VVIPs and Laws/ Rules of our Great Land

It is with a heavy heart that I’m forced to write this note when the aftermath of the sad demise of the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh is taking place. India had been the country of Maharajas and lots of so called privileged people at the cost of millions of homeless and deprived sections. In the modern democratic India, we come across new avatars of Maharajahs, in the forms of democratically elected representatives of people and the bureaucrats who serve them (not the people).

We, the common citizens of India get our thin temperament tested, whenever our beloved leaders are frisked or questioned inside (very unusually) or outside the country. We take it as an offensive towards our prestige/ ego, self esteem or whatsoever it is called…?! We immediately tend to compare the sops we offer all those so called VVIPs from abroad (Many a times, even the security guards are garlanded) and cry that we are offering this facility of exempting the law for just an individual and we expect them to do the same for our politicians. When they call a spade a spade, we make lots of noise and of late, we try to give all these incidents a colour of racism. However, in most of the cases (if not all), the truth is that the outside world understands the purpose of the rule and act accordingly, regardless of the personal charisma or fan following of the individual…!!

There are very stringent and far sighted rules made by our predecessors for the ultimate safety and security of the citizens of India and there have been continuous amendments incorporated according to the varying contexts, technologies and market gaps. However, what I noticed is the confidence/ guts of influential people who flout any law with the help of either money or power.

People who violate the laws/ rules on security checks or making it controversial when checked do not understand the purpose of every such checks and by flouting it they not only put themselves in danger, but also others, who are present there.

When it comes to air safety, despite the fact that there is a ban/ warning on flying in adverse conditions by DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), most of the VVIPs push their way through without understanding the serious consequences of such a move. This is because our VVIPs do not properly understand/ realize the danger or the possible consequences of such decisions.

Let me quote some relevant parts from an article published in Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad dated 6^th September, 2009 for your info….

“Helicopter pilots agree that even in cases where VIPs become adamant, it is bureaucratic and political hangers on who are the bigger problem. ‘Kuchh karo jee’, they will insist even when you have told them the weather is impossible.”

“I have known senior politicians and bureaucrats to stomp in frustration and start shouting when flights have to be cancelled.”

“He refused to listen so we took off only to encounter dense clouds and lightening soon. His confidence turned to panic and he screamed ‘Wapas chalo! Wapas chalo!’. Half an hour later, we were back in the airport, where we started from…”

These are the various accounts of experiences by some of the senior pilots who fly VVIPs across the country.

Now, we need to set up a permanent mechanism for continuous education to all those who fly frequently on the norms with the examples and video clips to keep everyone’s memory afresh on such issues. Most of them ignore the warnings to keep up their schedule, but fail to understand that it can cease their schedule forever…!! In the process, these VVIPs put the entire crew’s life in danger too. This is very sad and our people should realize that every rule is made with a purpose and it should be followed to serve the purpose.

Another suggestion evolved out of various discussion groups is to have a very stringent law and more stringent execution to cancel the license of the pilots who fly despite the warning by DGCA. This may give the pilots some firmness to respond to such pressures…!!

At the same time, the people who are supposed to execute the rule should be educated to understand the purpose of the rule and interpret it logically to serve the purpose of the rule and not just to follow the rule blindly to block the public/ public servants in the pretext of a rule….!!

As an irony of life, I shall write about some funny experiences later, where the rules are followed vigorously to deny or deprive people of their facilities without understanding the purpose of it.

Impact of corruption in Indian Economy

In the recent past, we were receiving chain mails on the huge figures of amounts lying in the swizz bank accounts of various Indians and there was this huge hue & cry on accessing it to plough it back in our economy…!!

Now, let’s look at another scenario….an insider of a ‘National Party’ said there was a dictum by their ‘Party National Head’ to all their ruling ‘State Heads’ to send 200 Crores per month to the head quarters…!! Of course, some portions are spent back on election time to distribute liquor, cash and other incentives to the vote banks. However, you can calculate the volume of money and remember, if a CM has to send 200 Cr per Month, he’ll definitely make more than that at his level.

We all, have been discussing these facts casually and at least some of us who would have felt in the bottom of our hearts some (false) prestige about the fact that we Indians have the maximum amount of money parked in those secret accounts. We were also advocating it to plough it back into our economy. Agreeing to the fact that such a move will help us during this recession blues, we need to understand the fact that we need to initiate a process to stop this accumulation in the future by eliminating the root causes of this….!!

