Illegal business: adoption

Business ‘of’ and not ‘for’ kids

International adoption is emerging out as a new illegal business

Adoption predominantly and fundamentally was meant to provide a better living and growth environment for orphans. Historically, the process of adoption was given a very high social recognition and was seen as a community responsibility. Of late, especially in the developed world, the increase in infertility rate has shifted this process of adoption from realm of domestic region to international markets. With Hollywood celebs like Madonna and Angelina Jolie adopting numerous children from world’s poorest regions, the whole concept of adoption seems to have become an international fad now.

Westerners see this act of international adoption as a rescue measure for orphans from poverty-stricken life. But then, this act at no given point of time convalesces the fundamental and core reason of poverty. Moreover, these so-called adopted children are actually either kidnapped, stolen or transacted and not really adopted. Social unrest, poverty and natural disaster make it very simple for child traffickers to export or import babies like any other commodity behind the veil of adoption.

International adoption has today become depraved business of supplying children to rich Westerners. Children are literally assumed as commodities and are sold to those who can afford it. In regions like Haiti, Guatemala, China and Africa there are agencies that deal in international adoption. Going by a conservative estimate, adoption today stands as a $100 million industry and agencies charge anything between $25,000 to $40,000 per child from adoptive parents.

According to an adoption advocacy organisation in the US, around 13 countries have put a ban on international adoption. There have been numerous cases where adoptive parents later kill the children or these orphans find themselves in foster care.  So much so that these so-called orphans turn out to be local children and not actually orphans. This can be exemplified by recent arrests of American missionaries in Haiti — accused of trafficking 33 Haitian children out of the quake-stricken country. A few countries use this process for exporting their socially detested or undesirable children to foreign families.

All in all, international community (viz. Hauge, UNICEF) need to urgently give a pause to the on-going glamourisation of international adoption and make it more transparent and regulated process. In the light of natural disaster and social and civil unrest, it is pertinent for countries to arrange bilateral arrangements and developed agencies based on proper accreditation norms. Otherwise soon this gratifying gesture of better-off society will take a shape of gigantic business and become an ‘icon’ among modern families. The present form of international adoption provides a different life, but do not promise a better life. What else could be the reason behind an American flying a thousand miles to adopt a baby while the next-door Canadians prefer adopting, more than 100,000 children, from the US itself?  In the same breath, a very few Americans find time to adopt orphans after the Katrina or Rita disasters; but don’t mind flying thousands of miles away and adopt a few so-called orphans from Africa, Korea or other south Asian nations.  Sounds quite morbid, isn’t it?

Corporate crime : Recession

Well, arrest me if you can!
Employees are eating away at company’s money, in bad times too!

Indeed. When it comes to corporate crimes, nothing has created more buzz than an Enron or a Madoff scandal. It’s a known fact that many companies, most of the times, typically let go their internal perpetrators scott-free with just a mere warning. Since the company suffers damage in both monetary and non-monetary terms, it's virtually impossible to exactly calculate the loss it had suffered due to corporate crimes. However, in bad times, when the companies are already bleeding with losses, employees' leave no opportunity to further deteriorate the condition. Or rather, leave no opportunity wherein they can exploit the on-going fragile situation and turn them their own personal benefit.
Going by recent PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC) biennial survey of economic crime (for the uninitiated, PwC itself was involved in numerous fraud cases, including the Satyam scam) for the past ten years, one-third of the target audience reported that they went through at least one economic crime in the past one year. The survey further revealed, “43 per cent of all corporate victims of crime and 56 per cent of those in financial services reported an increase”. There was a notable addition in the frauds committed by middle managers – a whopping 50 per cent. Around 56 per cent of Canadian companies have been the victims of economic crimes in the last 12 months. Every kind of crime, be it an accounting fraud, a money laundering or bribery, are deep-rooted in the country’s corporate culture. The direct fraud losses in the victimised corporations were greater than $500,000, on an average. Moving from developed countries to developing countries: According to KPMG Malaysia fraud survey, there has been an increase of 33 per cent in the respondents companies experiencing fraud in their organisations. Another survey by Kroll, a risk-consulting firm, shows that 36 per cent of senior corporate executives believe that the general risk of fraud has increased because of the recession.
Thanks to recession and performance-related pay (which is largely practised across the world), most of the middle level executives were not able to achieve their target and thus turned towards criminal path to fulfil their targets.
However, in order to fight recession (and the corporate crimes) and encourage entrepreneurship, many countries are adopting innovative schemes to attract young talent. The UK has nearly 3,000 events designed to inspire and educate aspiring entrepreneurs that eventually helps in creation of mini-enterprises.
Entrepreneurs do act as job creators but it comes with multi-faceted benefits. Not only it helps a young brain to enter the market economy, but also decreases the incidences of corporate crimes in the long run. Of course, countries need to tighten their corporate laws to check the growing corporate crimes and take appropriate actions against the culprits. Along with promoting entrepreneurship, respective governments should also ensure strict laws so that up-coming entrepreneurs do not get scope to make money on the cost of others and decay the corporate culture of the country further!

Corporate : Philanthropy

In the name of charity!!!

Philanthrocapitalism is being used for personal business!

What is the one thing that is common between Tony Blair, Jet Li, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Muhammad Yunus and Sir Richard Branson? In a single word – it is philanthrocapitalism which is bringing a businesslike approach to solve society's problems at global level. Corporate honchos have jumped into this bandwagon to take advantage of this ongoing global spree and straightening their latent purposes. However, a few genuine donors like Gates (who donated $3.8 billion), Jet Li (Jet Li's organisation, One, has already signed up 1 million Chinese to give money), Md Yunus (developed microfinance), Branson (social causes as a profit-making strategy) – to name a few – are taking all the possible initiatives to change the image of corporations and of course helping the society at the same time. A recent survey conducted by the US-based public relations firm, Edelman, discovered that only 38 per cent of people trust enterprises to do what is right and about 17 per cent trust the information they acquire from a company's CEO.
Projects like One Laptop Per Child or Project Shakti, not only helps the poor, but goes a step further and empowers them and promotes community action as well. Besides jobs, health care and housing, the concept of philanthrocapitalism should go further and ensure participation of civil-society on business and not vice versa. But with business and projects getting more complex and diverse, donors also need to strike the right balance. On one hand they ask for enough information to be able to monitor the effectiveness of the organisations they fund, but on the other they do not bog them down in form-filling bureaucracy. True, today most of them are eying on the tax break they receive from their initiatives. Most of them are investing in projects that redirect the money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Of course, the rise of the philanthrocapitalists does make some people nervous, fearing that these wealthy donors are unaccountable and lack legitimacy. Gates and others certainly need to be transparent and open to challenge. The initiatives have just reduced to marketing gimmicks that enable these entrepreneurs to push their products to even inappropriate demographies.
Philanthrocapitalism is of course shaping the most destituted part of the world and is trying to embrace business opportunity for the upliftment of the society. But then most of the times, the money get channelised to mid-size entrepreneurs in these developing countries (highly perforated with corruption). The big names need to urgently track down the flow of their money and make sure that it reaches the right audience. Otherwise, soon the whole concept of philanthrocapitalism will get written off.