Moral Corruption - an Abuse of Power

Moral Corruption- An abuse of Power

Chanda Kochhar- a role model for millions of aspiring minds around the globe. When she rose to occupy the corner office, she proved to naysayers that women are good as men at achieving anything that the world of mortal is capable of dreaming of or I can simply say that she proved that men and women are equal. Now the same person facing the dark clouds of allegations of moral corruption and financial fraud is yet another proof of the fact that the two genders are, indeed, equal. We both abuses the power.

Conflict of Interest and breach of Code of Conduct, two vices of Business Ethics and both seen in the case of Chanda Kochhar. If we start looking it from the perspective of Virtue Ethics, the virtuous action are dusted for a longer period of time. A virtuous person will choose to do the virtuous thing and avoid the vices. The only aim to develop virtues is to make the right choices more of a right habit, followed by right actions. Here in this case, the right choice and the right action is to avoid engaging in conflict of interest whereby personal, financial, or other consideration have the potential to influence or compromise professional judgment and objectivity. The involvement of Chanda Kochhar in decision making by not opting out from the Credit Committee showcases the unmeet of business virtues.

Kant’s deontology says that duty must be done with right motive. In this case, not just the duties are violated but also the motive is not of right intent. The first duty that CEO of an organization has, is to look after the public interest and company’s value. Here, the public interest is their money which they gave it to the bank with all trust and faith. A public servant must honour their responsibility to the public when advocating for the unmet communication and swallowing needs of the public. When a person is in such a respectful and leadership position, one must honor the code of conduct, should be transparent, must have integrity and strong stand against corruption.. Are all these violated when Chanda Kochhar informally pushed the loan to the Videocon group because of benefits received by her family members from the group’s promoters ? Indeed she did. Neither the right action nor the right motive.

Many may see Kochhar’s story as the fall of a women because we placed the burden of our expectation of Ideal Behaviour into her. Though these are just allegation, not proven guilty yet but we need to learn one thing- people in position of power abuses power. It’s not a “man thing” nor a “women thing”. We found men got punished when found guilty. If Kochhar found to be guilty  she should be punished as well. Whether we look it as Justice as Equality or justice to feminism.