However, each one of us know that ‘it is easier said than done’ and it requires lot of political and personal guts to envisage and execute a programme to eliminate this social evil….!! This needs tremendous support from the ‘common people’ or so called ‘aam aadmi’ like us to implement it successfully.

Now, how shall we contribute and support this? If any of this political leadership initiates such a process, let it be anybody from a ‘Gram Panchayat Member/ President’ to the ‘Prime Minister’, we need to respond by resolving ourselves on remaining non – contributing to the corrupt system for some silly favours from them..!! Very difficult…is it not? This is the point where the corrupt system scores upon…..

Be it a temple, be it an office, be it a park or any public place, every one of us need preference and we are always in a hurry..! Is it not? This pattern of behaviour had helped the system to deteriorate….!! How many of us go to temple with mental preparedness to spend time in the queue…? I had mentioned regarding this in one of my earlier notes that I’m always prepared to wait and if I am not prepared, I don’t intend to go inside and I’ll pray from outside and move. Similarly, when we are going to any place, please be prepared to spend time and pursue it as that will relieve you of mental tension and unnecessary loss of money.

Apart from this undue hurry, another common factor which triggers the system of corruption is the lack of knowledge and lack of confidence to identify and avail information from the proper source. This is magnified as the system adds value to the scenario by confusing and making it complex for a common man to gather information, even from an information desk. The individual, who sits at such info – kiosks and responsible to pass proper information, deliberately acts indifferent and makes the life miserable for those who seek information. As the process becomes complex, we tend to take short cuts and they succeed in their plans….!! However, now there are many avenues where we can access information from…thanks to the websites, RTI act etc.

The impact of the corruption and so called parked money is very frightening….

In 2002, 1 Kg of branded Atta cost was between Rs.12/- and Rs.14/-

In 2009, the same quantity of the same item cost you between Rs.35/- and Rs.37/-

What triggered the cost to increase almost 300%?

Is there a substantial increase in the cost of production?

Even if there’s an increase, is it as huge as 300%?

We talk of less inflation and buoyant economy, etc. Despite all these facts, why the costs are increasing steadily & exorbitantly?

Logical answer is……

The traders and industrialists, who have been funding the corrupt system all these days, are forced to take back the money from the poor consumers….!! (This is in addition to the government looting through the additional taxes and cess, etc. Another funniest system is that any tax is collected from the end consumer….?! Actually it should have been collected from the profit of the traders…!)

This is dangerous…..we need to initiate a response campaign through various platforms like ‘jagore.com’, etc. and should provide the info in the regional languages as well. The Indian consumer power is actually a ‘genie’ with unparalleled strength and we need to unleash it to eliminate these kinds of social evils. If we join together and boycott the retail outlets, all these traders will not be able to sustain for long and will be forced to accept the demands of the consumers….!!

Hermitages

Come few more days and my lens & frames will see this world from the perspective of a 40 year old (or young?!) and may be it evolves to be different….God knows…!!

This gives an opportunity to discuss about a dream project of mine, now shared by few of my friends as well, who are also working hard from their end to make this happen…!!
Our vision is to have a series of sustainable knowledge hubs offering services to bridge the rural – urban divide and bring India, few inches forward towards achieving more inclusive growth in this golden era of changing world dynamics. These hubs are conceived & designed as a chain of hermitages, which accommodates our elders with an aim of predominantly giving them mental comfort rather than just a string of physical comforts.

I was in Kerala recently to have a series of discussions with various people who are very serious about this project and keen on associating with this at different levels of involvement. All the previous social development projects I had conceived and executed in the past are with a strong & binding factor of ‘built – in’ sustainability element. Now, each such unit is designed to run on its own, without any external funding for its operations.

It is envisaged to graduate into a very classical and niche centre of excellence in the fields of performing art forms, with associations/ affiliations to International/ Indian universities, Institutions or Organizations of culture and heritage.

We would like to welcome people and their inputs in this regard personally from those who are interested to serve the old & young generations together…!!

The World’s Largest Democracy

We Indians boast of our largest democracy and as usual, we tend to exaggerate a bit too much of our beautiful country and beautiful system.

