A critical aspect of the fallout of the Adani group or any similar large business is how its lenders are going to deal with the aftershock and this is something I haven’t seen addressed anywhere. Post covid all big and small lenders are aggressively liquidating assets of borrowers whose loans have turned NPAs. I know this because I proof read ads of possession and sale notices published by banks and other lending financial institutions in newspapers through an advertising company. I have seen sale notice of asset for a measly Rs. 4 lakh loan. Why are banks behaving like extortionists? Because they are unable to recover business loans.
Businesses that borrow monstrously like in the case of Adani Group have fixed assets and very little in the form of liquid assets. They do not have a single lender but a consortium of lenders like in the case of Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines fiasco. When his airline business nosedived and went south he informed the lenders that he is unable to manage it anymore. The lenders got together and decided to invest more into his business hoping he could somehow turn things around. Finally, all that the lenders had were office buildings and airplanes to liquidate. Because of their vast influence over governments and civil administration these business leaders are unaffected by the consequences of NPAs.
So what can banks do to control their losses to some degree and repay investors who have invested with them? Turn to individual borrowers because they are helpless when the SARFAESI Act is enforced on them for forceful recovery of loans. What is worrisome is, if the Adani Group sinks even the recovery of all individual NPAs is not going to help banks overcome the catastrophic aftershock.
Indian opposition parties are up in arms against the Modi-Adani bonhomie. They are 9 years too late. When Modi was the PM candidate in the 2014 elections, he used to travel by helicopter to election rallies all over India from Gujarat and return the same day. The helicopter, pilot and fuel were all provided by Adani. This was in the public domain and everyone knew about it. Adani is a businessman and anyone who thought he was doing this merely out of friendship was being naïve. He was making a massive investment and what was he expecting in return? Now we know. Full and unfettered access to the corridors of power and to public money. The full extent of the financial damage that has been caused may never be revealed. What is required is a Supreme Court monitored fully independent financial audit, of all businesses of the Adani group and of all the financial institutions that are lenders of the Adani group. This is what the opposition parties should vehemently demand for. As long as the BJP is in control of the central government this will remain a fantasy.
LinkedIn has been inundated with posts about employees quitting jobs because of bad managers for quite some time. While this is true and I have done the same in my past jobs, a good amount of introspection coupled with plenty of reading has helped me understand my experiences better.
The origins of bad managers lies in the history of management itself. Industrial revolution gave rise to manufacturing and we started producing a myriad of items as our needs increased exponentially. Soon we realized that tasks are repetitive in manufacturing and we came up with processes to streamline the tasks. This in turn helped us to create documents which we call as manuals. Workers had to simply follow the steps mentioned in the manuals. This literally meant there was no work to be managed. When manager position was created it was to manage the workers and drive them to increase their efficiency and in turn the factory produce. Deming’s model or the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle embodies this culture of management.
When technology improved drastically and disrupted all industries it too adopted the same form of management, the best example of which is the waterfall methodology in software development. As technology matured it became evident that creating a software product and manufacturing nuts and bolts are as different as chalk and cheese. Also, unlike the erstwhile factory workers who were largely uneducated and followed the manuals and orders of their managers, technology professionals are educated, know what they are doing, have the ability to solve problems and can think out of the box. So the need changed to managing work and getting products out into the market as quickly as possible so that they can be monetized. This has given rise to the Agile methodology. One of the pillars of Agile methodology is self organizing teams that are absolutely clear about what and how much work can be completed in each sprint cycle. Such teams do not need managers, rather they need someone who can minimize/eliminate disruptions to work and can communicate clearly with the team members. In SCRUM, this is the role of Scrum Master.
