Business to the Buddha

Category: Business to Buddha

  • Panama leaks, IPL & the rulers







    Kill! Kill! Kill! the arena was full with the viewers and they were shouting, it was horrific scene. The gladiator was looking at almost a corpus – the other gladiator – who had lost the battle. Fate of this gladiator was in the hands of winner or the king. People were giving their verdict ‘to kill the losing gladiator’. What was wrong with these people who were enjoying such brutal and life taking game? I suddenly woke up and started thinking about this dream.

    The arena has changed, shouts for kill is changed too and now instead of the queen asking us to “eat cake, if we do not have bread.” The politicians are serving us IPL and other trifling stuff to divert our attention.

    No wonder there is widespread corruption, Panama Leaks seems to be the tip of the iceberg. Can we doubt of existence of 100s of other law firms in Panama or any other tax heaven? If there are ten more such law firms worldwide, what number we are looking at – in terms of corruption or black money? The problem is in most countries, let me take India as a case in point (as I live in India), there may be parallel everywhere though.

    Secondly, heard about few of the World Cup T20 matches were fixed. Vijay Mallya haggling with banks after eating thousands of corers for settlement. On top of this haggling RBI governor stating – Releasing defaulter names can ‘chill business activity’. We are fighting with each other on who should or must win, who is in your or my dream team and here the whole economy is at the ransom of those who are so powerful and mighty and yet in so much debt (and defaulted on debt) that if their names are made public economy of country will be standstill! At the same time, it is beyond doubt that those who have defaulted have a lot of money stocked in tax heavens. Otherwise how come Dr Vijay Mallya say that he can pay 4000 Cr in coming days. Why didnt he pay this amount before KFA becoming defunct?

    It is not just about one man. It is about those thousands who have stocked money and poor people of their country are dieing of hunger or more recently of thurst (In Maharashtra India) or are jobless. Once again quoting – Mr Rajan governor of Reserve Bank of India Panama Papers: Dangerous to question the legitimacy of wealth! Seriously! If people have legitimate wealth why would they hide it in tax heaven? Well, its likely that the answer will be – according to xyz legal framework created by (many of the corrupt politicians as the law maker) the then Govt it is legitimate to under Liberalized Remittance Scheme to put your money out of the country.

    It is like 1. making rules for your own and close clouts convenience and 2. than hiding behind the same to make your ill gotten  money the garb of legitimacy.

    FarmerIn all these – we are trending on twitter about local teams matches as hashtags! Forget that, we are not even considering that people and their cattle are thrusty but we are enjoying the tamasha of IPL where a lot of water is going in drain. Again, what is the argument? Maharashtra Govt may lose crores of rupees if matches are moved out of state. What is the probability and assurance that Govt will use the revenue generated by IPL for 1. prevention that is providing water to drought hit areas and 2. correction that is taking steps so that in future we do not face drought like situation.

    Governments (in effect rulers) earn most in the tragedies of citizen – be it flood in UP or earth quack in J&K or drought in Orisa or Maharashtra even floods! We’ll forget all the natural or man-made calamities and go back to our TV set or stadium and start shouting – six, or Kohli or slogan of a team. On parallel worldwide – for IPL in India, we’ve soccer in the Europe, NBA, NFL in USA and so on!

    This time the shouts of KILL are changed that is it. This time rules don’t ask us to eat cake if there is no bread, they show us the revenue generated in Govt tax collection. But problem remains – Forget terrorist! who knows the french revolution this time may explode the whole world?

    Image 1 source – http://famouswonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Depiction-of-Gladiator-games-by-Jean-Leon_Gerome_Pollice_Verso-400.jpg

    Note – Author referred to RBI Governor’s statements, but believes the rot in the system is political & crony capitalistic.

  • Inclusive growth, How?







    There is income inequality. Agree? If no check this – IMF Publication

    …increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down…

    If businesses want to earn good profits in long term; businesses need to improve purchasing power of poor. Why? When people will have enough money to buy products/services, then only profits will increase at a better rate. Isn’t it? The simple explanation to this is – once poorer population gets resources (buying power) market size for companies increase multiple times. The increase would not be for one company but for every company in the market. One example of that could be involvement in CSR activity wherein poor can get good basic facilities and opportunities to earn. Once the poor can earn, they can spend too! Of course a caution here is – CSR is not charity, it should not become charity where it may lose its meaning.

