I leave it to your sense of Neethi and Nyayam

Case 1- Suppose I am in a room where my colleagues are conspiring to rob a bank. For some reasons, I keep quiet, though I am fully aware of the plan. They go ahead with the plan and get caught. The right thing for me to do would have been either to stop them or to intimate the police. I didnt do both. Am I guilty then, for being a mute spectator to the conspiracy? You bet I am. (If you have any doubt, ask Sudheendra Kulkarni - LK Advani's aid in the cash-for-votes scam. He didnt take the money, he didnt offer the money, he was not directly part of the sting but only facilitated the expose - but he is behind bars now!!!).

Cartoon sourced from web

Case 2 - You are a senior manager in an organization with joint responsibility for creating a major policy that could generate revenue for the company. You consciously do not follow sound advice, but support a decision that has been viewed with apprehension by the advisors and warned by them that it would cause loss to the company. You still go ahead, over ruling them and prompty the company loses millions of shareholders money. Do you expect the company to still retain you? Definitely not. Company will, at the least, suspend you pending an enquiry, and block all your service benefits and think of recovering a part of the lost money in the event of your being found guilty.

Replace the protagonists in Case 1 with Dr.Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, and in Case 2 with P Chidambaram, the Home Minister, and see what should be done, and compare it with what is happening currently.

I leave it to your sense of Neethi and Nyayam.

Investment Advice

Where to invest in these troubled times?

Equity - Too risky and unstable in the current scenario. But if you are prudent, you can wait and watch, and buy good scrips with long term potential/holding. But do not indulge in short term trading.

Debt Instruments - Considering that the interest rates are rising and expected to rise further, it is worth parking some money in one year debt instruments like Fixed Deposits with Banks.

Mutual Funds - Strict no on generic MFs. You may try sector specific Mutual Funds that have good prospects. Lay off infrastructure based MFs. I am worried about Infrastructure sector, due to the policy paralysis. Land based, precious metals based MFs can be considered.

Gold - I wish I am wrong, but I get a bad feeling about investing in Gold now. I have always been a proponent of Gold as an investment,  but I feel the current prices are on the higher side and unsustainable in the medium term. Wait for the prices to fall, and then invest, but with a caveat - never invest in Gold Ornaments, but invest in Gold Bars, coins or Gold Stocks.

Land - This is the ideal investment as of now. Invest in small pieces of land that you can sell easily. Look for lands in Tier B and C cities or outskirts.  Avoid buy large tracts of land as this would affect your liquidity.

Buildings - Strict no.

Modern chicken and egg story

How Indian bureaucracy harasses honest citizens is illustrated as follows.

Suppose you buy a new Flat in a town, which is not your native place. And since it is a flat, your registration document is only pertaining to the land. Now the problem starts. You dont have any proof that you are living in that Flat. Suppose you want to open a bank account. Well you cant, as Banks want a proof of residence. Suppose you want to apply for a telephone. You cant. As they want a proof of residence. Fine. Now you think you can solve this by changing the address in your passport or driving license. They want, not one, but two proofs of residence. Only way for you to have it is by applying for a ration card or voter id. And in India, you can forget about getting yourself enrolled and issued one for one year.

It is a typical chicken and egg story

Bear with me

A bit pre occupied with work, and mind is blank.

Shall be back here in a couple of days. Bear with me

Aam Aadmi - No place to go to!

Fundamental economic theory propounds that inflation is caused due to excess money chasing fewer goods. Hence, Central Banks adopt the stand of increasing the interest rates to suck the excess liquidity out of the system. How this works is as follows.