The general expectation from every employee is that they need to be at their maximum efficiency during their work timings. Employees have to be fully focused on their work for 8 hours. What this means is, employees have to turn off all other aspects of their lives in their minds as soon as they step into their offices. We know this is far from reality. Our professional and personal lives are not mutually exclusive rather they are intricately interconnected. When employees reach office their minds are filled with thoughts about different aspects of their personal lives and it takes time for them to start focusing on work. The exact reverse happens when they reach home after work. All body functions are performed using blood so when we have food blood is required for digestion. Depending on the amount of food we eat some part of blood from the brain is also utilized in the digestion process. This is why we feel sleepy after a heavy meal. Add to this all the conversations, meetings and other distractions. Taking all of these into account, out of the 8 hours, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to be fully productive for more than 5 hours.
Now, let me narrate why I quit two of my previous jobs.
I wanted to do MBA from my engineering days but didn’t have a substantial reason to embark on it. In a previous job, I joined a customer support project which had a security management system which I had to learn on my own to support and maintain it. In 2 1/2 years, I became an expert on it. After I was sent on an onsite assignment I won contracts for my company to upgrade the security management systems for two of its clients. The IT head of one client was a German and he put me through 3 hours of grueling technical session on the product. I also learned a lot about the businesses in different domains and business aspects of outsourcing in those years so finally I knew why I wanted to do MBA. I wanted to move into roles where I would be engaging with clients, solving business problems and making businesses streamlined and efficient. Meanwhile, a promotion would have made me manager and as the management sat for 5 years twiddling its thumbs contemplating if I should be promoted, they made two glaring mistakes. 1) They never asked me what I wanted 2) They did not define a career path for me in spite of seeing my capabilities and strengths so clearly. In the last project I did for the company, I went for knowledge acquisition to the client’s location which was outsourcing its IT operations for the first time and returned to India to set up an IT support team. The initial days were hard as the client needed support during non-office hours as well. I became sleep deprived and was on the edge of insomnia when I went to a friend’s place one evening after work and passed out after having a can of beer. Then, having beer to sleep started getting repetitive. It was at this point that I fell out with my managers. After working for 10 straight years without a break I realized I had to go do something else and the MBA was staring right at my face.
In another job, the company was known to provide work from home facility to most of its employees. My dad was not well at that time, my work location was far away from my hometown and dad was in no position to be relocated to a new place. Work from home was important so I didn’t mind joining at a lower salary. Precisely at this juncture, company changed its work from home policy, started forcing all employees to return to office and put a blanket ban on work from home for new joiners. The first two months I was on bench and had nothing much to do, third month I was assigned to a project, fifth month the manager changed and in another month the new manager had messed up the project. To add to this he targeted me and put me on Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) in just under two months after starting to manage the project which is unheard of.
In both cases, I did not quit those jobs because managers created adverse situations. They created the triggers which led me to decide to move on. My decisions to look ahead were not because I didn’t want to continue in those jobs or I couldn’t handle those managers and bad management. I already had enough to handle in my life, didn’t want to spend any of my time and energy suffering bad managers and had no stomach to fight to hold on to a job. I simply pulled myself out of the toxic environments they had created. Quitting jobs because of bad managers essentially means out of all the relationships and situations employees have to handle every day, a toxic manager is the easiest and least important one to get rid of. What is interesting though is, on the flip side, employees will brave every odds if they know they have managers with whom they can communicate openly and place their trust. Companies believe all employees can be retained by dangling the carrots of promotions and salary hikes before them. There will come a time in everyone’s career where mental health will assume greater significance than all other incentives.
These managers carry the legacy of factory management in their corporate genes where they revel in imposing themselves on employees and torture them in the name of micromanagement. Companies also believe employees cannot think for themselves, do not know what they want out of their careers and which career path to take so managers are assigned to decide for the employees. This is how employees get stuck in the promotion cycles and become disgruntled when they are passed on for promotions.
There are multitudes of causes and effects behind every employee’s decision to quit their jobs. Managers just light the match stick which results in the fire. Changing the factory worker management mindset is the most important step. Moving from people to work management is another crucial one. Employees spend 8 hours and more 5 days a week in office so they need someone who can manage their work load and be there for them to talk to. Manager mindset and management practices haven’t evolved with time which is what is required to control employee attrition because of bad managers and poor management.
