Sadhguru’s advice: Government should give tax relief for sustainable businesses

• Speaking at the Business Insider Global Trends festival 2020, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, has made a clarion call to businesses to wake up to the importance of sustainability.
• The yogi believes aspirations of the nation, the plans of the leadership and businesses have to be aligned with the fundamentals of environment sustainability.
• Sadhguru believes that over the next 7-8 years, governments across the world should provide heavy incentives for all those who restructure their businesses and adopt sustainable goals.

Indian yogi Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the man behind the Isha foundation, has made a clarion call to businesses to wake up to the importance of sustainability. Sadhguru, who has spearheaded the Rally for Rivers initiative, has a massive following globally, including some of India’s biggest celebrities.

Speaking at the Business Insider Global Trends festival 2020 from the backdrop of the Grand Canyon in the US, Sadhguru in conversation with William Bissel of FabIndia, spoke about the need for businesses to think long term and include sustainability as a part of their big picture.


Sadhguru’s carrot and stick idea for businesses to become ‘sustainable’

“None of the business people will like it, but at some point, some policy nudges have to come in – in terms of incentives and penalty for not being a sustainable business. This is coming but in a slow manner,” he said.

He believes that over the next 7-8 years, governments worldwide should work towards a common goal and there should be heavy incentives for all those who restructure their businesses to become sustainable. “Eight years is good enough time for businesses to turn around. But beyond eight years, there should be a heavy penalty to pay – not in terms of imprisonment but in terms of taxes they have to pay. Incentives are the better way to go because they will bring innovation. If you are taking serious sustainable initiatives, you should get tax relief,” Sadhguru said.

He went on to add that we have moved from capitalism to a market economy where everybody can participate, and anybody who has a good idea and shows the ability to execute that idea will attract the required capital — albeit with a little bit of struggle.

But the transformation towards sustainability will not take place just because businesses think about it, they have to implement an action plan for the long-term impact. “With the population growth and number of people getting into economy activity and consumption being high, people think business is the culprit. But the real culprit is the population. Businesses are thinking from quarterly to quarterly business balance sheets but for any business to sustain, it has to be managed with a long term projection,” he said.

The imperative need for action, else India will have to pay the price

Sadhguru said that it is essential that India wakes up to the reality of the situation soon. “The problem is the degradation of the ecological condition of the planet, particularly in a country like India because the population and the land proportion is so unrealistic – the number of people trying to sustain themselves from the little bit of land. We will probably pay the biggest price before any other nation,” he said.

And to bring about that change, the aspirations of the nation, the plans of the leadership and businesses have to be aligned with the fundamentals of environment sustainability. “The government, environmental forces and business leaders, we need to sit down and make policies,” he said.

Sadhguru also believes that it is of prime importance that in India there lies a difference between ‘what’s good for the environment and a political slugfest as everything in India is political today’.

“The Centre makes the policies and states hold the geography. If the Centre comes up with a new policy, few states will incorporate immediately but state governments with opposition parties will say no. Everything is political and nobody is looking at the people. This must go,” he said.

From a massive air pollution problem to scarcity of water in villages, India is dealing with many issues as a developing economy. And as it makes the strides towards economic development. the entire ecosystem – from an individual level to the government has to come together to make changes and build a stronger, sustainable environment .

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