distinct entities and in watertight compartments. It is argued that corporate governance responsibilities are towards shareholders and hence gets primacy over corporate social responsibility that is seen in a voluntary context. In the rapidly changing social, economic and political context today, both at national and global level, this distinction is increasingly getting blurred.

''Indian corporations going global, and global corporations with Indian operations, need to see both the shareholders and the society; the latter includes the consumers of goods and services produced by them. For this reason, corporations need to prioritise their obligations towards society at the same level as towards their shareholders, he said.

The Vice President was addressing the annual day celebrations of Sri Ram College of Commerce.

He said India was well endowed with both human and material resources which had enabled the country to achieve substantial progress in many spheres. Two aspects--corporate governance and meaning and implications of globalisation, have a direct bearing on economic activity and on the lives of all sections of the society.'' Both need to be carefully and comprehensively debated by the managerial talent set to graduate from this college," he advised.

UNI KAS KK RAI1818