Many a days, I restrained myself from writing this and a recent news item in the ‘Times of India – Hyderabad edition’ inspired me – rather provoked me – to express, what I felt at the bottom of my heart.

At the outset, let me explain the context… The perception of the true & beautiful rural India is just a hoarse these days…if anyone still boasts of the same….!! This may be harsh to accept or digest for my friends who live outside India. They all must be having some beautiful nostalgic memories about their villages and never would like to accept the ever evolving ‘development’ in their respective remote places across the country.

The ‘once beautiful’ rural parts of India is now corrupt and doesn’t care for any values we all boast of….!! Every passing election is making us more & more corrupt and abusive…!! On an average, every major candidate spends few crores in each election and in every constituency, there will be at least three such candidates who spend like that. Imagine the money distributed in a single constituency and where is this money coming from? If you calculate the total amount spent all over the country, it will be much more than the accumulation in the swizz banks…!! Apart from money, another item distributed is country liquor, made of illegally smuggled spirit (which may even come from hospitals and mortuaries)….!! There are many places where a whole colony or community wiped out consuming this illicit liquor. Our great ‘media mafia’ is partial in terms of coverage as they consider making somebody a poster boy out of a weird speech as more important than such silent massacres poor, illiterate people, who can be biased by anyone with a motive.

Now, let’s understand that our democracy is still alive not because of the greatness of our system, but just because of the acceptance nature of our people. Even if somebody goes on a rampage of massacre, we would not respond, rather we have the ability to rationalize it as our destiny…!!

Having written so far, let me describe the silver linings among all these are the expectations we all have on the educated youth of this country and the few examples like following….

The DGP of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. A K Mohanty had executed his duty with vigor during the first phase of elections. He had practically arrested the movement of cash and liquor, which otherwise would have got distributed across the state. Almost all the vehicles were stopped and examined and crores of currency had been seized. Mr. Mohanty was brought back as DGP by a special request from the Election Commission after recommending action against the then existing DGP for sharing a stage with the Chief Minister and violating the code of conduct by publicly praising and supporting the CM. It is an open secret that Mr. Mohanty cares a damn about any political pressure from any quarter…!! Many of the SPs, who were helpful to many candidates from various constituencies found it difficult to help their friends as they knew the nature of DGP and possible consequences if they fail in their duties…!

The results of these stringent measures were very funny and eye – opening…!! The rally addressed by Mr. Rahul Gandhi in Hyderabad had only around one thousand people as audience. The reason: The money & liquor could not be distributed to the people to attend the meeting as there was this strict check was happening. Now, all these leaders are pulling crowd by paying money & distributing liquor. Gone are the days of charismatic and crowd pulling personalities. Our villagers even bargain to get more money when they come to pick them to the meeting place…!! This proved that even a single authority with determination to implement the systems can really make a change.

This was one of the silver lines which gave me some strength to write despite the frustrating deterioration of the system and the lack of people’s ability to respond to all these social injustices. However, a news item show cased the determination of a village, which in turn, made me write…!!


A rural village in Andhra Pradesh had stopped the candidates, who came with money at the entrance of the village. Every voting individual of that village came together to corner the candidates with a list of development requirements written on a bond paper and made the candidate to sign it with an affidavit of fulfilling it.

This is simply amazing….!! Even in our highly literate Kerala, I had not heard of such activism. This is the real ‘Panchayati Raj’ or decentralization of power. Let’s hail it and hope that it spreads to each village of our shining India..!!

It is my sincere wish that all of us take this forward to induce an unbiased thinking process among the villagers and make them participatory in the development process as they only know the exact requirement of their respective habitats.

A Tribute to Sabari Master

It is a sad moment in my life to write this note as I never thought that I would be writing this after his unprecedented departure. Whole of last week I started to write and then got stuck due to the burden of grief my mind was carrying…!! Such is the impact on each of us, who interacted with him at least once in our life time….! And it was evident from the size of the crowd present at the funeral function.

Though he was associated with a political outfit for all his social empowerment activities, he was respected and heard beyond his political affiliations. He used to be a consultant, advisor, a friend in need, guide, philosopher and what not…? There are few words to describe the way he used to handle others’ problems with utmost sincerity and involvement. Above all, to me, he was the most unassuming and simple social worker, who never allowed others to exaggerate his own great works.