    If this logic is clear – shouldn’t business be investing in making people prosperous? Once we do this we would solve a big problem – poverty. Hopefully, we will be able to not only grow the businesses but also grow every strata of society. Isn’t it? This is interdependent co-arising.

    Let me share a store, a very old & cliche, but I think that can drive home the point.

    Heaven HellLong ago a person wanted to see how heaven and hell were. An angle obliged and granted the wish. Person was blindfold and was sent to hell first.

    When the blindfold was removed, person was standing at the entrance to a great dining hall, full of round tables piled high with delicious foods of all kinds.

    The person noticed that, people seated around those round tables but their bodies were thin, and faces gaunt and creased with frustration. Each person sitting on dinning table held a spoon though their arms had no elbows and the spoons were four feet long. These people could reach the food on those platters, but could not get the food back to their mouths.

    Next the person was sent to the heaven. In the heaven the entrance to the dining hall was big, it too had round tables with piles of lavish feast as hell had. Here too people did not have elbows in arms and they were holding long spoons about same length as the hell. The person noticed that the people in heaven were plump and happy, the dinning hall was full of joy and laughter. Situation in both – Heaven and Hell were similar, however there was difference in the milieu, the reason?

    The difference between heaven and hell was – the people in heaven were using those long spoons to feed others so effectively everyone was full, plump & happy.

    Source of the story is AnomalyBeta and LinkedIn

    —

    So, if we take the concept of interdependent co-arising as the core of growth, capitalism or communism or any economic structure we follow we will surely have inclusive growth. The catch here will be – value of money will decline, and exclusivity (as marketing or demand / supply concepts of economics) will play in different fashion. In whatever case at least the basic necessities hopefully be fulfilled.

    Other blogs on inequality – The Price of Inequality, Not so trickling down!, Economics concepts and equality and Has the time for this idea come? and Inclusive growth

  • Kanhaiya to Mallya why lessons from Buddha Prevail!







    Recently India saw two very poles apart events and both can make us learn – the Middle Path of the Buddha. One incident was of JNU – ultra leftist & anti establishment – and the other was bank NPAs (one example of Vijay Mallya) – ultra rightist & Crony Capitalistic. I did not write anti-national as those who read news or biased towards one side would find my opinion biased even before reading the post fully, so ‘anti-establishment’ was the word used.

    The backdrop of Javaharlal Nehru University row is this – students union of JNU requested for a cultural event. Well, for those who do not know JNU is a University in Capital city of India. JNU students union is a leftist union. This event turned sloganeering against India. The slogans – besides anti India – included supporting terrorist who (in rarest of rare capital punishment in India) was hung during previous Govt. The previous Govt was run by the  parties currently in opposition – including left front. In twists of the whole drama a hero emerged named Kanhaiya Kumar. When I searched and heard one Professor of JNU, I came to know more about left front. They seem to support the whole drama where slogans were raised against India. This support goes deep down in the intellectual class sitting in news channel studios in Delhi.

    Domestic helpThough anti-establishment word sounds weird because where was the class of Kanhaiya Kumar for last 10 years? Where were they when there were a lot of corruption cases? Suddenly that class is demanding Azadi (freedom), well freedom from whom and what? If you demand freedom from poverty – work! Isn’t it a better solution? Azadi from toot-phoot (breakup) – better you do not do it, isn’t it? Currently who is involved in toot-phoot (look at parts of India where Maoists are active & killing). Azadi from terrorism – better you support or join security forces isn’t it? Why were student’s slogan in support of Afzal Guru (a terrorist)? Azadi from Manuwad & Brahmanwad (it is related to caste system of India) – I too am against caste system. Would it be better to do something at a grass-root level instead of sloganeering ‘against India’? Azadi from suit boot (economically better off) – isn’t it good if you do any of the other things listed above you would get in suit boot? Perhaps someone else will raise voice against you! But does it mean you and the other economically better off should leave everything and become poor in support of you to have Azadi from suit boot? The logic of communism is at question here – to bring affluence or wealth to less privileged is a better approach rather than making everyone equally poor to bring equality. Isn’t it? Read about Aarti Amma here these people should learn from her.

    Indian Big Corporations debtOn the other hand there is another class in India – capitalists. They are those who either mend rules or get rules created to favor themselves. According to some reports the amount of debt big corporate houses in India have goes in lacs of crores (of trillion INR). The example of top 10 debtors is below in image. These corporate houses are those who keep close relations with the law-makers (political parties – either in opposition or in power). So, these debtors enjoy the debt money lavishly. Once they kind of run out of money, they get debt restructured (happens to big companies only). There is a fancy word for that – Corporate Debt Restructuring. One such example in India is Dr Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher Airline. We’ve heard of his lavish birthday bashes and Calendars; he owes 7000 cr (70 Billion INR) to banks. His airline is defunct and he recently fled; banks has declared him willful defaulter a couple of months back.