When interest rates rise, Banks offer higher interest to the depositors, which makes it attractive for the investors to invest in Bank debt instruments like FDs', rather than in other areas like Stock market, land etc, and they curtail spending to save. If the Central Bank also decides to increase the SLR and CRR, then Banks are forced to retain additional cash in the system. Another consequence of raising the interest rates, are that Banks are forced to raise the lending rates, making it unattractive for the industry and business to go for debt financing for their expansion schemes. The alternate route of raising through stock market is ruled out as investors, as I said earlier, has moved away from the more risky stock market to the less risky debt instruments. Thus industry is starved of funds, forcing them to cut production or at the least withhold expansion plans (you have to remember that an inflationary economy is good for the industry, as they are getting more value for their products in the market). The reduced production, coupled with liquidity being sucked out of the system, means economy slowing down, less money chasing less goods (same goods) leading to reduction in prices.

But then with RBI increasing the interest rates 12 times in 18 months the inflation has not come down one bit. Why is this so?

One of the reason is that Government has allowed Indian industry to raise money, through equity or debt, from the Global Markets which are currently under recession, and the western countries have abysmally low interest rates. Thus the industry has enough and more money to fund their expansion, and this money finds its way to the market one way or other, leading to further inflation. And with double digit inflation prevalent, they are laughing all the way to the banks, as their products are selling at higher rates day by day.

Only people who are affected? The common man, mainly the middle class, who find their EMIs on housing and vehicle loans going up month after month, with no relief in site.

I was once the franchisee of a leading IT training company in the 1990's. Their only objective was to ensure that whenever I clear by debts and start earning some profits, by introducing either a syllabus change or introducing some scheme, they will ensure that the money is taken from my pocket to theirs. At least I had the option of exiting the business then, which I did, but the aam admi of India has no place to go to.

PONC around us

Philip Crosby, the Quality Guru coined the term PONC - Price Of Non Conformance.The price of nonconformance puts a Rupee (Dollar) value on all waste and wasted effort caused by a lack of quality. Examples of the price of nonconformance include reprocessing, expediting, unplanned service, computer reruns, inventory, customer complaints, service after service, downtime, reconciliation, and warranty. In manufacturing, PONC typically falls between 20 to 25 percent of sales, while in service/administrative organizations, PONC averages 30 to 40 percent of operating expenses. This means that a company making $100 million typically will spend $30 to 35 million in nonconformance costs. And if the company is making a net profit of 20%, i.e $ 20 million, just by reducing waste by 50%, the company can earn an additional profit of $ 15 million. We do have PONCs even in our personal life. For example, every time you buy from a hyper market, you end up buying 20-30% more than what you actually want. Often companies talk of reducing cost, when actually they should be concentrating on reducing waste.

I was exposed to PONC early in my career when I attended a Quality Management Program.

Recently, on a visit to India, while noticing the happenings around me, I was amazed at the price a common man has to pay as PONC in every walks of life.

The Government Schools did not offer the kind of quality education that they were supposed to give. This resulted in parents having to pay higher fee to put their children in relatively expensive private schools. This is a PONC. Further, the private school is not doing a proper job of teaching, forcing the students to take private tuitions. Another PONC.

The Government did not use the tax revenue properly in building good roads. This resulted in roads disintegrating at the first sign of rain (God! I was in Kerala recently, and the roads were an absolute disaster. And I am talking about NH47!!). The time lost (it took me 3 hours to cover 117 kms from Palghat to Nedumbassery Airport), the damage to the vehicles (I saw a jeeps axle breaking into two in front of my eyes), and the fuel wasted are all PONCs. And just because the Government did not do its job properly and squandered the money elsewhere, they had to go in for Private Players like L&T to build roads. And these private operators collect tolls, which we have to pay!!. Another PONC. While admitting that the roads built by private operators are very good, it begs a question as to why the Government cannot or did not lay such roads in the past. The technology and skill sets are available!!.

There are many such cases one can see around us. The Inverters one has to keep in the house just because the Government cannot ensure 24x7 supply of uninterrupted power, the Voltage Stabilizers we use at home because the the Government cannot supply unfluctuating electricity, the higher price we have to pay for Bottled water, because the State cannot supply pottable drinking water...........................the list is endless.

