The LIBA fraternity wishes to address the perplexing challenge of Inclusive Growth with LIBA BEACON’08, a National level Business Ethics conference.

With its unprecedented GDP growth rates, India grapples with rapidly rising relative and absolute inequalities, thereby leading to two grossly different faces of India. One is the “Shining India” which is prospering and the other is the “Suffering India” which battles with stark poverty and is excluded from the growth process. The two faces of India are both a ray of hope and a symbol of despair. Reconciling these two faces is the biggest challenge faced by India today.

Beacon '07, a LIBA initiative, was the first in a series of such annual conferences on Business Ethics. It focussed on areas such as Ethical Challenges in Marketing, Ethical Challenges in the Financial Sector, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance in India. The conference saw eminent personalities adding grace and limelight to the occasion. The chief guest for the conference was Mr. M. Damodaran, Chairman - Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Some of the prominent speakers were Dr.  J.J. Irani (CEO& Director, Tata and Sons), Mr. S. B. Mathur (Chairman, National Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Krishna Mohan (President, Ogilvy & Mather), and Dr. Madhav Mehra (President, World Council for Corporate Governance, London).
Continuing the trend, this year we hope to make it even better with LIBA BEACON ’08 which carries the theme :
India At 60 – “Inclusive Growth - The Challenge of the New Era”.
Growth is inclusive when it allows and encourages all members of the society to participate in and contribute to the growth process on an equal basis regardless of their individual circumstances. Inclusive growth is not based on redistributive approach to addressing inequalities. Rather it focuses on creating new opportunities and ensuring equal access to them. Equality of access to opportunities will hinge on larger investments in augmenting human capacities including those of the poor, whose main resource is labour and which will then be optimally utilized.
A number of issues ranging from financial deepening to role of NGO’s, strategies for inclusive growth to policy perspective, technology transfer to skills development are anxiously waiting to be addressed. We must embrace inclusive growth as a key development goal because of rapidly rising income and non income inequalities leading to increasing concern that the benefits of India’s spectacular GDP growth are not being equitably shared which could derail the growth process itself.

Inclusive growth in its true sense would not be possible to achieve without a judicious blend of initiatives by the government and the corporate world. What is the role of businesses, the primary beneficiaries of the rapid economic growth, in this initiative to propel growth while taking along the deprived?  How should the businesses move to make a significant positive impact on the socio-economic empowerment of the disadvantaged sections? What strategies should the government pursue to make the marginalised sections of the society a part of the growth process?