There is a delightful and must watch Malayalam social satire movie, Pranchiyettan and the Saint that was released in 2010. Pranchi is the colloquial Malayalam version of the name Francis and ettan means big brother. Superstar Mammootty plays the titular role of Pranchiyettan and the film’s background is set in the market of wholesale dealers of rice in Thrissur in Kerala which incidentally happens to be my hometown. From his grandfather’s time his family was in the wholesale business of rice and he got the nickname of ‘ari (rice) Pranchi from his school days. The movie chronicles the desperation of Pranchiyettan to get rid of the ‘rice’ legacy he carries and how he gets comically duped each time. His desperation reaches the crescendo when he is coaxed into shelling out Rs. 1 crore in return for being bestowed with the Padmashri award (an implicit pointer to the fact that awards are now more bought than genuinely given), gets fooled again and the ensuing ridicule he has to face.
Narendra Modi shares a similar dilemma with Pranchiyettan. He has been unable to shake the stigma of ‘Butcher of Godhra’ off his back even after 2 decades, being absolved off the charges leveled against him by the Supreme Court and even after becoming the Prime Minister of India twice. It was obvious that he was expecting the whole of India and the rest of the world to embrace him and conveniently erase his life before he became the Prime Minister from their collective memory. But the stigma of Godhra, now rekindled by the BBC documentary must have left him sore and infuriated to his bones. One question begs for an answer: If he has been exonerated of any crime in the Godhra incident, why is the government banning the documentary so aggressively in India and why are BJP supporters up in arms on the streets resorting to violence to prevent the screening of the documentary?
There is something of far greater significance that must be nagging him or must worry him. He is India’s first Prime Minister from the time India’s (and the world’s) digital age truly began. The portrayal of him as the true and only leader to lead India into the ‘Golden age’ and equating him with Lord Shiva (NaMo) was spread largely through the digital world. The perception battle was won hands down on social media platforms. But the same social media platforms have turned out be double edged swords, providing his detractors the space to question, deride, ridicule and even abuse him. What is noteworthy here is, none of India’s past Prime Ministers have got treated badly like him, not in the past not in the present. There is the element of respect that India’s past Prime Ministers have received, from within the country and globally that Modi has been unable to garner in spite of all his high pitch speeches, photo op sessions and the effusive bonhomie with global leaders. When he boldly proclaimed in 2014 after becoming the Prime Minister that anyone, even a tea seller’s son can become the most powerful leader of the country, he inadvertently lowered his own stature as well as the dignified qualities required for a Prime Minister to have to be respected by the global leaders.
The stigma of Godhra and his inability to win the respect and acceptance of being the most popular and accepted leader are going to have detrimental effects on his legacy. He should have been mindful of these aspects before elevating himself as the only one worthy of leading the country. History is not going to be kind to him.
News of layoffs from Silicon Valley heavyweights and the startup world are grabbing headlines and eyeballs each day now. Professional social media platform LinkedIn is inundated with posts from laid off employees expressing anguish at the way they were locked out of company premises and office computer networks abruptly. There are several reasons for what has been happening but it would be better understood by first looking at business fundamentals and other underlying factors.
All companies aspire to grow their revenue and profit margins Year-On-Year (YOY) and this is the mandate of their top executives. Business strategies are created for both revenue generation and cost saving (money saved is money created) based on market analysis and macroeconomic conditions. This results in the initiation of projects which when executed results in the development of products, services, etc which can either be commercialized and monetized to generate revenue or used internally to increase efficiency and thereby reduce cost to companies. Bigger companies will have multiple projects and startups will be mostly working on developing a single product/service. Now, there are business evaluation methods (NPV, IRR) to establish if a project can be successful but there can be hurdles during project execution, introduction of similar products/services and other market changes, changes in macroeconomic conditions and availability of funds that can fail the project and failure of companies in case of startups.