My father used to do a lot of help to various people regardless of their cast, religion, social background or any such conditions. In many cases he used to voluntarily offer help, even without the recipient’s request….!! So, during my childhood, I used to observe my father as well as those people from various back grounds who come for help and many of them after receiving the help as well. I had seen many of them breaking down in front of my father when they explain their sorrow and the glee in their eye when they visited after successful completion of their requirement with my father’s help. I used to amaze at my father’s ability to solve others’ problems and of late, during my teens, started discussing with him how he feels after completing each such incidents….?! He used to reaffirm only one thing…the joy he gets out of each such help offer is that as if he created another fixed deposit in God’s bank, which will fetch interest in the form of help to every member of his family when they require help from others. He believed that we are all social elements and if we don’t practice the values then there is no point preaching or praying….

However, all those individuals and families, who used to come from various parts of the country with a request definitely looked forward towards my father as God and a man capable of doing great things and regarded him as an individual with great knowledge and many of them recognized him after receiving the help as someone who did something which they would never have been able to achieve on their own…!! It is true that he was really knowledgeable and for us he was a living encyclopedia and inspiration to innovate…! So the aura was always visibly surrounding him ever. Later on in my life, I received the interest of my dad’s good deeds and realized how important his words were and took an oath to myself that I would follow his path in terms of helping others and preach only what I could practice. Later in life, when I was working in a voluntary organization, which was undertaking a World Bank funded rural development project, I came across a very funny incident which gave me lot of self – realization and confidence, even though the incident was intended to discourage me.

This was during the initial days when I joined this organization and in one of the executive committee meeting, the CEO of this organization, criticized me for carrying myself in the office as the CEO of the firm. He is one of the very sharp intellects of the country, who is respected by very many in the country for his contributions for the development of the rural hamlets of our country. First of all, it was shocking for me to hear it from him as I still respect him a lot and I shall vouch that I had learnt many things in my life during our close association for about two years. This criticism initially hurt me, even though the other executive members argued for me in that meeting, but provoked a strong analytical thought process inside me. I then realized that many people from various parts and various projects used to approach me for different types of help and my patient hearing and approach was appreciated & liked by all these and made them close to me and prompted them to approach me for each & every issue. Even though I always heard them and gave a logical guideline to act upon with the help of my own experience, I used to specifically put them on to the concerned authority in the organization, whenever it was not my jurisdiction. However, the way I used to approach issues and my body language were the culprits.

This definitely made me realize the fact that why people listen to my words in a gathering….!!! I thanked my dad for the same kind of vibes he gifted me with….!! Now, the relevance of this description is to point the fact that when my dad or me did the help to others, it was well recognized or the recipient definitely acknowledged the pain behind the effort and this is the same with many people who help others. But Sabari master was very very unique and special because he never let the recipients know the pain he takes in helping them. That’s the greatness, I could very rarely witness in people like him. There may be many people like him, who helps others, but to me he’s unique for this quality of unassuming nature, which will knock down any of his opponent, with tears in their eyes.

Aftermath of Mumbai - 26/11

This is a very sad moment in the lives of all of us from India….!!! However, we have to face this phase in life and respond to our surroundings in responsible manner.

At the outset, let me salute the martyrs of this attack in the order that follows.....

1) Those innocent citizens of India, who succumbed to the hate game of invisible enemy who programmed the whole activity taking advantage of our corrupt & inefficient system and the office bearers of it ( May it be politicians, may it be inefficient bureaucrats).

2) The staff of those hotels, who did not mind about their lives, but chose to guide and reach as many to safety. Many of them let their lives in the process….!! I salute them from my heart for they had options to safety, but chose the other way.

3) Those Security Personnel (Police, ATS, NSG and all of them), who lost their lives during when the were doing their duty brave heartedly and selflessly and ofcourse,

4) The brave journalists who reported the incident to the nation, gambling with their life and with lot of integrity and intelligence by not showing certain parts live as it would have hampered the purpose and the direction of the operation and of course, for bringing all those cared together and to make a consensus on the issue, which had shaken the intelligent politico and made them cautious as well.

However, the fools remained fools and got trapped themselves into lot of mess by their own hollow lip service, which other wise they would have got away with some excuses or a U turn & apology…!!!

