Corporate governance in India: Traditional and scriptural perspectives

Abstract

There is a host of literature on governance models, stakeholder protection, best practices in board constitution and its processes, the equations between the board and the operating executive management, and so on. What is less known is the fact that our own ancient texts have laid down sound principles of governance which surprisingly seem very relevant to modern day corporate requirements. In this paper, we explore some of the ancient and scriptural sources to illustrate some of these basic principles as brought out in such texts, and to relate them to modern day precepts and practices in this field. An important objective of this study is also to examine whether some of the current best practices are so foreign, and hence inappropriate, to our circumstances, as is often suggested; and finally, also to ascertain whether there are best practices in ancient governance that could be extrapolated or built upon in designing an Indian model of good corporate governance.