There is a business evaluation model called PEST which is used to analyze macroeconomic conditions to determine the success or failure of a business initiative. PEST stands for Political-Economic-Social-Technological. PEST was later extended to PESTEL to include Ecological and Legal factors. Ecological can be largely divided into two factors – natural disasters and diseases. Companies have traditionally ignored ecological factors during business evaluations. The first time I came across ecological factor becoming relevant was after the devastating Mumbai flood in 2005. A client that had outsourced its IT operations to a service provider based out of Mumbai asked for a disaster recovery (DR) team to be set up in Bangalore. But diseases were completely ignored.
When the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and countries went into lockdown, supply chains got massively disrupted. Companies were forced to modify their strategies and operations with immediate effect or close down. As the lockdowns extended, many of the ongoing projects became reduntant temporarily while new business opportunities started coming to the fore. Online home delivery and educational platforms popped up and thrived. Hiring increased substantially to implement and support new projects. It was evident that lockdowns had to end or would cripple economies of countries but where companies seem to have grossly mistaken is in their assumption that businesses would not or take a long time to return to pre-covid situation. My understanding is, if businesses had done their evaluation by considering ecological factors and specifically the factor of diseases and understood the implications, the world would not have had to go through what it had to for two years of the pandemic.
It is well known that majority of projects initiated by companies and majority of startups fail. Companies try to absorb employees in failed projects into other projects whereas startups are left with no option but to let go off their employees. But organizational consolidation amid fears of impending economic recession, disruption caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising inflation and interest rates have resulted in the layoffs we are seeing now. There are different categories of employees that have been impacted now.
1) Employees on bench – Employees who are not assigned to projects or are out of projects and yet to get new projects are assigned to bench where they are trained on new technologies and topics while they continue to receive their monthly salaries. Normal practice is, most employees on bench get assigned to new projects and those who don’t are let go after a specific period of time. When layoffs due to consolidation is initiated, bench employees are the first ones to be affected.
2) New/recent joiners – When projects slow down or become redundant, new/recent joiners get impacted first when projects are shut down or team sizes are trimmed.
3) Senior employees – Yes and no surprises. All companies expect their employees to upskill themselves along with increasing experience and move up the ranks. While it is true that the corporate pyramid becomes thinner with increasing height, employees who choose to do nothing or continue staying in specific roles become redundant with time and replaceable. In a previous job, I have seen experienced people of a specific skill being let go and people with less experience of the same skill being hired to fill up those roles. Senior resources are needed in projects only till the time the projects become stable and all information is documented. Then projects can be run easily with a couple of senior people and team members with lesser experience who need to be paid far less salaries. This is also a way for the companies to reduce expenses and make the projects profitable. Moreover, new graduates are leaving colleges with the knowledge of latest technologies and who need to be paid only a fraction of what the senior employees are being paid. This is also making senior employees redundant and expendable.
Top executives are needed for businesses to ride through the storm so they will not be let go off now. In the recent past, some companies were offering high severance packages for top executives to take voluntary retirement because new and young leaders bring fresh perspectives into leadership roles.
It is important to note here that as employee headcount increases the number of internal staff in human resources, facilities and other departments also increase. These employees play no part in revenue generation and add on to cost to the company. Employee reduction also results in the reduction of internal staff count.
Do we need to fear or worry about layoffs? Lush green forests dries out in the summer heat and just a single spark of fire is needed to burn it to the ground. All that smoke and heat, in turn. rises up and brings rain. From the ashes, life springs up again. Life is cyclic and this is the Universal truth. Difficult times force us to introspect and is the time for reality check. These are the times which help us to understand if we want to learn something new and get back into the market or find our true passion and set our lives in a new direction. Any transition is difficult and no one is living happy, peaceful and stable lives which is what everyone is aspiring for. Challenges will come in everyone’s life at some point in time. Overcoming them and moving forward is what makes us truly successful.
