Happy Diwali 2007

Wish all of you and the families a very Happy Diwali and a prosperous year ahead!

My, my, aren’t these prosperous times already!!

Sensex is having its dalliance with 13,000 levels. There are articles abound about corporate salaries going through the roof or through the sky. Most of the people we know are doing very well.

An acquaintance, a high flying executive I met lately, was very disappointed – “Almost everybody is drawing a 1 cr salary!! And I thought I am being paid well.” Profound sadness. Needless to say that he quit his job soon for a salary which crossed that aspirational mark. Recently I visited a friend who has bought an apartment in Mumbai for close to half a million dollars (~Rs. 2.0 crores) and spent at least $100k (~Rs. 40-50 lakhs) in doing it up. And then the Merrill Lynch Cap Gemini Study told us that there are 83,000 dollar millionaires in the country, toting up to an aggregate of US$290 bn of wealth. My colleague pooh-poohed these numbers; according to him, the real numbers should be 150,000 and US$ 500 bn. respectively. Being close to a dollar millionaire himself, he certainly knows better. But given my humble middle class background, I get daunted by these very very large numbers. Okay, go ahead and teach me the effect of inflation and tell me that these are not as large as they seem. Well then, these are very modest numbers. But, I am still incredulous. I am not making as much money and not being a smart man about personal finance, I have much less than I should have, even with my modest income. So, if the evil inflation has made 1 crore a modest number, I and my family should have been destitute. But we are not. I had some muesli for breakfast this morning. By God’s grace!!

Oops!! I am wrong there. Apparently, it’s not by God’s grace. It’s by the grace of Dr. Manmohan Singh and the magic called “Economic Reforms” that he had unleashed on this country. It seems, in real and comparable terms, I am actually quite poor; only the standard of living has gone up. Don’t you remember the startling stories of seventies, when your foreign returned dad, uncle, second cousin (or whoever) used to regale you about how a janitor in a Rotterdam hotel came in a Volkswagen and later bumped into him in a downtown bistro? India is much more developed now and the standard of living has gone up. And thus poor people like me are not exactly destitute – in fact it is so much better, that we can afford to employ a chauffer to drive our cars – at least I can.

And amidst all these, the wretched soul that I am, I suddenly remember the suicidal farmers of Bidarbha, the starving millions in Orissa, the flooded and homeless villagers of Narmada valley, the child laborers who are neither here nor there after a new notification, India’s appalling ranks in Human Development Report and Global Hunger Index, bla bla bla… I think about these and I ponder – if the country has really developed so much that 1 crore is a modest sum and a poor man is employing a chauffer, then why the hell are all these miserable party poopers dying of poverty, hunger and disease.

A kind friend steps in and explains. He starts by stating the truth first. The reason that I am poor is because I am stupid. And that I am stupid is being ratified by the fact that I have not understood how an economy works even after a business degree from a school of repute. He assures me by stating the following:

1. Free market is meritocracy; so people without merit will be poor (I agree with that as it applies to me quite aptly) and people with merit will be rich (can’t say much about this though)
2. All you are witnessing is a temporary phenomenon. Soon another great mechanism called “Trickle Down” will happen and every thing will be, as they say, hunky dory, and the farmer in Bidarbha will soon have a Budweiser at the end of the day. (I am quite happy as long as part of that trickle happens through me)
3. It (the “Trickle Down”) should have happened a little earlier, but for those bas***d politicians, you know. They are very corrupt and they do all those bad things they show in Hindi Movies. (yeah yeah, we all hate politicians, don't we? Somtimes I wonder, without them who will we put all the guilt on?)
4. Actually, this poverty-shoverty is not our worry; it should not be. It’s the job of the politicians to take care of these, but they are f***ing up this great “Indian Story”.
5. So shut up and don’t spoil the Diwali mood. In stead drop in at my place for the card party and to taste the single malt I discovered on my recent trip to Scotland. And I have some Davidoff ciagrs to go with that as well.

Well, thank God, oops, thank “Economic Reforms” – I may be poor, but I have some friends with really “modest” means and superior intellect.

So Happy Diwali to you again and cheers!!

Falling off the map

(written in September 2008)

My home is 5 minutes walk from my office, but I don't walk to work most of the mornings. On Mondays we have a partners' meeting from 8 am. As my driver doesn't arrive before 9, and there is no parking space at work these days, I have to walk; even if it is raining. This week, the meeting got transferred to Tuesday. As I was walking to my office, I passed by a newspaper vendor, who sits on the adjacent crossing. As expected, all the frontpage masthead of the papers were screaming about the triple fall - Lehman, Merrill and AIG, and the havoc it did on the stock markets. And what was striking that, it was not only the English dailies, but also all the Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati newspapers as well.

