First Published June 4, 2025
Imagine a late monsoon evening in Pune, where the heat hangs heavy and the streets shimmer with the reflection of neon signs. In a makeshift conference room above a narrow lane, executives from Scania, the venerable Swedish truck and bus maker, gathered to confront a problem they could no longer ignore. The evidence was damning: someone, somewhere in their ranks, had slipped a luxury bus into the hands of India’s Transport Minister, Nitin Gadkari, ostensibly to secure municipal contracts. The whispers began as rumours – who paid for the car, why was it parked outside Gadkari’s daughter’s wedding venue? – and ended in a publicly admitted scandal: Scania had committed bribery, left its factory idle, and watched its reputation sputter in a market it once coveted.
Scania’s story goes back a few years before 2017, when the first hints of misconduct emerged from investigative journalists and local officials. At the heart of it was a deal to sell buses to state governments. Scania, keen to expand in India’s rapidly growing public transport sector, leaned on third-party agents who promised smooth negotiations. Those promises came with strings attached: unofficial payments to officials, inflated invoices, and a bus delivered as a wedding gift, far beyond the modest token anyone would expect. When the internal audit confirmed the worst, Scania did what it had to do: admit wrongdoing, pay fines, and shut down operations. Yet the real cost was deeper. In India—where building trust is as important as building roads—Scania’s brand was tarnished. The lesson was simple: tie yourself to people willing to bend the rules, and you’ll soon find yourself dragged into the gutter.
Now shift your gaze to Columbus, Indiana, where a different engine maker, Cummins Inc., stands at a crossroads of its own. In December 2023, Cummins signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay a staggering $1.675 billion fine – the largest ever under the Clean Air Act. The charge? Altering almost one million heavy-duty pickup truck engines to cheat emissions tests. In essence, Cummins’ software allowed polluting trucks to pass for a national standard, while in real-world conditions they spewed far higher levels of nitrogen oxides. Regulators described it as systemic: not a handful of rogue mechanics, but a deliberate corporate decision to prioritise sales and market share over clean air.
Cummins’ own statement remains telling: “We see no evidence that anyone acted in bad faith,” they proclaimed. That is corporate speak for “We refuse to admit we crossed the line.” Behind the scenes, though, there had been engineers who raised alarms, internal memos warning of potential legal fallout, and cost-benefit analyses triumphantly concluding that fines would still be cheaper than redesigning engines. When the scandal finally broke, it was clear that Cummins – like Scania – had chosen short-term gain over long-term integrity.
These are not isolated episodes. They form a pattern. Scania’s indulgence of bribery in India and Cummins’ evasion of emissions standards in the United States share a stubborn refusal to play by the rules. In their own ways, they reveal a culture where “that’s how we do business” outweighs “that’s the right thing to do.” Partners, customers, even governments that look the other way become enablers. And so the companies that transact with Cummins find themselves in uncomfortable proximity to heavy-handed tactics and ethical compromises.
This isn’t about wagging fingers or moral posturing. It is about recognising the company you keep. If a multibillion-dollar supplier routinely skirts laws—delivers a free bus to a minister, tweaks software to hide emissions – what does that say about its values? If you’re a municipal transit authority buying buses or a data centre planning to install hydrogen fuel cells, you must ask yourself: Do you want to be associated with an organisation that treats regulations as optional? Or with the executives who quietly calculate that a few million in fines is an acceptable cost of doing business?
One of my favourite authors once said that you can judge a society by the way it treats its workers and the food it puts on the table. In a corporate context, perhaps you can judge a company by the way it treats its customers and the deals it strikes in the dark. Scania’s buses sat idle in Pune while Cummins’ engines roamed across American highways, polluting the air that children breathe. These are not minor infractions; they are fundamental betrayals of public trust.
If you decide to partner with Cummins – whether by purchasing engines, collaborating on fuel-cell projects, or investing in their stock – you are implicitly endorsing their playbook. You become part of a network where ethical corners are cut, reputational risks are calculated away, and accountability is an afterthought. In that sense, those who transact with Cummins share a certain value: a tolerance, if not an outright endorsement, of unscrupulous behaviour.
So the next time Cummins touts its green-energy ambitions or highlights its commitment to diversity and inclusion, remember the full story. Remember the internal emails about software hacks, the hush-hush settlement with U.S. regulators, and the partners who quietly count the cost of fines as part of the budget. And think back to that still, humid evening in Pune, where a luxury bus changed hands to seal a deal that would later explode in Scania’s face.
The company you keep, after all, tells you everything you need to know.
Lee Thompson – The Cummins Accountability Project