The year just gone by has been a good year for Indian business. Almost every sector of industry has grown impressively, and this in spite of spoilsports like higher global oil prices and a poor monsoon. Of course, the full impact of the latter will be felt over the next few months but still India Inc. should have few complaints about 2004. The hurrahs with which the stock market rang out 2004 are good enough proof of that.

Yet, as we begin 2005 with cheery optimism, corporate India will be remiss if it doesn't heed an important lesson that 2004 (or rather the last two months of the year) brought to it. I am obviously referring to the fight between the two Ambani brothers. Mukesh and Anil Ambani's tussle for ownership of the Rs 99,000-crore Reliance business group may be the most visible and high-profile fight that has ever taken place in any Indian business family. Don't blame the media for that-after all, the fight first spilled out into the open after a short sound bite that the elder of the two Ambanis chose to give to a TV channel in the middle of last November, and ever since it has been fought by the two largely through the media.

The use of the media as the primary medium for a fight by two of the wealthiest and most influential Indian businessmen may seem unseemly, curious and even juvenile. And how that fight will end is another matter and a subject of full-time (at least for now) speculation among the media. But the more important issues the fight has raised are all about corporate fairness. As a new year begins, it may serve Indian businessmen well to heed such a notion. So here's a pop quiz for Indian CEOs, promoters, owner-managers and entrepreneurs.

Let's begin with a few simple questions: Do your shareholders and stakeholders know who owns your company and exactly how? Are those 'independent' directors on your company's board really independent or are they all your own yes-men? Have you been allotted shares in your company at a hefty discount that your stakeholders are unaware of?

Should you want good corporate governance (my apologies for using those last two words together-a phrase that since November 2004 sounds numbingly clichéd), it's a no-brainer what the answers to those questions should be. Yet, at India's largest private sector corporation, the answers to all of those were all wrong.

Through most of its three-decade-long existence, Reliance and its founder Dhirubhai Ambani have been a source of inspiration to hundreds of Indian businessmen, many of whom have been so awed by their success and meteoric growth that they've strived to follow that example. Now, 35 years after Dhirubhai founded the business, the example that Reliance is setting is one that few will want to follow. Let us hope 2005 becomes the Year of Corporate Fairness.

Have a great New Year!

Sanjoy Narayan