Human capital is the only appreciating asset in business: Arun Maira

Technology and business strategies must be used to make greater use of human beings as assets, rather than discarding and replacing them with machines powered by artificial intelligence, Arun Maira, business management consultant, public policy thinker, and former member of the Planning Commission of India, said.

 

Addressing the Business & Economy Literature Fest (BELF) 2025 on Saturday, Maira said that human beings were the only appreciating assets that a business has.

 

The event was organised by the TV9 Network, with Penguin as knowledge partner, BCC&I as industry partner, and StoryNest as curation and ideation partner.

 

Maira said that India’s competitive advantage was its large number of employable human beings, many of whom were still not being decently engaged or employed in building the country’s enterprises.

 

Every country and every business must build its technology and strategy on the resource that it has greater access to than others, said the author of Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society.

 

Maira’s address was followed by a duologue titled Decoding the Leader DNA. Responding to a question on whether leaders were born or self-made, author, commentator, and former chief executive officer of Procter & Gamble India, Gurcharan Das, said that it was a combination of conditioning and growing up, and that, more than skill, it is the right attitude that ultimately matters.

 

According to the author and former director of Tata Sons, R Gopalakrishnan, leaders are self-made. “The leader is a person who can reflect and act.”

 

Delving into the topic of leadership in the Indian context, when families or dynasties pass control to the next generation, meritocracy is sometimes compromised, Das said, “We are not mature until we learn succession.”

 

He noted that it was unusual for second- or third-generation entrepreneurs to churn out real leaders.

 

Many Indian companies built by strong entrepreneurs and businesses failed to survive because they believed only their children could succeed them, Das said.

 

Gopalakrishnan felt that the debate was infructuous. He said it did not matter whether the successor was an entrepreneur’s son or a professional manager, as long as the person delivered.

 

He added that the era of professional entrepreneurial managers is coming. “Professionals have to be entrepreneurial, entrepreneurs have to be professional.”

 

The chief guest for BELF 2025 was West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose.