When I wrote Problem of top 5% blog I was little too concerned due to various reasons. One was, I – being a centralist – am not a good judge of the situation in completely capitalistic societies. Second was – I myself was at the center of the example. How can I judge myself. I may get biased was the very obvious possibility. I shared the draft with Prof Mankad, again various reasons. He knows me, he has lived in the US for many years, he is an economist etc. His response was –
So the possible solutions Prof Mankad suggested starts from the top. Top 5% or 10% need to shred their arrogance (read Problem of top 5% a figurative real life example of representing our society, economy and even schools).
An interesting case happened recently in India. A Gujarat based Jeweler – Savji bhai – has gifted generously to his employees this Diwali. Apparently he is a standard 4th dropout! Mahatma Gandhi used to say what Prof Mankad suggested in his opinion – “…the wealth of the owners is distributed among the workers and when this situation is arrived at, only then would India grow in real terms…”
According to reports Savji Bhai has given Diwali gifts based on a loyalty program, so even though he did not study typical “Employee Engagement” and “Loyalty Marketing” or any other jargon of an MBA. Additional interesting this is – he supports pilgrimage of his employees families, has made stadium in Surat.
Just to conclude – Mahatma Gandhi said wealth distribution as the way for Swaraj, Top 5% are hoarding the wealth (reference Dr Joseph Stiglitz) and even Govts are afraid of top 5% so we have a creative solution which Savjibhai experimented with recently. Has the time for this idea come? Wish we see Business and the Buddha co-exist positively to make this world a better place to live and be enlightened.
NDTV interview (I am yet to watch it though)
Savjibhai in a brief speech (Gujarati) 2012 – when not many people knew him.
Note –
# The blog Problem of top 5% was published on 11th Oct, draft created was on 26-27th Sept. Prof Mankad shared his opinion on 27th Sept.
* I read Huffington Post article which Dr Mankad referred, however currently not able to get that link, so here is related link – http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed
2 Comments
rummuser · October 26, 2014 at 5:19 pm
Savjibhai must be a philosopher. For all life’s problems we can find answers in the old philosophers. Plato for instance, is among the most famous critics of democracy. His criticism is relatively simple, but potentially devastating. It runs as follows. Politics aims at achieving justice, and so political policy must reflect the demands of justice. Only those who know what justice is and have the self-control to enact what justice requires are capable of doing politics properly. Alas, the average citizen is dumb and vicious. Hence Plato’s conclusion is that democracy is a fundamentally corrupt form of politics; it is the rule of those who neither know nor care about justice. In The Republic, Plato’s Socrates argues for a philosophical monarchy, the rule of the wise and virtuous.
anonymous · October 29, 2014 at 10:22 am
“philosophical monarchy” (tough word to comprehend itself) seems difficult to achieve, if that could not be done by The Buddha, Mahavir – on the contrary they left their empires – can we mortals guide the world towards that?
One example is Krishna who could do that to some extent but the cost of that was at least 18 lac deaths some 5000 years ago. Jesus was crucified and what not!
Collectively the whole generation has to be uplifted, that seems to create some better system.