Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/kisan-sabha-protest-march-mumbai/article23039856.ece
At Tasha & Girl, we make it a point to buy from farmers and cut out the middlemen as much as possible. We know our producers by name; we know their families; we know which school their kids go to; we even know how much sugar they like in their tea.
Having said that, we are not always in tune with their needs, their pain, and their lives outside the transactional nature of our relationship. We buy fruit. They sell fruit. We sit and enjoy some gossip and a cup of tea once in a while when we meet in season. And yes, we also negotiate, hard. After all, we have a business to run. But we ensure that we try and go to the source for everything we use.
Which is why when the farmers’ march happened, and the news broke about 50,000 of them walking non-violently and with great concern for others’ inconvenience, to the capital, not for handouts, but to demand their just rights, and their place in our modern society as is due to them, we were in a quandary:
Should we use this opportunity to show solidarity with our producers and suppliers on our official communication channels, or should we stay away from any potentially polarising conversation that may harm the brand?
By the time we decided to “Fuck it all. Let’s tell the world that Tasha & Girl stands with the farmers,” it was too late. We had missed the opportunity to make our point, and putting that up today, when the entire demonstration is over, and the farmers are (at least as of now) on the winning side, would be opportunistic and unethical. So, we let it slide.
The problem is that corporates (whether large MNCs that are very concerned about their public image, and rightly so, or small startups like us, who aren’t sure how a stand for or against anything will be seen by our already-handful consumers) in India (elsewhere too, but I am only concerned with India at the moment) find it difficult to decide where to go public with a moral issue. And this was as moral as they come. It doesn’t matter how much training you have had and whether you went to Harvard or majored in Ethics. It doesn’t matter whether your heart is in the right place or not. It doesn’t even matter if the impact of your communication would make any difference either way. The truth is that we businesspeople simply do not know how to react, even when the issue at hand is so close to our hearts (and our wallets).
There is no precedent, there is no history of corporate social activism of this kind post-independence, and there seems to be a very large list of disincentives if we get caught with a position that our consumers do not identify with.
I do not claim to have any answers. In fact, that we chose to procrastinate over a simple post 2 days ago itself proves that we have no solutions whatsoever. We are as confused as the next business.
Perhaps, it is time to look toward pre-independence corporate social activism. The Tatas and the Birlas, specifically. Perhaps, I need to study how they managed to conduct profitable businesses and yet contribute to the freedom movement and be part of socially progressive activities. Perhaps, the times were different then. Perhaps, they really didn’t take a stand in the way we have been taught. Perhaps, they risked it all. Perhaps, we will find such people and companies in every generation. I do not know.
What I do know is that I know some amazing people (I would go so far as to call them heroes in this context) who are far better than I can hope to be. These people are fearless and always take a stand, even if eventually it proves wrong. The important thing is that from a commercial point of view, they are all that society would deem as “successful” in their own fields. I wonder how they do it.
To me, it seems like it will indeed be a long march to reach where they already stand today.
