Code of Conduct

Summary

This brief pamphlet from the Forum of Free Enterprise lays out a ‘Code of Conduct’ addressed to industrialists, businessmen, and members of the professions in India. Issued by the Forum on the conviction that free enterprise must be defended through visible self-discipline as much as through advocacy, the document argues that the system can only retain its democratic legitimacy if its practitioners uphold high standards of integrity, honesty, hard work, courtesy and continuous initiative.

The Code then walks through the obligations of each constituency in the productive order. Producers and distributors owe consumers quality goods at reasonable cost, fair measure, and protection from adulteration. Employers owe labour dignified working conditions, fair wages, opportunities for skill-formation, grievance procedures, and recognition of stable democratic trade unions as part of a ‘checks and balances’ framework for employee-management relations. Management owes shareholders a fair return commensurate with risk, while also maintaining reserves for expansion, modernisation and research. Profit earned under competitive conditions, after fair wages are paid, is defended as a ‘legitimate reward’ — but hoarding, black-marketing, profiteering and malpractices in company management are condemned as anti-social. Professional men are asked to subordinate personal gain to the larger objective of service.

The pamphlet closes with a civic obligation owed by ‘all’ to the community: to bear one’s share of taxation honestly, to repudiate tax evasion, to participate in social and civic improvement, and to treat wealth or power as an opportunity for service rather than vainglorious display. A back-cover slogan — ‘Free Enterprise is your Enterprise. Safeguard it.’ — frames the entire tract as a self-policing manifesto designed to inoculate Indian capitalism against the moral case for state expansion.

Key points

• The Forum of Free Enterprise issues this Code as a public pledge that practitioners of free enterprise will police their own conduct, not merely defend the system rhetorically.

• Honesty, hard work, courtesy and continuous initiative are named as the four foundations on which ‘the edifice of Free Enterprise rests’.

• Producers and distributors are bound to quality, reasonable cost, fair measure and protection of consumers against adulteration.

• Employers are asked to treat worker welfare as a social obligation rather than philanthropy, to pay fair wages, to institute grievance procedures, and explicitly to welcome stable, democratic trade unions.

• Management’s accountability is dual: a fair return to investors for risk taken, and a duty to retain reserves for expansion, modernisation and research.

• Profit under competitive conditions is defended as a legitimate reward for risk and development work, but hoarding, black-marketing, profiteering and company-management malpractices are condemned as anti-social and evil.

• Professional men — lawyers, teachers, doctors, auditors, writers — are charged with subordinating personal gain to the ‘larger objective of service’.

• The civic coda condemns tax evasion unequivocally and treats wealth and power as obligations of community service rather than occasions for ostentation.