Came across this social media post about a leopard and a dog getting stuck inside a toilet and the leopard choosing to not feed on the dog. What is interesting is the comments of wildlife researchers who have opined that the leopard became sad because it got stuck inside the toilet and lost its freedom so it no longer had interest in feeding. The glaring flaw here is, if this was true all predator animals would have starved themselves to death in captivity. Predators hunt prey and feed on the fresh meat. Some predators like lions leave the leftover carcass and walk away. Some felines like leopards and jaguars carry the leftover carcass and hide it to feed later. The point here is, fresh blood and flesh when in contact with air develops strong stench after some time. The stench is at the spot where the prey is killed. Scavengers catch this stench and arrive to devour the leftover carcass. If the leopard had killed and consumed the dog inside the toilet it would have been stuck in the enclosed space with the stench of the carcass. This is the most likely reason why it did not attack the dog.
Here is another social media post which tries to compare and equate predator-prey relationships in nature with capitalist exploitation. Animals kill only for food. Also, no animal kills members of its own species. Only we kill our fellow beings for a thousand reasons (which is why we have words such as murder, assassination, etc) and only we kill animals without the need to consume them. Capitalism is a human construct intended for some among us to become wealthy and powerful and exploit the rest of us. There is no exploitation and greed in nature and there is no parallel to capitalism in nature.
Social media platforms are inundated with posts in which animal behavior is being interpreted from our perspective. Our emotional side becomes dominant when we analyze most of the incidents and situations in life. This is what has created what we call as human-wildlife conflict. Tempers rise and emotions become frenzied every time tigers and leopards attack us, elephants enter our area and cause destruction, wild boars destroy crops and dogs, snakes and jackals steal our poultry. Question is, are animals intentionally trying to harm us? This is where we need to think from their perspective and understand their situation. The fundamental need of animals is food and water. When there is enough food and water available, animals will reproduce and multiply. When food and water becomes scarce they will not reproduce and focus only on self sustenance. To be a dominant species in nature’s ecosystem, animals have to reproduce and maintain a sizeable population. Animals adapt to changes in nature’s ecosystem to survive which is why every animal’s diet consists of a range of different items. Many animals have become omnivores and consume both plants and meat because of this reason. The exploding human population has been forced to encroach into forests thereby destroying the habitat and food sources of wild animals. We have all grown up being taught and in the belief that wild animals will die if forests become extinct. We completely missed the factor of adaptability. To survive and to reproduce, wild animals are adapting to us which is why they are attacking us, our crops and our poultry. There are always degrees of risk involved in hunting in the wild. Prey animals can cause significant injuries to predators such as zebras breaking the jaws of lions by kicking with their hind legs during hunting chase. We, our crops and poultry are easy and risk free meals so wild animals are adapting more quickly to all this. Contrary to popular belief, population of many wild animals is going to increase in due course of time.
It is this ignorance of nature and the lack of understanding of the ability of animals to adapt that has prompted this minister from my home state (Kerala) to call for the culling of tigers to control their population. There is also discussion going on to control the population of wild elephants and monkeys. As long as food is available animals will continue to reproduce and they will counter any forceful reduction in their population through more reproduction. We still do not want to admit that it is the destruction of the habitat of wild animals because of our burgeoning population that is causing human-wildlife conflict. We have already created many types of imbalances in nature’s ecosystem, the most deadly one being burning fossils and releasing all the carbon trapped in them into the atmosphere. Human-wildlife conflict is creating another imbalance where some animals are going to adapt to us and the ones that cannot are going to become extinct. We have been tugging at nature’s sleeves and pushing it to the tipping point. A global natural catastrophe is becoming increasingly imminent. What we are doing is suicidal and we are going to achieve nothing but self destruction.
October to February of every year are the most important months for the birding community. Birds in the Northern Hemisphere embark on their epic migration to escape the onset of the frigid winter season and in search of food. They start migrating after the end of their breeding season so they lose all their breeding plumage and develop nondescript plumage that can help them blend into the surroundings during their journey. The birding community in my hometown eagerly awaits every year for the migrating birds to arrive in large numbers at the vast swathe of wetlands which is home to paddy cultivation at the end of the monsoon season. Before cultivation begins the wetlands are filled with water birds and waders that give way to raptors and passerine birds when farming starts. The birding community is out there in full force during these months as there are new birds to be seen and identified when they take a breather to rest and feed and also to witness any dramatic events like raptors such as Eagles and Harriers hunting snakes and other small birds.