    So in recent times, India has seen extremes of both the sides – failure of overly capitalistic system where crores of rupees are usurped by organizations without remorse and there are overly leftist those who want to overthrow the establishment itself. We have seen an example of USSR failing and we have seen repeated recession / bankruptcy. These examples teach us same the lessons again and again. There is a middle path that we need to follow, No left or no right. There has to be a balance.

    The solution? Once again it is the eight-fold path –

    1. Perfect Vision,
    2. Perfected Emotion,
    3. Right speech,
    4. Right action,
    5. Right livelihood,
    6. Right effort,
    7. Right mindfulness, and
    8. Right meditation

    All of these have to come from within, outside perspective will contaminate these. Meditation is a one single solution, it may provide each one of us from Kanhaiya to Mallya ‘tranquility’ that will help reduce the fascination to revolt or predilection to cheat. Because if we start following this eight-fold paths we would realize – ‘we all are connected’, ‘we all are interdependent‘ and if we want Azadi, this azadi would be from whom? If we want to cheat the banks, it is in turn cheating with someone who is a family of ours.

  • Truth is really something you do!







    I have been reading one or the other story of Father Anthony De Mello’s books – The Prayer Of The Frog Vol. I and Prayer of The Frog Vol. II and share the same here occasionally. The books have small and very interesting stories. One of the story I read was on a balancing act is here –

    ————

    Truth is really something you DO

    The disciples oprayer of frogf Baal Shem once said, “Tell us, dear Rabbi, how we should serve God.”

    He replied, “How should I know?”…then went on to tell them the following story:

    A king had two friends who were found guilty of crime and sentenced to death. Now even though the king loved them he dared not acquit them outright for fear of giving a bad example to the people. So this is the verdict he gave: A rope was to be stretched across a deep chasm and each of the two men was to walk over it—to safety and freedom or. if he fell, to his death. The first of the two got across safely. The other shouted to the first across the chasm, “Tell me, friend, how you managed it.” The first shouted back, “How should I know? All I did was this: When I found myself listing to one side. I leaned to the other.”

    You don’t learn to ride a bicycle in a classroom.

    ————

    Balance is what needs to be practiced by everyone and not one or the other only, that can bring harmony & peace in the whole world.

    Tolerance Vs Being True To Yourself was the title of this weeks LBC (Loose Bloggers Consortium) where currently eight of us are supposed to write on the same topic. I have written on tolerance earlier too when India was facing with media created debate of whether India is tolerant? As usual I write by changing the topic a bit, mostly go completely awry and write; hope mostly it connects with the topic. The seven other bloggers who are expected to write regularly are, in alphabetical order are Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser and Shackman. The title was suggested by Shackman. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too!

  • Flawed business model







    There was a company Kingfisher Airlines which owed 7000+ Cr (70+ billion INR or well over 1B USD) to a consortium of banks in India. The company could not pay its debts; its owner/company recently was declared ‘willful defaulter’ by few banks. Now, the owner Dr Vijay Mallya is shifting to England with all funfair.

    Indian Big Corporations debtThis event and the total debt (sourced from a LinkedIn post above) makes one seriously think – is it true that “The wall streets fraud” as Bernie Sanders US presidential candidate has said earlier? In India, we have very contrasting examples – one side there were many farmers who were committing suicide because they couldn’t repay loans and on the other side we have banks with NPA (Non Performing Assets) & professionals who do “Corporate Debt Restructuring” resulting in many if not all NPAs in future. At present Indian PSU’s NPA is more than their Market Capitalization.

    Isn’t it “a subsidy transferring wealth from the rest of us to a select few” as the article rightly says?

    Just imagine – the debts given above, tax evasion, Satyam case and many other cheating happening not just in India but in almost every corner of the world. For me ‘wall street’s fraud’ is just a metaphor, there are many more frauds we are confronting daily. I have written on a few earlier – Volkswagen & Toshiba, Rajat Gupta and Moral Markets! to name a few. Are we really maturing as human race? Or we have become more deceptive and satanic?

    Just another example is the double speak of developed world on saving the earth – read Profit over the Planet.

