Round Table on Business, Governance and Society

Abstract

The editorial policy of Decision places a keen emphasis on engaging with practitioners. It is believed that such an engagement not only enables academia to better cater to the needs of practitioners but also provides scholars with a rich source of new insights and phenomena for researching. Pursuant to this policy, a Round Table on Business, Governance and Society was held at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta’s premises on the 30 January 2014. Keeping in line with the theme of the special issue, the speakers at this Round Table represented the voices of the other side—the community which has usually been at the receiving end of resource conflicts involving businesses. The three speakers were Mr. Bharat Patel, Mr. Ravi Rebbapragada and Mr. Sanjay Upadhyay. Bharat Patel, is the Secretary of Machimaar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan—a grassroots group of fishing communities based in the Bhadreshwar–Mundhra region of Gujarat—engaged in a struggle against the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Mundhra. Ravi Rebbapragada, is the Founder of the NGO Samata, associated with the Supreme Court verdict popularly known as the Samata judgment that prevents the sale of land owned by tribal communities to non-tribals. He is also Chairperson of Mines, Minerals and People: a growing alliance of individuals, institutions and communities who are concerned and affected by mining. Sanjay Upadhyay, is a Supreme Court lawyer and the founder of the Envirodefence, a legal firm. Mr. Upadhyay is a Visiting Fellow at the Boalt Hall School of Law, the University of California, Berkeley, and has served as an environmental and development law expert to the World Bank, IUCN, FAO, UNDP, DFID, ILO, the University of Cambridge and Duke University. The discussion was moderated by Nimruji Jammulamadaka, faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. The audience included the faculty and the students of the institute. The following is a transcript of the Round Table. Bharat Patel (BP): Let me begin by telling you about the Gulf of Kutch, where I come from. People like us, the fishing communities in this part of India, are totally dependent on this Gulf. And there are reasons for this. The Gulf of Kutch has very good mangrove forests. It comes next only to Sunderbans in this respect. There are several islands and almost 210 types of marine algae. There are many coral reefs, creeks and estuaries (almost 168 of them). Fishing is good. The production is about 1.4 lakh tonnes annually. India’s first marine national park is located here. It is very rich in bio-diversity, and the gulf is 175 km long and 30 km wide. The condition now is such that, it is not a marine national park; it is a marine industrial park. This gulf has 14 SPMs (single point mooring) from which about 70–80 % of India’s crude imports arrive into the N. Jammulamadaka (&) Behavioural Sciences Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata, India e-mail: nimruji@iimcal.ac.in