I am part of a birding community on social media which is specifically focused on birding in the wetlands and in the monitoring of activities at the wetlands. Amur Falcons are famous for their yearly migration from their far off breeding grounds in Siberia through the North East side of India to the southern part and eventually to the African continent. Although huge flocks are seen in the North East very few are seen in Kerala, my home state at isolated places. So the birding community went ballistic about a month back when 4 Amur Falcons arrived at the wetlands not very far from where I reside. 3 of them left abruptly but one female stayed back. Birders thronged to the location to see it and get some good shots. Couple of days back, a doctor in the group asked me if the Falcon was still there. I was told by other group members that the Falcon seemed to be injured and not in good health so it would not be wise to disturb it. But the doctor and I decided to go today and get a few distant shots. But I was completely unprepared for what I bore witness today.
When we reached the location a few birders were already there and were trying to feed the Falcon with worms in order to attract it to the ground from its perch on the high electric line so that they could get good shots.
After spending some time with them we moved ahead and came across a Black-winged Kite. Suddenly the Kite swooped down into an area of tall grass. When one birder went to check on the Kite to see if it had hunted a prey he was shocked to see the carcass of a Peregrine Falcon lying on the ground. The Peregrine Falcon had arrived a few days back and seems to have got electrocuted on the electric line today morning. We decided to shift the carcass to an open space nearby so that we can photograph the Kite consuming it.
As the Kite descended on the carcass, the Amur Falcon flew and landed near the carcass. What happened next blew our collective minds away. What we get to see on National Geographic and Animal Planet transpired right in front of our eyes. The Amur Falcon engaged in a fierce duel with the Kite for a couple of minutes. Pound to pound the Falcon is smaller than the Kite so it was riveting to see them spread out their wings on the ground and go at each other menacingly. The Kite eventually decided to abandon the carcass and flew away. I was under the assumption that the Falcon engaged with the Kite for feeding rights but the Falcon left the carcass and flew away. Amur and Peregrine Falcons share habitat during migration. They may have some sort of ecological balance with one another. Such information may get passed on genetically along with the knowledge of migration. This could be a possible reason for the Amur Falcon to fiercely protect the carcass of the Peregrine Falcon and not consume it.
These were easily some of the finest moments in the last 8 years of my birding life. Every time I go for birding I fervently hope to see and click birds in flight to capture the wonderful expanse and colors of their wings and birds hunting their prey. What I saw in these couple of moments today has trumped everything I have experienced till now.
The recruiting head of a startup company based out of my home state in India contacted me recently for a senior role. Seemingly buoyed at my profile being a good fit for the role, she immediately set up an online interview. I went through the company website and checked out the team. When the interview invite came, I saw that the CEO was in the list of attendees and checked his LinkedIn profile. Turned out he had done all his education and all his work experience was with companies in my home state. He has never stepped out to work and has experience only in working with small to medium local companies and not with large and multinational enterprises. Having the polar opposite of his background I would have been a complete misfit in his company. Just as I had thought, during the interview it was evident from his body language and his way of speaking that he had no intention of hiring me. Couple of takeaways from this.
1) Recruiters look for match between job description and candidate profiles and largely ignore the cultural fit aspect. It isn’t about the organization culture but the specific team culture for which the hiring is being done and the tone of the culture is set by the hiring manager which is defined by the manager’s personality, technical and people management competency and at times even their academic background. In the case of startups the CEO/Founder sets the tone of the organization’s culture. When candidates are rejected before/after interviews cultural mismatch is one major reason which is never mentioned. Whenever people have asked my opinion about joining companies I have told them any organization is fine what matters are the role, the manager and the team’s culture. At the lower levels of the corporate pyramid, team culture doesn’t matter much but assumes significance as responsibilities grows with roles.
