Khursheed bashes ‘vulgar’ corporate salaries

Corporate affairs minister Salman Khursheed has urged the private sector to avoid paying ''vulgar'' salaries to their top executives, and said the government would keep a watch on executive compensation.

Khurshid clarified that the government would not regulate salaries of chief executives. But no one in India ''has reached the level of liberalism where vulgarity is also a fundamental right'', he told PTI in New Delhi on Saturday.

The Congress-led UPI government has lately gone on an ostentatious austerity drive as the country reels under economic slowdown and the worst drought in decades. It has asked ministers and senior officers travel economy class and with smaller delegations, and called off lavish state-sponsored galas. Ministers and some lawmakers have taken salary cuts.

"I think when we are working on this (austerity), we can hardly say that we shut our eyes on what salary the CEOs are going to take," Khursheed said.

Khursheed said the subject of salaries of top executives would be debated by a parliamentary standing committee that was scrutinising the provisions of the new companies bill, tabled in the Lok Sabha in August. ''Let's get the opinion of the standing committee, then we will move forward,'' he said.

Khurshid's remarks seem in line with this government's thinking. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had, in May 2007, asked companies to ''resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives and discourage conspicuous consumption''.

Khursheed's remarks also come in the backdrop of outrage across the developed world over excessive compensation and multi-million dollar bonuses paid out to executives, even at loss-making firms.

Politicians and policy makers have advocated curbs on these salaries, a theme echoed at the Group of 20 meeting in September.