Now, let us scrutinize some important facts emerged out of discussions, statements and very sad incidents in the last 4 – 5 days.

a) Anger against politicians…

A very understandable anger against the political class and their insensitive statements are seen across the country….Every one who deals with it is still glorifying the response in connection with this particular incident and looking it very superficially. But this nation wide response has much more under current than what is seen outside….!! It is an outburst of the people who had suffered a lot, in the name of corruption, pseudo secularism and the lack of sensitivity, intelligence and competence by the political class. However, we should understand that even though the uncouth and bleak politico are blamed for lack of accountability and on top of that their controversial comments and statements made them fools in front of the citizens, the real inefficiency is of the system and the bureaucracy which is by and large, inefficient, obsolete and incompetent. So the ire against politicians is only the ire against ‘Shikhandi’ of Mahabharatha. Hence, the urgent need is to re-engineer the system in terms of technological sophistication and a competent & dynamic bureaucratic leadership as well as the team. The lack of an integrated umbrella agency on top of the various agencies across the country to guide and initiate action on the basis of the intelligence reports is causing damage in terms of delay or denial of action despite receiving enough intelligence inputs from various sources. Hence such an agency has to be constituted and empowered to monitor the action taken by the various executing agencies and each agency should be held accountable for their action & inaction.

b) A B Bardhan’s comment expressing concern and fear over the reactions of the people and he was very critical about the same. Even M A Naqvi meant the same, but could not express in proper words and fell prey to his own insensitivity

Instead of being critical about the response of the people across the nation, why don’t one look at the political class, who had abused the power, position and their clout indiscriminately over and over for such a long period, regardless of the political outfit they belong to and without even a glare of sensitivity towards the people of this country who actually positioned each one of them in their respective places, whether big or small..!!As he rightly pointed out, it is a dangerous signal to ignore, but the action/ reciprocation is bound to happen from his colleagues from each outfit, by changing their ways and becoming more accountable and transparent in whatever they do. Can he assure it in this mindless world of populist and opportunistic politics…?!! If he does not initiate this process, what he intended or may be more than what he meant may happen and it would demoralize the faith in the largest democracy of the world very soon and the repercussions may be out of any one’s control. Let us constructively do everything to avoid such an impact.

c) The systemic failure and the inability to plug it.

This is an alarming fact, which was admitted by our governance publicly by multiple numbers of Politicians, Ministers and the Bureaucrats. However, the alarming fact is that our reaction to the situation is not quick enough and still the blame game is going on, instead of constructive action.

Around Us

This is a story of one my old friends, who’s a veteran & pragmatic social activist called Gopakumaran Nair, who has lots of knowledge and has a very clear mind on helping people voluntarily. We used to spend some time together, every evening. However, of late, the daily schedules of all of us became so hectic that we were finding it difficult to spend some time together. This man with his experience, knowledge & multiple skills set should have been some vice president or CEO cadre in any organization.

Believe me, this wonderful gentleman is amazing as far as any profession you talk about in this earth as he’ll have a clear idea about the subject. More over, if he doesn’t know much about anything, he’ll be very honest to admit and next day he’ll come up with an opinion about the same after researching about it.

He used to help people voluntarily and as a matter of fact, he had helped me also by solving many crisis situations in my personal/ professional life. He has a very clear attitude & principles in his life. He’ll not accept anything for any service he is doing voluntarily and the same way he’ll charge you very professionally as per the market price if he’s doing a service professionally. However, between friends I have seen him waiving off lots of money for the services, he had done taking lots of pain and involvement.

Recently when I met him, I had seen him little upset and I asked him the reason. He told me that he undertook a freelance project for some of his friends, which used to happen in the nights. The project was in the nascent stage and his role was to support the onsite team abroad. As the project was in the very beginning stage, he didn’t have much to do. However, his presence was very much soothing for the individual who was coordinating the project (it was a morale boosting experience for him). After putting in some consistent efforts, the project was brought in to the track. 

However, according to GKN (Short form of Gopakumaran Nair), it required lots of improvement as far as the basic systems and processes are concerned and he sounded this to his friend who’s coordinating the project and also pointed out the flaws in the current system which may hamper the project in the long run. The result was that GKN was kept out of the loop on the developments.

