Attendance was very poor. A de-motivating factor for any enthusiastic lecturer. I have just come to the class after delivering a INVITED LECUTRE on Business and Sustainability at the Seminar organized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India at the MCCIA Conference Room. There were more than 130 Charted Accountants attending that lecture; they all had come from their offices to attend the lecture. The crowd was so much the organizers stopped registration at one point. But the situation at the IndSearch PGDBM class was pathetic, to say the least. Apparently students do not see much of a value in such lectures. I am passionate about the subject; I am ready to teach even if one student attends the class.
The lecture went as follows:
1. Sustainability (CSR) is three dimensional - economic, environmental and social; a sustainable organization is one that is (a) economically viable, (b) environmentally sound and (c) socially acceptable. Sustainability is also called the Triple Bottomline approach, distinguishing it from the more popular financial bottomline approach of many business organizations. It is also called the 3 P approach: Planet (natural resources, energy), People (health & safety, equity) and Profit (economic growth)
2. One of the characteristics of the Sustainability approach is to "think differently" ("The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them" - Albert Einstein) - business as usual approach does not work.
3. Example of thinking differently: "Pollution is resources not positioned at their maximally effective location" Buckminster Fuller - i.e. pollution is nothing but a resouce at a wrong place. (Google Buckminster Fuller and know more about his work). We discussed carbondioxide at the exhaust and in a soda water bottle.
4. Sustanability offers us new opportunities - the result of thinking differently. We discussed about inventing a gadget that could convert the carbondioxide emitted from your vehicle into soda water !
5. We learnt about the environmental issues and the characteristics of physical environment.
6. The first characteristic sof environment is "Common Property". The air, water and soil belong to all; they don't belong to one single individual. That leads to the basic environmental issue: When something belongs to everybody, then it belongs to none. Everyone thinks that someone else will take care of it. We discussed the situation of keeping our house clean while not bothering about the cleanliness of the surrounding, which belongs to all of us. We also discussed the concept of "Tragedy of Commons". We also discussed the story told by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa on the village priest and the milk abhisheka.
7. The second characteristics of the environment is "Multiple Use". We discussed the use of water for many purposes, like from brushing the teeth, washing, cooking, bathing, transport, sport, industries etc. We noted that if one user uses the resource at the expense of others, there is a potential for conflict. We noted the feelings of people who walk for miles to get water when they see someone watering his lawn in their neighbourhood.
8, The third characteristics of the environment is the "Uncovered Cost". I asked the students to tell me as to how they would calculate the cost of their travel to IndSearch from their house. The answer was typical: they would include the cost of petrol, cost of their time, cost of repairs and maintenance, cost of insurance, depreciation and interest etc. But the cost of someone getting ill because of the emission of pollutants from their vehicle, someone taking leave because of illness caused by vehicular pollution, loss of productivity due to systems affected by vehicular pollution etc., are not included in the cost calculation. In fact, this cost is distributed among the society. That is the cost of pollution due to travel (externality) has not been internalized. I gave you an estimate of about US $ 2,200,000,000,000,000 as the uncovered cost of the environmental damage caused by the 3000 largest corporations of the world in a year. This amount is much higher than the GDP of many countries. When such un-accounted damage is caused to the environment there is always a likelihood of conflict.
During the Second half of the class we continued to READ the paper by Milton Friedman and completed it.
See you all next Monday, 20 December, 2010. Hopefully we have good number of students attend the class then.
6. The first characteristic sof environment is "Common Property". The air, water and soil belong to all; they don't belong to one single individual. That leads to the basic environmental issue: When something belongs to everybody, then it belongs to none. Everyone thinks that someone else will take care of it. We discussed the situation of keeping our house clean while not bothering about the cleanliness of the surrounding, which belongs to all of us. We also discussed the concept of "Tragedy of Commons". We also discussed the story told by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa on the village priest and the milk abhisheka.
7. The second characteristics of the environment is "Multiple Use". We discussed the use of water for many purposes, like from brushing the teeth, washing, cooking, bathing, transport, sport, industries etc. We noted that if one user uses the resource at the expense of others, there is a potential for conflict. We noted the feelings of people who walk for miles to get water when they see someone watering his lawn in their neighbourhood.
8, The third characteristics of the environment is the "Uncovered Cost". I asked the students to tell me as to how they would calculate the cost of their travel to IndSearch from their house. The answer was typical: they would include the cost of petrol, cost of their time, cost of repairs and maintenance, cost of insurance, depreciation and interest etc. But the cost of someone getting ill because of the emission of pollutants from their vehicle, someone taking leave because of illness caused by vehicular pollution, loss of productivity due to systems affected by vehicular pollution etc., are not included in the cost calculation. In fact, this cost is distributed among the society. That is the cost of pollution due to travel (externality) has not been internalized. I gave you an estimate of about US $ 2,200,000,000,000,000 as the uncovered cost of the environmental damage caused by the 3000 largest corporations of the world in a year. This amount is much higher than the GDP of many countries. When such un-accounted damage is caused to the environment there is always a likelihood of conflict.
During the Second half of the class we continued to READ the paper by Milton Friedman and completed it.
See you all next Monday, 20 December, 2010. Hopefully we have good number of students attend the class then.
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