    The point, after lamenting so much is always – how do we solve these problems? Only way I see is spirituality – Paris attacks – solutions please moving towards being saint in suits rather than Thief in Tuxedo.

    Related blogs – What are you searching for?

    Image source – LinkedIn post of Mr Hariprakash Visant

  • Profit to Purpose







    Since long when I started blogging on Business to the Buddha; I had this in mind – we are all connected (Interdependent co-arising in Buddhism). Therefore, if the whole world wants to look at development, it can only happen if all grow, not at the cost of ‘other’. I have written about 260+ blogs in last 5+ years, recently, I found a perfect way this concept was presented by Tanmay Vora. It’s perfectly said that a picture says a thousand words, Tanmay has proved it right here.

    I requested Tanmay to let me share the drawing on my blog, and he was kind enough to let me do this. You can read his thoughts on Mindset shift here.

    Profit Purpose Saint in SuitThis is the idea of my thoughts on being Saint in Suit. We all need to grow as professionals and as individuals. We have to be saints in business and personal life both this will be profit with purpose.

    To read more of Tanmay’s thoughts go to – http://qaspire.com/

  • Saint in Suit







    It was Feb or March of 2011. We were just completing our MBA and as would be the case with any other B-school companies were visiting campus for recruitment. A big company was scheduled to visit one day. One of my friends – Jaydutt – was among the most likely candidates to be selected. However, he did not even attend the presentation of the company. Everyone was curious, why?

    I – besides others – was shocked it! I went to his room and asked him, why did not you attend the presentation itself forget the recruitment process?

    He said – “I know the company well, and I have firsthand experienced working there. Pravin, as confident you were, other friends too were confident and I was under pressure to make a decision, it was a enormous confusion I was also not able to make a choice. So, yesterday night when I was about to go to bed, I asked myself this question – ‘if I join them, would I be happy getting up every day in the morning and going to office? Would I enjoy working there? I would invest at least 8 hours per day there, which is 33% of my daily life or close to 50% of my hours awake in a day, am I really keen to go there?’ My conscience told me NO! I decided to skip the company.”

    MeditationThis small conversation with Jaydutt made me think – those points were such that even after full 5 years I still remember the discussion. I recalled that small discussion with Jaydutt when I planned another of my journey from Business to the Buddha to Saint in Suit. I realized whenever I say Business to the Buddha, there seems to be a gap between Business and the Buddha. There seems to be a movement from one place to the other. It requires separate effort or action.

    When I met Fateh uncle recently, I realized that it is not going from one place to the other. It is “being” that. He is a successful businessman and a spiritual person. The title Saint in Suit actually came in my mind when we met once and he was wearing a suit! Now or in future we’ll have to be professionals with the spiritual connect. We need to be saints in the form of professionals. That awareness will either sprout or if does not, we need it to be developed. Though, unfortunately currently I don’t have time to commit to this and keep writing regularly there besides keeping my pace here too.

    Saint in Suit concept is spirituality and business are together. In this concept the plan is to write about how business works (or should work) on spiritual practices, how it can work on spiritual practices, sharing any model related spirituality and business, sharing or defining model related to spirituality and business in any business function e.g. Board level to line executive from marketing to HR to suppliers etc.

    I’m hoping to bring like minded people on this platform to start writing about being saint in suits. your contributions are welcome there create your login.

    Image source – http://www.bravefury.com/six-reasons-men-should-do-yoga/

  • Dont divide – we are all interdependent







    Yes I know you must be wondering as if the topic is not complete or I missed something? This blog is not related with politics or religious division either. No, no I am not going to write about terrorist attacks again. They are becoming something very common now a days. We do need a solution to that with Talks, if that does not work perhaps force.

    Look inwardsThe year started on a very strange note – people wrote if 2016 is similar to 2008? The world bank reduced forecast of world GDP growth rate to 2.9% however had a positive outlook on growth of India. However, as we read news like this, we tend to think – ok make this strata analyse this. How about the developing countries as a whole? How is Europe doing? How about China? So we try to divide and look at each as individual or strata or country, isnt it? We are all interdependent, we must think of the whole world. If we look at worldwide trend, we realize that 2.9% is lowered expectation, that is a cause of concern. When such concerns are raised we must do one thing – turn inwards. This inwards is applied on an individual level as well as a local level e.g. the smallest strata we are considering for growth for example country. Look for options for improvement locally. When we see troubles in GDP growth worldwide – the best option to consider is looking for improving economy at country level – increasing local consumption, improving livelihood of the citizen by infrastructure or other basic needs. Because these small steps add to the monolith of global GDP, isnt it?

