Cheating, with whom?

The air I breath you too breath the same so does the ex-CEO of VW Martin Winterkorn.

Recently, there was a huge issue of VW vehicles cheating emission testing, it resulted in heads being rolled and stock price plummeting. What Volkswagen did was – it programmed its models starting 2009 till 2015 such that during US standards testing (NO_x) were met only during laboratory testing. According to Wikipedia the NOx emissions during normal driving was ~35X higher.

Similarly Toshiba had been involved with accounting fraud. Toshiba continued doing this under three different CEOs. Had it been under only one we would have thought that it was more on personal level and not on organizational level. There are many more such cheating by the way. These things affect not just one person, it affects everyone – irrespective of whether you drive VW car or you are a Deer (may be a lion) for that matter. I wonder if those sitting on the top wants to go where from there! These cheating made me think – who are these people cheating? It was a question during rainy seasons in Mumbai. Roads of Mumbai get terrible during rainy seasons. You can barely avoid seeing a pothole on road. This is a normal scene – generally – across India. I asked this once on Twitter –

I wonder if the road constructors of Mumbai drive on these
roads! @TrafflineMUM so pathetic conditions in one rain..

— KRD Pravin
(@krdpravin) June 15, 2015

@TrafflineMUM Shameless BMC / MCGM such horrible roads in June itself; we’ve to suffer this until Sept @Dev_Fadnavis @AUThackeray

— KRD Pravin (@krdpravin) June 23, 2015

The point I am trying to make is – the constructors of Mumbai roads are driving their vehicle on the same road, the employees of VW are also breathing the same air which is polluted by their vehicle. Similarly, Toshiba employees must be holding shares of Toshiba! Who are they trying to cheat? And why?

Wish these people who are involved in such activities realize that they are effectively cheating themselves too. If they do world would become little better.

I am sure some or the other interest groups, political circles must be pickin’ and grinnin’ and enjoying those events – VW and Toshiba. Wonder if those pickin’ and grinnin’ now would help improve the overall system instead of being selective.

The topic of LBC was pickin’ and grinnin’ (Generally, I change topic of LBC) suggested by Lin for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently eight of us are supposed to write on the same topic every Friday. The seven other bloggers who are expected to write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser and 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!

Related blogs – Games Indians play.