GKN didn’t react much though he understood what is happening around him as he didn’t want to lose the friendship. But it was obvious that the inevitable will happen and one day,  exactly as expected, when the payment date arrived, he was asked to pack up citing the reason that there is no sufficient revenue generated and that there was no or limited contribution by him in the project. GKN was bowled out by the comment as he recollected the same person’s words praising his caliber and exposure exactly a month ago. He was hurt by the other person’s insensitive comments and stopped going there. When he explained this to me, even I felt thoroughly disturbed about the insensitive behaviour of his friend, who’s known to me too. I told GKN that I can intervene in the matter, but GKN is a unique person by himself and his reaction was as given below…

“How can I ask him to pay me when I personally know that they have not started making enough out of that project? And more over, when he sincerely feel that my contribution in the project is not sufficient for him to convince his partners, I strongly feel that as a true friend I should not put him in trouble by putting pressure on him.” When he finished these words, there were tears visible in his eyes…even though he gave a feeble try to cover it up….!!

I always had respect for people like him, who had imbibed the values and principles, which will definitely make their life smooth and  satisfying for themselves, though they go through such hard times due to the ignorance of this world towards the integrity, values and principles. But I'm personally lucky to have a group of people who are in great heights in various walks of life and we stand by each other in such rough patches in life.    

The act of wealth making…!!

Making wealth by working hard was never a sin anywhere in this World. Even Indian epics describe about wealthy people like ‘Kubera’ and depicts Lakshmi Devi as ‘Godess of Wealth’. This preface was to express that even I am personally not against the act of wealth making.

However, I have my own principles and values driven way of doing it. These values were induced by a very strong system prevailing in my maternal family which was traditionally land lords & orthodox. What I mean to say is that genuine & very principled way of wealth making was encouraged in my family and equally and still more aggressively, in-genuine/ over night way of wealth making was criticized…! My father had a humble beginning and a strong will and hard work took him to heights. However, he remained a good human being first and then a good professional. He had preached only what he practiced and he is still one of the most influential human being in my life, who actually moulded my character. I am inspired to continue in the path right to my conscience with an unbiased thought process and I strongly advocate for values in this world of opportunism and unethical ambitions. I come across many stagnant phases in life which could have otherwise made me ordinary in the name of pragmatism. However, around me I see a huge group of people, who just consider that wealth making is the only goal in life and they take pride in adopting any mean way to achieve this. Here, I would not blame them as individuals, instead the system prevailing is corrupting their minds.

Again, there are 2 categories of people, one who don’t bother much about anything else and admit or get exposed about the hollowness in their thought process. Their thoughts & actions are very visible and they don’t mind about that at all. They normally do everything to acquire wealth and they do all the possible gimmicks to show off that they have got wealth by purchasing material assets to the extent possible and then talking about it in every occasion regardless of suitability. These kind of people are very commonly seen in our every day encounters in life. I had always been empathetic with these people depending on the base character of them. Many of them were very plain and the actions they do are basically a reflection of many psychological suppression they were forced to do during their tender years due to lack of every thing, what they enjoy right now. However, some times these people go weird in some of their actions, which makes me intolerant. The second category we’re talking about is very different from the former one. These people are comparatively educated and having good knowledge about what is good and what is considered not good. Some of them are even philosophic and devotees of one or more modern Gurus too. Now, up till this point everything looks perfect, rosy & decent. But, when it comes to wealth related issues, these people shreds off those philosophical mask and come out with the real ugli face and make you feel shame of being close to them. These people try everything to avoid getting exposed in this front, but miserably fail to do so…. Personally I have lot of reservations to associate with these pseudo philosophers. Some of them ( whom I had come across ) had criticized me stating that I am not fit to survive in today’s practical world. I always have heart felt pity for them and seriously, I can only be sympathetic to them. I would like to quote a story to express my view on ethical/ unethical wealth making....as per my view...any similarity of the characters with anyone is just coincidental ....

They are flamboyant… They are talked about every where… Their father had a humble beginning and grew the business in front of their eyes… After his death both together took over the conglomerate and finally, in this journey of so called success, they both split to grow further! They have the best possible influence in any possible governance of the Country.

Interesting ….is it? I had read many articles about them and in one of those, I came across a sentence mentioning that ‘wealth creation is no more considered a sin in India’ and hence they decided to join and continue with their father’s business…!! As a matter of fact, the genuine way of wealth creation was never considered a sin in India and it is all the same ever.

