When the directors of Bharti Airtel sat down for their board meetings in February and May this year, the heaps of paper with detailed meeting agenda were conspicuously missing.
Instead, each of the directors sported a spanking new iPad —- a fully loaded, 9.7 inch, 64 GB, Wi-Fi, and 3G model that sells at Rs46,900 apiece.
“All the 16 directors, CFO and company secretary were provided with iPads containing all the agenda papers and presentations required,” a spokesperson said. “iPad was the only item allowed on the board table.”
Now, the average age of a Bharti Airtel director is about 53.6 years. While the younger directors, such as 43-year old Pulak Chandan Prasad, may be comfortable tap-dancing on iPad’s slick touchscreen, some amount of discomfort for the oldest board member, 69-year old former Tanzanian prime minister Salim Ahmed Salim, would be understandable.
Still, there’s no way the company will let paper back into the board room.
Talk about going green.
In fact, Airtel will also stop sending out physical copy of shareholder communication such as annual reports and instead use email, wherever possible, to share such information with its shareholders, the spokesperson said.
The company’s announcement of the ostensibly green, anti-paper drive comes only days after it was targeted in a name-and-shame campaign by international environmental activist group Greenpeace, which wants to reduce diesel usage by Indian telcos to power their towers.
Greenpeace’s grouse is that these companies spend around Rs12,600 crore burning 1,800 million litres of diesel a year to power the 400,000 odd mobile towers that require about 14 billion units of electricity annually.
Also, the ministry of corporate affairs had clarified in late April that email for shareholder communication complies with the provisions of Companies Act framed in 1956.
Last year, Bharti sent out 450,000 physical copies of its 172-page annual report. The mandatory shareholder communication, using paper, had cost the company nearly `2 crore last fiscal.
According to the company, a little over half of its 4.5 lakh shareholders have registered email addresses for such communication. This would not only save paper, but also help save on a good part of the cost it would have incurred otherwise, the spokesperson said. However, if a shareholder insists on having a hard copy of such communication, the company will humour him or her as well.
“Agenda papers for a single board meeting could run into 100 pages for one member and a large number of pages in colour were printed and shredded at the end of the meeting for confidentiality,” Bharti spokesperson added. “Going forward, Bharti Group hopes to replicate the paperless board meeting at its various group companies through use of laptops and contribute significantly to saving the environment.”
But Greenpeace, which is meeting Airtel management on Friday, isn’t amused.
“These are good initiatives and will reduce paper consumption, but the problem is that by taking such small steps, Airtel is trying to deflect attention from the more serious issue, which is millions of litres of diesel being burnt every year to power their towers,” said Abhishek Pratap, senior campaigner at Greenpeace. “We hope that Airtel will start talking about core issues sooner than later, instead of trying to divert attention.”
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