2) The head of a department in a government engineering college in my home state once told me that students are no longer interested in completing their degrees and are obsessed with starting companies. This startup culture is being fueled by the glorified stories of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg being college dropouts and going on to build Microsoft and Facebook, Sabeer Bhatia founding Hotmail and selling it to Microsoft and by the relative ease of acquiring funding now. The new trend is the growing obsession of having one of the CXO designations. Startups are largely associated with innovation which has distorted the meaning and purpose of innovation. Innovations have impacted, improved and drastically changed the entire human race. Radio, TV, Telephone, Fan and Penicillin are some of the best examples. For me, an air conditioner is not an innovation because it is still a luxury and hasn’t reached the majority of human population but a mobile phone has. How many of such innovations do we see coming out from the startup ecosystem and impacting humanity positively? Now it is all about money, go-to-market strategy is all about commercializing ideas and monetizing them, raising funds, achieving breakeven, becoming profitable, paying back investors, equity and financial ratios and percentages. The concept of innovation and business being for the people and by the people has largely eroded away. When I asked the CEO what his future plans for his company was he replied that he wants to expand internationally but not in India. Someone who knows nothing about international work culture is having lofty aspirations to go global with his business. Clearly, his focus is on generating higher revenue by leveraging on the weaker Indian Rupee compared to the Dollar and Euro. With such narrow vision these startups and CXOs aren’t going a long way ahead.
Through the course of human civilization, we have always sung and written about the best and the victorious among us. History is all about the tales of the heroes who braved everything and emerged victorious. No word is spoken about the ones who lost because we have been taught to believe they are the villains or the bad guys or the ones who needed to lose or die. Nature teaches us that may not be the case every time. So here is a story of the one who fought valiantly and lost.
Over the years, during my walks through the wetlands I have heard cries coming underneath the water and from the bushes spread across the land. First time I heard I thought it was a kitten stuck somewhere, so similar was the cry. Local people at the wetlands told me it is the cry of toads that have been caught by snakes. In 2018 I saw the sight for the first time, a toad being swallowed by a chequered keelback. Today, I saw the sight for the second time. But this time, situation was amply different. Wetlands have been dug up for paddy cultivation and the snake had bit into the side of one of the legs of the toad. Keelbacks are non-venomous, so they have to hold on to their prey at all cost and then slowly swallow it.
The snake hadn’t grabbed the toad properly and the toad knew this so in order to shake the snake off the toad decided to jump into the water on the side of the muddy area. The toad managed to drag the quite hefty snake along with it into the water.
It could also be that the snake chose to go along with the toad because keelbacks live in muddy waters and they need not worry about losing the toad in the water.
What needs to be noticed now is the surface of the water. That is oil spilled from the machineries used to till the mud for farming. It is not just pesticides and insecticides, pollution is affecting land and farm produce in many different ways. The toad was forced to jump into this polluted hell to escape from the snake. If it had been able to shake off the snake it could have gone under the water where it could have been safer.
But even in this oily hell the snake did not let go off its vice like bite on the toad’s leg.
Finally the toad seemed to become tired and gave up on its struggle to escape from the snake’s mortal bite.
I know everyone would think that the toad was afraid of death that’s why it was trying to escape from the snake. Fear as an emotion exists only among us and not in nature. Survival is a natural instinct and all animals in nature try to survive so that they can reproduce and their species can maintain their dominance in nature’s ecosystem. All animals try to maximize reproduction and nature controls population through diseases, predator-prey relationship, etc. The toad here was only trying to survive. If there was fear in the animal world, they would have also learned to build houses to protect themselves. Birds build nests to raise their young then why don’t they build nests for them to live? Because all animals follow nature’s fundamental law of survival of the fittest and they seem to know death is part of nature.
We Indians have cursed and complained about our governments, politicians and civil administration for being corrupt and useless and the judiciary for not being able to deliver justice at least once in our lifetime. I too have, several times. The corporate world requires its employees to talk about solutions and not keep complaining about problems. But the challenge is figuring out where to start solving the problem. Same is the case with our country. We need reforms in every possible way but where do we start from?
