The benefits of “good governance”, however imprecisely defined, has been quantifiably established. The “Reputation Institute”, an NGO, estimates that intangibles like reputation make up approximately 81 per cent of a company’s value and a “strong reputation yields 2.5 times better stock market performance” compared to the overall market. One could debate the methodologies behind these calculations but the central message is indubitable. Well-governed companies have easier access to capital, they pay lower interest rates, secure better credit terms and attract the best and brightest of talent. Good governance is good business. While recently rereading Erik Erikson’s 1969 psychoanalytical political biography of Gandhi, Gandhi’s Truth, I was particularly struck by the following statement: “Freud, in one of his ‘economic’ moods might well have said that, psychologically speaking, such men (people like Gandhi) save others not so much from their sin but from the fantastic effort not to see the most obvious of all facts: That life is bounded by not-life.” Gandhi, according to Erikson, allows us to face the fact that we are “bounded by not-life” and tempts us to draw power from such efforts as exemplified in Gandhi’s life struggle. A reading of Gandhi, from a purely philosophical point of view, would tempt one to see him as someone who — like the Buddha