Absolutely convinced corporates are more ethical today: Azim Premji

Premji said he believes that the younger lot who have built professional organisations and made it really big by the age of 30-40 years are more conscious about philanthropy and their responsibilities towards the society.

New Delhi: Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji on Friday said he is 'absolutely convinced' that corporates of today's era are more ethical than 20-40 years back, and attributed this to 'cleaner' governments and businesses' own sense of ethics. 

Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit, Premji -- who is counted among India's top philanthropists -- said he believes that the younger lot who have built professional organisations and made it really big by the age of 30-40 years are more conscious about philanthropy and their responsibilities towards the society.

"I am convinced that the corporates of today are more ethical than the corporates of 20-30-40 years back...one is because governments are cleaner, two is because they have got a broader sense of ethics guiding them...they are definitely cleaner, no questions about that," he said.

The doyen of the tech industry further said that in his view, the older generation in wealthy and affluent families 'probably gave much more to charity'.

"I think, some of the current generation is living in the shadow of that legacy, and they find that they don't have to increase the amount of giving...because giving by their fathers and grandfathers was so much, so there is an automatic bias," he said.

Premji exhorted companies to come together and contribute to the larger good of society and its people.

"When we look collectively at the role of businesses and enterprises in our country, we must go continually beyond any framework that we have set for ourselves, we must ask the most basic, fundamental questions of where is our society, workers and work," Premji said.

He urged companies to prioritise important issues and challenges facing society and work out ways to address them for the betterment of society.

Apart from running businesses with ethics and integrity, companies must also do their bit to operate within ESG and sustainability framework, he noted. 

This includes reassessing what they do with CSR budgets to ensure that the corpus is spent on 'fundamental issues of need' rather than being given away only to meet statutory requirements.

"We must understand that collectively, as businesses, we have no limits to our responsibilities. It is only when we have this deep understanding of the enormity of our responsibility, that we can collectively create a sustainable future," he said.