Wish we could do something to reduce all these waste, as that would mean our country growing at > 15% per annum

Divine Retribution

Of the two key people involved in the Cricket Match Fixing Scam at the turn of the Century, Hansie Cronje died a tragic death in an accident.

But it was felt that Azharuddin got away scot free. He even became a Member of Parliament. Now the long hands of divine justice has reached him too in the form of an accident which has left his teenaged son fighting for life.

I can cite many examples of such retributions from my HPCL days, where the crooked amongst the petroleum dealers, who made pots of money through adulteration, paid heavily at some stage in their life - one had his painter daughter married off to an industrialist, only to find that he had send her to a living hell, for the guy was a wife beater. Another had a film actress swindle all his wealth, yet another was forced to kill his wifes secret lover and later on in his life saw his only son commit suicide after a failed romance. Then there was the case of one of the officials from HPCL, who after an era of corruption, having retired had just driven his family in a car from Kerala to Karnataka, only to find his only son having died in the car on the way. With hospitals refusing to even check him, as it was a DOA case, the old man was forced to drive all the way back to Kerala - a 10 hour drive, with his dead son leaning on the shoulders of his wife. He also  had the mortification of seeing his daughter, whom he married with great fanfare, being tortured by his son in law, who turned out to be drug addict.

The long hands of divine justice catches up with you in one way or other.

What the poor wants - Life with Dignity and basic amenities

The Governments, both at Centre and State levels, have got its priorities absolutely wrong.

The politicians and law makers assume that giving one time doles like TV, Grinder, Mixie, Laptop, Sarees during festival is the way to root out poverty, and win votes. They think the poor wants nothing but this.

They are sadly mistaken.

What the poor wants is not rotten rice which is sold at Re 1 per Kg. They buy it from the PDS, but promptly resell it to the street side hoteliers, who make iddly and dosa in a push cart. The poor go out and buy rice at market prices for their consumption, as the rice given at Re 1 per Kg stinks, and infested with worms.

What the poor wants is to live with dignity. They dont want to be told that they are being given a charity and are living on doles. They want reasonable quality goods made available at  affordable prices.

They want their paper works to be done without hassles at the panchayat office level.

They want the Courts to give them speedy justice, as they cant afford a lengthy legal process. They would appreciate the State giving them good legal aid at reasonable prices, so that they are not fleeced by the lawyers, who make deals with the counter party behind the back.

They want to be able to go to the Police Station without fear and register a complaint. And they want the confidence that action will be taken against the offender, whoever he might be.

They want their children to get good, decent, simple education at Government Schools. They want these schools to have basic infrastructure, adequate teachers and books at subsidised rates.

They want reasonably affordable medical care at their door steps - in the primary health centres and district hospitals.

They want clean water, sanitation, drainage, electricity, and good roads (even if they are not black top).

They want micro financing to help them tide over their financial requirements

They want a workable small savings scheme, and someone to guide them as to how to make their money work.

They want a shelter with basic amenities.

They aren't asking for much.

Is it not a shame that, 64 years after attaining independence, they are still waiting for these things, which should have been made available to them decades ago? Their plight is worse off than what it was all those decades ago.

But I am afraid someone from Government will read this, and then pass a Right to Live with Dignity Bill in the Parliament - as if passing a bill will solve everything.

Evide thirinjonnu nokkiyalum, avidellam pootha marangal mathram..............

Onam is special to Malayalis not because it is just a harvest festival from a bygone Agrarian era. Those days harvest denoted the end of the 4 months period of toil in the field, during which people were forced to tighten their belt just to survive. The harvest brought paddy, vegetables, money, dresses etc to the household, and one is always happy when one has plenty of those. The month of Chingam is also hence considered auspicious to commence commercial activities, housing projects, and more importantly, now that rains are behind and there is plenty of money around, one can plan functions like Marriages, House Warming et al. Onam signifies prosperity, abundance, plentifulness. Even the nature expresses this wonderfully by decking the entire State with lovely flowers. With harvest on, there is considerable activity, jobs for the poor, disposable income on hand to fulfill their long standing wishes. It is the season of hope, a period to satisfy one's needs and to enjoy the fruits of one's labour. It is also why Onam is the festival looked forward most by Malayalis.

