Corporate Governance – Its Origin in Ancient India
KEYWORDS
Governance, Vedic, Welfare, Corporate
Corporate Governance is a very important concept and its relevance today in business can be seen as the development of the welfare concept. The welfare of business means not only growth and development of business in terms of profit and market share, but also to see that overall growth is attained in society. In this process, it requires a lot of accountability and commitment among the various authorities within the organization. Corporate Governance is not a new concept and this existed long back. The history of effective Corporate Governance can be traced back to the Ancient period. A lot of archeological evidence, scriptures, and religious text give reference to the existence of effective Corporate Governance practiced during our ancient times. Today the approach of Corporate Governance is talked more from the point of business but in Ancient India, it was about overall administration of the state. It talked about how the king used to manage his subjects through effective Governance. In this paper, I tried to focus on the concept of Corporate Governance which existed during Ancient times and how it was relevant during those days in proper administration and management of the policy. For this purpose, the ancient period is studied under three heads namely-Vedic period, Mauryan period and Gupta period. Special reference in this paper is made towards Mauryan period which was regarded as a period of good governance, as the structure of administration was so well established and governed which became model for a lot of empires worldwide. A reading in Chanakya’s Arthashastra which was written in 4th century BC is worth mentioning here as it gives guidelines on administration and management practices which were to be followed in order to achieve the welfare objectives. Study of Ancient system of Corporate Governance throws some light on the evolution of the present Corporate Governance which is more specific to business approach. A lot of ideas practiced and the system in usage in governing business entity today has been borrowed from the ancient system and its relevance can be even seen today.
CMA N Raveendranth Kaushik
The author is the Consultant – International Taxation Bengaluru, Karnataka