Are directors responsible for a hospital fire, ask panelists

KOLKATA: Should a railway minister or an aviation minister be arrested after a train accident or a plane crash? Should a transport minister be put behind bars when a state bus mows down pedestrians? Should not a fire minister be prosecuted if the department hands out permissions that it should have withheld?
These were some of the issues that cropped up time and again as speakers discussed the pressures and pitfalls of corporate citizenship at the Calcutta Club on Monday.The obvious reference was to the AMRI Hospitals case in which directors are in jail for over one and a half months following the devastating fire that killed 92 people.
It is only on Monday that police took two operational staffers of the hospital into custody. They were present on the hospital premises during the fire. The growing exasperation came out Monday evening with many panelists wondering why the government could abdicate all responsibilities and demand corporate bosses fulfill professional and moral obligations. "Is the law equal? What happens if people die in a bus accident? Is it the owner of the bus who is responsible or is the driver at fault? Or did the mishap occur due to extraneous factors?" wondered moderator Suman Mukherjee, director of Calcutta Business School director Suman Mukherjee.
"It is often alleged that those close to the government escape prosecution. The pitfall lies in defining the limits of responsibility. The government must lay bare its expectation from the corporates and senior executives' responsibilities as corporate citizens," said Oxford professor Tapan Raychaudhuri.
Acknowledging that large corporates were capable of enormous good or evil and wielded more power than government agencies, CII national council member Dipankar Chatterjee said the need was for more responsible corporate citizens on the board. "We need independent directors to perform and not scare them off," he said.
MP Ajay Kumar, who has witnessed life through various prisms including that of an IPS officer and a corporate executive, felt what people really did mind was the unfair manner in which government treated citizens. "Had railway ministers been put behind bars for accidents, then people would not mind the arrest of AMRI director," he reasoned.
RTIICS director Kunal Sarkar, too, felt the government needed to spell out its own responsibilities and tell how much a corporate should chip in. "A few days ago, there was a lot of hue and cry when a woman living on the street was denied admission to a government hospital and gave birth on the pavement but no one questioned why a woman had to live on the pavement at all," he said.
With the passionate government-baiting by speakers drawing a lot of applause, senior advocate Jayanta Mitra dispassionately guided the audience through the legality of the AMRI case and sought to justify the actions of police and government. "It is inevitable that in any large company, directors will not be able to do everything. They have to delegate functions to employees. But the responsibility of a director does not end there. Freedom to delegate does not absolve a director from discharging his duties. Directors are required to take reasonable care to run the affairs of the company and guide members of management. What is expected of directors of a hospital like AMRI is that they lay down internal controls to avoid pitfalls. If they fail to do so, allegations of negligence will be brought against them," Mitra argued.
Neuro surgeon Sandeep Chatterjee agreed. "All three partners - government, corporate and the public are responsible for successes and mishaps. To earn that extra buck, government agencies gladly furnish NOCs to businesses that do not conform to rules. Even the public who often gloss over the irregularities are to blame," he said.