Much has changed at the ground level as the State  moved away from an Agrarian Economy to a Services Economy, or rather a foreign inflow driven economy. But still there is joy abound as the whole State is on a holiday mood, people take a welcome break, have additional income from the annual bonus issued at around this time, and the NRK's (Non Resident Keralites) fly home in droves with suitcases bearing gifts to  their nears and dears.

The period before this Onam has seen Kerala get copious rains, the Dams are full, the harvest is good, and there is much to look forward to.

Let People be Happy for the ten days at least. There is much to worry about during the rest 355 days. This is the time to recharge one's batteries and hope for a bright future.

The beauty of nature during Onam is wonderfully captured by Changampuzha  in Ramanan

Malarani Kadukal Thingi Vingi,
Marathaka Kanthiyil Mungi Pongi
Karalum Mizhiyum Kavarnu Minni
Karayattoralasal Grama Bhangi
(A loose translation - The forest of flowers is thick and dense, and the nature is radiating with the brilliance akin to those emanating from Emerald (Emerald is green and here the simile is with the greenery of Kerala). The heart and eyes are attracted and shining at this sight of blemishless beauty of the rural areas)

But the lines which has stayed in my memory from this poem, right from childhood are,

Evide thirinjonnu nokkiyalum
Avidellam pootha marangal mathram
Oru kochu kattengan vannu poyal
Thuru Thure poomazha ayi pinne
(Wherever you turn to and look, you will see only trees/plants in flowering state. And by chance if there were to be a gentle breeze, then it will be a rain of flowers)

Ha! Only Changampuzha can pen like this!!!! The description of the rain of flowers as Thuru thure poomazha ayi pinne has stuck a chord in me, never to be erased. It captures the beauty of the nature during Onam, like nothing else.

Here is wishing an year of peace, prosperity, abundance to all my Readers.

Alright for many innocents to be killed to save one guilty of heinous crime

HUJI, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, an Islamic Terrorist Organization has claimed responsibility for the Delhi Blast on Wednesday, in which 11 people died and about 80 injured. The note states that unless the sentence of Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the 2001 attack on Parliament House who is currently on death row, is ‘repealed,’ the group will continue to target the courts, including the Supreme Court.

Now, 11 people paid with their lives and many injured just because the Government dragged its feet on hanging Afzal Guru, who is in the Death Row for the past 7 years!!!. Congress party, which plays vote bank politics to appease the minority community, is squarely responsible for this tragedy and cannot wash the blood of these innocents off their hands.

Our justice system goes by the principle that even if many guilty goes unpunished, no innocent should be punished.

But here we have a situation where it is more like 'it is alright for many innocents to be killed to save one guilty of heinous crime'.

What a tragedy!!!!

How long must we suffer such fools like Ghulam Nabi Azad?

How mindless, callous and insensitive the UPA Government is can be deduced from this news report (the highlightings are mine)

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad faced the ire of angry relatives who alleged that there was delay in the handing over of bodies of those killed in the Delhi high court blast. The relatives surrounded Azad at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and complained to him that despite a ten-hour wait, they were not handed over the bodies of the victims. N K Gupta, relative of Nalini Aggarwal (55), alleged that the family got a confirmation of her death at 12 noon but the post mortem was not conducted till late night.

Azad told the angry relatives that no one expected such an emergency. He told them that the authorities were doing whatever they could do.

"We are taking every step to ensure that such things don't repeat next time," Azad said.

No one expected such an emergency in the National Capital, which has seen repetitive bomb blasts!!!!!  If the Government had a disaster/terrorist attach management system in place, it would have been ready for ANY emergency. This is the problem with the Government. They know people like to move on after a couple of days of noise (have you heard anything about the investigation on the Mumbai bomb blast?) and will forget about this blast too. Damn emergency preparedness. That is for cows.