Over next few days, I received quite a few calls, mails, SMS-es, asking me if everything was ok at our end, as news of a local Bank's exposure to Lehman came out in the papers. I told all, that things are not so bad for me; so far. But then, tomorrow's another day.

Few days later, I called one of my best friends in Kolkata. As we talked, I was a little surprised that he did not ask anything about this almost earth shattering stream of events. I asked him if he knows what's happening in the financial markets. He said that he doesn't know and he doesn’t bother as well. I can understand the second part (not that I approve of that), but I could not understand the first part. How could he not know??! Doesn’t he read newspapers?

As I asked around some other friends, who belong to the same milieu in the same city, I found some relief and some answers. I was reassured that my friend has no interest in the world of business, which as I mentioned earlier, was an acceptable (although perhaps slightly perilous) personal choice. However, I also realized that no vernacular newspaper in Kolkata gave any great coverage to the unfolding events. The news items, if reported, were tucked into one of the inner pages, neatly in small unnoticeable two columns. Hence, only the keenly interested reader would get to know about it.

The issue that is always debated is, whether media influences society or is media a reflection of the society? This is the classical poultry conundrum. But it cannot be ignored that, in the short term, media portrays only what sells. Thus, it can be said with some certainty that business, finance and economics, does not sell in Bengal.

It thus remains for anyone to speculate if Mamata is the reason of the fall or is she the outcome of this universal apathy? Is she the disease or is she the symptom? Does Bengal (and Bengalis) understand the need for business and economics and its importance? And if it does not, which is partly portrayed by my example given here, will it get business back to its soil soon?

16 years back, when I gave up my job in one of the largest European engineering giants, to sign up in a prestigious B-School, I had to deal with one of my maternal uncles. Rangamama was once upon a time a dedicated foot soldier of the Communist movement in Bengal, and quite close to some of the people who made to the top of the political hierarchy. Idealist that he was, he could not do the same, and was soon a disenchanted teacher in Durgapur. But he could not jettison his values and beliefs. I can’t forget the look on his face, when I declared my decision to go for a business degree to him. It had disbelief, sarcasm, condescension and almost a pain of having being betrayed. “You are going to study business? Does business require any study?” He had indignation written all over his face. What he did not say but surely thought, “Should a Bengali Bhadralok think and deal about business?”

It seems, 16 years later, not much has changed. And again, we will be falling out of the map.

Oh, talking about maps. Nokia, in India, provides GPS services for some of its handsets. Thus one can download maps of cities and can browse the maps offline or navigate real time through satellite. The cities that it services are: Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur!! (Silence; precious silence)

Looks like we are falling out of the map again. And no Mamata is not the only one to be blamed.

We're not interested in politics

(A letter I had written to Tarun Tejpal, Ramachandra Guha and Anu Kumar)

I woke up last morning with the news staring at my face that two of India's wealthiest and most influential industrialists think Mr. Narendra Modi is perfect candidate for running the nation.

So, not only you get away with murder, you get a chance to become the prime minister and rewrite the law!!

Finally the cat is out of the bag.

The fear and apprehension of the so called leftists have come to be the reality. In simple English, that reality is - people in Indian business are out there just to make money and they don't care if the hand that feeds them is stained, nay, immersed in blood. And what will be the predictable refrains?

• "It has not been definitively proved that Mr. Modi had any hand in the riots
• "He has won overwhelming mandate of his people; so he is a good leader." (most Gujarati businessmen and bureaucrats say this
• Lastly, "We are not interested in politics." (most will use this reason and indeed they are being truthful)

This last point brings me to the article Tarun had written in Rediff sometime back after 26/11 (http://in.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/17mumterror-death-of-a-salesman-and-other-elite-ironies.htm). I was really happy to see someone in media finally voicing an appropriate criticism of the society at large for its severe apathy or antipathy towards politics and politicians. Digging deeper, I think this apathy is apathy of convenience, especially when it comes to business.

Co-incidentally, I was in a board meeting in Ahmedabad on January 13th, and I could see how proud the local corporate citizens were of Modi, his MoUs and his prospect of becoming the PM. Some of them were indignant in saying that the national leaders of BJP are scared of him and his popularity and will thus not allow him his rightful place.

Personally, I find it extremely lonely and difficult in situations like these, which have become too prevalent these days. Last year in June, I had, written in a mail to Ram, about the severe polarization of the Indian business class, especially in North, which is dominated by specific communities. In my personal discourses with corporate executives (not the family moneybags), including some of my colleagues, I have started realizing that this malady has now infected the educated and prosperous professionals as well. Perhaps it is time that Indian media put this question on their front pages, "Is communalization of Indian business complete now?"