    The other thing to keep in mind is – when a hungry person eats, that adds to his/her health. If a stuffed person eats extra, his/her health may deteriorate, isnt it? When we are seeing world GDP, we must concentrate on the underdeveloped not on developed world as the driving force for growth. In the end once again – we are all interdependent.

    Image source – Petfinder.com

  • Chicken in the “poultry farm of economy”







    It was October and winters were just starting in Canada, for a change it was nice weather for me. I had not seen < 10 degrees in Mumbai for almost a decade now. In this beginning of winter we – Anil, Abhijit, Prasad and I – were talking about eggs being Veg or non-veg food. I was the only Veg person amongst all and do not eat egg (by choice). So the point went on to whether egg has life & how does fertilization of egg happen?

    poultry

    That discussion became an argument and point of contention. I said I do not eat egg because of my choice, I do not want to question whether an unfertilized egg should be considered as veg & I (and many more Veg) should consume egg.

    It was an interesting question, I never had thought of this. So I searched on net and of course others too did it. The argument was won by Abhijit in the process of egg fertilization. My mind was running in different direction when I read the production process or making of an egg! If you want the drift read how egg production happens (inside a chicken!) here.

    Hens are like gumball machine (as the author of the blog calls it), popping eggs every 25 hours. Hen keeps on producing eggs through its process of ovulation, where Ovum is released to infundibulum, to magnum, to isthmus and to shell glands. The most surprising and disappointing part comes here at shell gland. The white shell which we see in egg is made by not either the diet (ok that is good) or by procuring enough calcium from the hen’s body. Yes, calcium is taken from hen’s body e.g. bones if enough calcium is not consumed by it. Just imagine daily this hen is producing egg and if enough calcium is not in its diet it is decomposing its body to produce the egg.

    Now let us think about hens as human, poultry farm as world economy (well I want to say this but still want to mince the words) and owners of poultry farm are the few who are heading World Bank, IMF, Banks and politicians. They perhaps do not care about what happens to the hen what they want is their egg next day. Oh yes, the owner of poultry farm does health check-up, takes care of sanitation & cheks quality of feed (equivalent of running education and development programs), but its as good a guess of yours as mine – for what?

    Making of shell of an egg and effectively the whole DAILY process of production of egg made me think of humans as the chicken. We are burning our lives (ask chicken uses its bones); why to make the economy work! An economy which is judged by GDP, share market growth and value of money et al. and who is at the core of it all? The Pseudo-owners or the proprietor of the economy of the world!

    Abhijit helped me learn that Veg people can eat eggs which isn’t fertile as that does not have life in it & it could be called similar to any dairy produce.

    Image source http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/AgroCommodities/54197/

  • Prayer of The Frog – Temple, worship & love







    prayer of frogI have been reading one or the other story of Father Anthony De Mello’s books – The Prayer Of The Frog Vol. I and Prayer of The Frog Vol. II and share the same here occasionally. The books have small and very interesting stories. One of the story I read was on a religion here it is –

    Two brothers, one a bachelor, the other married, owned a farm whose fertile soil yielded an abundance of grain. Half the grain went to one brother and half to the other.

    All went well at first. Then, every now and then, the married man began to wake with a start from his sleep at night and think: “This isn’t fair. My brother isn’t married and he gets half the produce of the farm. Here I am with a wife and five kids, so I have all the security I need for my old age. But who will care for my poor brother when he gets old? He needs to save much more for the future than he does at present, so his need is obviously greater than mine.”

    With that he would get out of bed, steal over to his brother’s place and pour a sack full of grain into his brother’s granary.

    The bachelor too began to get these nightly attacks. Every once in a while he would wake from his sleep and say to himself: “This simply isn’t fair. My brother has a wife and five kids and he gets half the produce of the land. Now I have no one except myself to support. So is it just that my poor brother, whose need is obviously greater than mine, should receive exactly as much as I do?” Then he would get out of bed and pour a sack full of grain into his brother’s granary.

    One day they got out of bed at the same time and ran into each other, each with a sack of grain on his back!

    Many years later, after their death, the story leaked out. So when the townsfolk wanted to build a temple they chose the spot at which the two brothers met for they could not think of any place in the town that was holier than that one.

    The important religious distinction is not between those who worship and those who do not worship but between those who love and those who don’t.

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