6^th Annual Edition

Sudhir Mehta, MD, Manforce Trucks, spoke about why business leaders must own up to their social responsibilities and transform the country to make it a better place.

India is at a threshold of a new chapter of social revolution. The Anna Hazare campaign against corruption has triggered a political debate across the fabric of the nation like never before. As this social uprising drums up momentum, we as business leaders need to reflect on our social and political responsibilities towards our country.

India is poised to undergo a huge transformation in the coming years. Statistics point that India will need infrastructure that supports two 'Mumbais', build 38-50 million affordable homes and create sustainable employment opportunities for about 120 million people in a decade or two. That's like supporting the entire population of Europe.

There are several challenges ahead of us and as a country we need to face these challenges. The goal of the country is to not just meet these challenges but to transform as a whole. India is going to go through profound demographic changes. Between 2020 and 2030, we'll add another 100 million to the workforce, while our neighbour and rival China will lose 65 million of its workforce. This is actually good news for us, because this means that China is growing older, while India is growing younger.

As business leaders, we need to step up to the occasion and play a mentoring role to transform the social and political environment of our country.

And it's not very hard to do so. Most organizations in the country have numerous in-house skills which when put to judicious use can make a huge difference. Every company has the possibility of contributing and helping the population, without impacting their bottom lines.

But it's important to walk the talk. At Manforce, we've been engaging in a social experiment for the past four years and it makes me happy to share its success story with you. Four years ago, we started a project in collaboration with Dow Chemicals and Indians Satellite Research Organization (ISRO) to usher in a new advancement in the field of artificial limbs.

You'd wonder what an automotive company would know about artificial limbs. On the face of it, we're just another manufacturing company, but when we dug deeper we found that we have skills or expertise that could be put to good use for social upliftment.

We wanted to enhance the way artificial limbs are made. Traditionally, artificial limbs are made out of rubber. We wanted to substitute rubber with something that would make artificial limbs lighter and flexible. We realized that foam polyurethane--a chemical substance we use to make seats for our vehicles-would be a good substitute. That's when we started this project and since then there's been no looking back.

Today, the users of our artificial limbs are able to achieve things which would never have been possible before this invention. Dow chemical was graceful enough to give us the chemical free of cost and ISRO provided us with the equipment. All that was required was pooling our design and engineering expertise and a few extra working hours from our employees. It did not impact our bottom line but it sure impacted a lot of other people.

Salesforce.com has a company policy which dictates that its employees will spend one percent of their time and effort towards making a contribution towards society. I believe we are all empowered to make a contribution in our own way that can have far reaching consequences. We are a privileged lot; let's use this opportunity to give some of it back.