Public Relations and Communicators Blog

It is not every day that a brand gets tested such. It’s an uncanny coincidence that a brand which bears the name Amazon, a name depicting the legendary female warrior race, believed by ancient Greeks to exist on the edge of the known world, comes face-to-face with a modern day social warrior living on the edge of her beliefs.  Like every human or brand battle, this one too is about courage, convictions and beliefs. It is important to bring the episode to fore, lest the discussion become an anesthetized one about a brand and its ambassador. The incident which Swara Bhasker tweeted about is a blood curdling gang-rape of an eight year old, by a man, his son, his nephew, and his friend, repeatedly over four days. The girl was kept alive with this single gruesome purpose and finally strangulated, and her head stone-bashed to doubly ensure her end. Swara tweeted “I am Hindustan. I am Ashamed. #JusticeForOurChild #JusticeForAasifa. 8 years old. Gangraped. Murdered. In ‘Devi’-sthaa...

(also appeared in Firstpost)  The recent Tata boardroom spat has spawned many faceted discussions, and one of these has been on the appointment and role Independent Directors – an aspect that not only concerns governance, but also Board room expertise. Like many, I spent a considerable amount of time wondering what the boardroom discussions would be like, extrapolating from the little information that was available. To emphasize the need for expertise in the board, the rules for appointment of independent directors of a board under the MCA Act require the independent director to possess appropriate skills, experience and knowledge in one or more fields of finance, law, management, sales, marketing, administration, research, corporate governance, technical operations or other disciplines related to the company's business. It is quite clear that expertise (and not just experience) is one of the necessary qualities of the board. The question that kept coming back to me was...