 

The real punch line is the one in the tail. Instead of assuring that Government will ensure that there wont be any terror strikes in future, here is the idiot confidently telling that he will ensure bodies of the deceased will be released to the relatives without hassles NEXT TIME when there is a terrorist attack. That means he is expecting many more terror attacks. Why should we suffer such fools?

1000 and still counting.............................................................

My initial plan was to commence blogging on the New Years Day of 2008. But like many other things in my life, on a whim, I decided on October 9th, 2007, to create a blog. I was new to blogging, and had absolutely no clue as to how to go about it. Google came to my assistance and identified blogspot.com for me as my domain. This blog was thus born.

It was called Raja's World for the best part of a year and a half. I was never too comfortable with such a generic name. On the auspicious occassion of Makara Sakranthi, 14th January 2009, I rebranded it as RAJADHARMAM. And it has stayed that way since.

In my first post, I had written,

What can you expect in this blog? A wide range of topics ranging from current affairs to management to music to sports - critically analyzed. Raja's world will make you think.................................. This blog is my Gurudakshina to all those who taught me academically, professionally and in real life. May the Gurushishya parampara endure..............

Nearly 4 long  years down the line, this blog has reached the landmark of 1000 posts. And as promised, I had indeed critically analyzed a wide range of topics. I also hope that I have prodded my readers to think differently, challenged their conventional wisdom and made them view issues from a different angle.

Did I ever think I would be still here writing my 1000th post? Frankly no. Because I never thought, I had in me enough material to write so much about. I have heard that Marathon runners enter into a zone after a few kilometers, which makes them forget their tiredness and propels them forward. I know how they feel now. I have been bloody tired, battered and bruised during this journey lasting 4 years. Many a time, I just wanted to give up blogging, as I found myself short of new ideas, thoughts and feared I was being repetitive. But I persisted. Perseverance was never my virtue during my young years. I used to start new things, but give it up once the novelty wears off. But as I grew older, I just hated to give up anything. Maybe the influence of the powerful Saturn (Saneeswaran) in my horoscope.

My stats show I have readers from all over the world - India, Middle East, Holland, Canada, USA, South Africa and even tiny Portugal. Stats also show that my readers are more interested in blogs related to traditional ancient wisdom , mythology rather than on current affairs. This is a bit surprising.

Despite pressures from my friends and well wishers, I have refused to monitize my blog or link it with blog rolls or other blogs. I have always had a steady readers numbering 3-40 per day. I am thankful to my readers for coming back again and again. I hope at least a few of these posts would have provided stimulation to your brain cells.

I bow my head in pranam to my Gurus and Goddess Saraswathi. This 1000th posting would not have been possible without their blessings.

Let the marathon continue............................................

Moral and Ethical bankruptcy of Politicians

The Anna Hazare movement exposed the ethical and moral bankruptcy of all our political parties.

Here was an issue which is dear to the people of the country, irrespective of the rich, middle class or the poor - Corruption. Here was an issue, which they could have and should have supported whole heartedly, and won the hearts of the people, whom they claim to represent. But all of them missed the big picture. The issue was one of corruption. By turning it into a movement against the parliamentary democracy system, and the need to protect the parliaments integrity, they came across as self preserving unethical bandicoots. Congress was shown up as downright thugs. The BJP was leaderless and did not take a firm position till the end. When they did, it was too little too late. The Yadav clan was vociferously opposed to Anna. So too was Mayavati. The so called moral guardians of the nation, the Left, put up a weak case of supporting the anti corruption drive, but was dead against the Anna mode of protests - but never gave an alternate option. The southern parties blew hot and blew cold. The Shiv senas and Akali Dals were not to be heard at all.

This could be the beginning of the end of our current parliamentary system. The disillusionment with our politicians is complete now. And for the second time, a leader from outside of the political spectrum has come up.

Though the gains of the Anna crusade was minimal, this could yet result in some long term structural changes in the polity.

And that couldnt be too bad either