Business to the Buddha

Tag: Italy

  • Inner revolution







    Recently heard that UK has declared recession, Spain and Italy has done so earlier, Greece has once voted against the austerity measures and Sarkozy is no more French president – which is a dent on austerity measures of Eurozone. This is the story of Euro! USA employment numbers are not that encouraging, employment should be about 250,000/month however last time I noted it was 150,000 or so. China showed reduced production and Indian GDP is down.

    The picture looks gloomy, however have you seen importance of stars during full moon?  No! The importance and glitter of stars is prominent during darkest of nights. I believe this tough economic time is hinting of such nights when we would realize the importance of small things which impact us in big way. Take an example corruption! Take an example Greed! Though it seems a lesson on moral science but what else we are saying when we talk about the “Moral Hazard” as the biggest reason of recession and financial turmoil! In Indian context we need to work on reducing corruption (byproduct of greed) which is the biggest moral hazard here. In Europe and US Greed is the problem.

    I asked myself – are we going to see a revolution in the world? This revolution I believe would be on a tangent – it would not only happen in the society, not only by the society but also it would happen on the self! We have seen societies changing, cultures evolving  however these changes die down slowly and moral hazard starts again.

    Guruji

    I was attending an Art of Living (with Guruji :)) session today and the idea of ‘inner revolution’ stuck to me at that time. This makes a perfect sense – if everyone becomes righteous, we would not need to change the society, it would change itself.

    We need to get ready for inner revolution and help change the world for better today and tomorrow! Remember this would start from each one of us.

  • Where is growth?







    The mobile was ringing, suddenly phone was picked and the statement – wait! Mumbai Indians needs only 5 runs to win in last 6 balls. I said ok Sir I will call you in five minutes. The turmoil of thoughts continued in my mind. What am I thinking, what are the questions in my mind, so many things how do I connect all these dots etc. Mumbai Indians eventually won, Prof Mankad informed me in next five minutes.

    We started talking – the market is steady, if not bull than not bear too. Indian Prime minister and Finance minister both are making statement that “We are going to grow at 6.9% if not at 8%”. Still, there is some uncomfortable feeling. I told Prof Mankad, “Sir I am not convinced. Further to it I said – news is Facebook is licensing the AOL patents – owned by Microsoft now – for close to 550 million. Next thing which I forgot to ask him was – news of bribing in Mexico by senior executive of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart was running behind growth – sometimes in 90’s – and got in this trouble recently when the case was surfaced. I further added that Italy and Spain are showing -ve growth (to be precise signs of recession), where is growth?

    As always these questions were simple to answer for Prof Mankad. What he said very closely resembled to my thinking of inclusive growth. He said – hold your horses, the questions are right, this growth is notional and specific to IT and finance industry, largely to few services industries so to speak. The questions are pertinent, sir said. If I remember correctly he also informed me that Italy not only Spain has declared recession, French election would surely put more light on the already tough Euro crisis. Sarkozy is likely to lose, and then there are more elections coming up in Europe e.g. Germany etc. Political parties in Holland have agreed on austerity measures. Growth would happen and thus recession would be arrested only once we see growth in all the industries otherwise we are in a bad shape. It is not possible to say that we are growing at so and so rate when only one or two industries are showing signs of growth.

    This reminded me of my most loved theory of the Buddha – Interdependent Co-arising. I have written on this often and the current situation shows us yet once again that we are all connected, nothing can be isolated and growth is a collection of small growth in each industry. Each industry is a building block for the overall movement of the engine of economy world across (with few riders). No China can survive without US or Europe, no India or Philippines can grow its service industry until there is overall growth in the demand of service industry in developed nations.

    Where is growth? There would be growth when we all learn that we need to think about each other and help each other grow – we are all interdependent and we would successfully grow only when we grow together.