Before Independence, India’s literacy rate was very poor and most of the educated people were involved in the Independence movement in one way or the other. Almost all of them became part of India’s administration post Independence. When the legislature, executive and judiciary were defined in the Indian Constitution, the legislature and executive could be elected but how to elect the judiciary? That power was given to the President of India but therein lies the problem. The President is elected by the legislature through vote. We have seen successive Presidents being elected at the behest of the political party that is in majority in the Parliament. This leaves the door open for the executive to exert its influence over the election of Supreme Court judges indirectly. There is another problem that goes hand-in-hand with this situation. Courts in India can only issue and doesn’t have the power to execute its judgements and orders. Be it the police, state and central investigation agencies, all are controlled by the central and respective state governments. The Courts need the state and central governments to execute its judgements and orders. If we look back at the Rafale case and how fingers were pointed at PM Modi, I told my dad nothing was going to come out of it. Even if the court found Modi guilty, who would arrest the PM? It would have had to be himself. Judiciary going against the executive and legislature will break the fabric of the country.
There is another underlying problem here. When corruption started seeping into the administration power hungry politicians started ruling the country and continues to this day. Even the media says Congress/BJP/Left “ruled” state and not “governed” state. The white British raj simply got replaced by the brown Indian raj. Then those politicians started using goons and criminals to exert their power and influence over one another and over the people. Then some of the goons and criminals became smart and thought why work for politicians when they themselves can win elections and become politicians. This is why most elected members to Parliament and state legislature have some association with crime in the past or present. Then these elected members elect the President who in turn elect the Supreme Court judges. So it is quite obvious how crime and criminals have and can exert control over law and justice. This is the primary reason why Indian judiciary has become stale and ineffective.
I believe India can be reformed by two simple steps:-
1) Make the judiciary an independent entity. Judiciary is the guardian of the Constitution so it should be beyond any influence. The Constitution is for the people by the people. So establish a way to elect judges by the people or representatives of people without any affiliation to politics, legislature and executive.
2) Hand over control of central investigation agencies to Supreme Court and state police and state investigation agencies to respective High Courts. Their powers should be vested with the courts and courts should give administrative rights to the police and investigation agencies to the state and central governments.
Arm the courts to execute its orders on anyone in the country irrespective of their status and see how India changes in a day.
Rishad Premji, son of Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji recently commented that moonlighting or working in multiple jobs simultaneously is unethical and amounts to cheating. Question to ask here is, why do employees in India moonlight? There are several reasons:- 1) The most important one – monetary needs driven by inflation, taxes, medical needs, supporting aged parents and children, paying loans and a ton of other reasons and salary increments companies give that do not even remotely match the ever increasing needs brought on by the above mentioned factors. 2) Dissatisfaction in their current full time jobs because of poor management and bad managers, poor salaries and salary hikes and work that is monotonous, nothing to learn from and devoid of challenges. 3) Taboo imposed by hiring managers and recruiters who look down upon employees who switch jobs frequently. 4) For younger professionals looking to grow, moonlighting gives them the opportunity to learn more quickly and compete better in the job market.
Rishad Premji can say what he wants from his position of inheritance and privilege. Company owners, CEOs and other top executives who take paychecks that are 100 to 1000 times of the peanuts doled out to regular employees will not have the need to moonlight. Only if he is in the shoes of someone who is moonlighting will he truly understand why employees do one full time job, come home exhausted and compromise on their health, well being and family time to work more.
Tax collectors in Delhi were colluding with businesses to help them cheat on their taxes. In 2015, the new Delhi state government started providing tax collectors with bikes to travel, paid their fuel bills and gave them laptops, mobiles and incentives on tax collection. Revenue generated from tax collection jumped exponentially in a year’s time because tax collectors felt guilty about cheating the government that was taking so much care of them. This is a great example for companies who are complaining about moonlighting employees to learn from and start taking care of their employees so that they don’t feel the need to moonlight.
Ranjeet Menon's Blog 