As a common man, I was always an admirer of them and used to quote them as visionaries, in my interactions with many people across the country. Of late, I had an opportunity to evaluate some of their group organizations to find out how some of my clients can do business with them and in the back ground check, I was startled to know that they never keep up their promises as far as financial commitments are concerned and hence, I recommended my clients to ignore the proposals, however big and promising it may seem to be… Recently, in an interview in a leading news channels, there was a question asked by the interviewer to one of these brothers…that’s when the other one opened an IPO and got over scribed by the public…!!! She asked when shall she expect an IPO from him ( The other brother who was interviewed) and his answer was that he has enough money, so he doesn’t have to go to the market. But now my question is that the money he is arrogantly boasting of having is whose money…? His business associates and the service providers and the suppliers of his organizations are the scape goats………!!! Is this ethical? I know there are many small time service providers who literally cry to survive due to either late or no payments from his organizations…!!! And you are in the process of building a billion dollar home for yourself and you are in the list of first ten rich people according to Forbes business magazine…and so on…!!!

Despite all the accusations his late father faced, he was never reluctant to pay his associates. He used to understand the need to feed them as they were the back bone to his growth…? Is it that this son of that father forgot that a business is built on the values it carries over a period time? Or is it the beginning of the End, which may eventually come over a period of time……? It could be possible that despite all the sophisticated systems they had put in place, the people in the mid-management levels are goofing up things in order to achieve appreciation and there by their personal gains by sycophancy and a virtual improvement in the cash flow at the cost of poor suppliers and service providers.

As far as these poor species of suppliers/ Service providers are concerned, neither they have the strength to fight the huge muscles of such a conglomerate, nor that anyone will help them in fighting these ill practices..!! Many of them tried to borrow and sustain and eventually perished in the process as the margins with such a big deal used to be always wafer thin…and some of them terminate the contract and write off what is due to them.

Is this the right way of wealth making? Is this what business is all about? Is this the ethical way of doing business? This particular way of wealth creation is still a sin anywhere in the world. People simply don’t bother to think about others when it comes to money…!!

Many a times I used to wonder whether I’m wrong in expecting the business to be ethical..?! However, each time I come across some of the well run business which do not vary on policy decisions and very specific & clear about what they promised, what they are doing and what they want to do?, I am reminded that I’m not wrong. These business groups commit only what they can do and nothing else…!! Very clear and ethical and their business is steady for years together and some of those business houses are older than both these brothers…!!


My request is that I still have great appreciation for their achievements and what I expect from them is that they will have a periodic feed back from the public & associates which should be able to keep them informed of what’s happening around…


I don’t aim to be the number one in what I am doing…I would like to be a good human being doing ethical business for safeguarding my investors’ aspirations by doing an ethical and legal business respected and appreciated by every one associated with me.

Change Management

Have you ever felt like the walls are closing in? Does it seem you have hit that ceiling and have gone as far as you can go? What about the experience of having the bottom drop out? It sure can feel like life has boxed you in, which makes you feel congested or suffocating…To Cultivate Change, my philosophy is that each of us is at some time constrained by:

1. our beliefs and assumptions
2. our learned behaviors
3. our ability to evaluate our experiences
4. our fears and resistances
5. our definition of our “self”
6. our distorted sense of reality

These are the 6 walls life presents us with to keep us boxed in. As you feel pressure or resistance from these “walls”, you may find it difficult to catch your balance. However, you should realize that there are skills you already have, which when paired with the right strategies, will actually allow you to easily leverage whatever experiences to bring your way…

It has been said that, with the right attitude, any thing is possible. Attitude does play a role. However, if you hold on to past experiences or make assumptions, you are pulling in on the walls that keep you where you are, in that comfortable place. If you continue to do things as you always have, how do you expect things to change? If you believe what you always believed, your results will be similar over and over again. Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results”. Something other than our circumstances must change in order for us to experience a different outcome.

Desire + willingness to change = Action & Action + Purpose = Fulfillment

Change is inevitable. Change is constantly occurring. The more we resist change, the harder our lives tend to be. And life has its own way of moving us forward. Some of the biggest hurdles to our progress come in the form of “life changing” events such as health issues, job loss, car accidents, and an act of nature. Many charities have started as a response to a “life defining” event for someone. Laws are established in response to a situation in someone’s life that was not desirable. Every change makes an impact on many people. You choose whether the impact on you is positive or negative.