The poster boy of Indian entrepreneurs of the 21st century, Narayana Murthy, is back in business at Infosys – the third biggest Indian tech firm – with a renewed mission to reverse the slide that had happened in his absence. Of course the economic slowdown had its own role to play, but the Infosys slide has been mainly engineered by a rising attrition rate, probably because of eroding values of employee welfare; values that were initially laid down by Murthy himself. The catchword of ‘employees first’ resonating with equal importance to ‘customers first’ was pioneered in India by Infosys, not just as a business strategy to foster higher revenues but also higher happiness levels of its workers. You can call it altruism, but trust me, despite some new-age philosophies preaching against this construct, it is better than the ‘me only’ capitalist doctrines. Even the heartland of United States that was built on the ideals of ‘survival of the fittest’ and showed little sympathy for those who couldn’t make it, has been eventually forced to acknowledge the pain, frustration and miseries of the weak as was evidenced through the Occupy Wall Street campaign and President Obama’s second term. Barack Obama is often castigated by the Conservatives and media for being a socialist, and hence labeled as weak – a typically stereotyped capitalistic prophecy – only to find out that the overwhelming middle-class voters are behind him, despite his belonging to a racial minority. That’s leveling scores of socialism with capitalism, which many thought is indispensable. Without any doubt, capitalism forms the backbone of almost any economy; and centrally-controlled government planning or equal wage distribution based on principles of communism alone cannot take a country far and on the path of being economically prosperous. But an equitable distribution of wealth is as much important in an economy as ‘wealth creation’ per se is. And Narayana Murthy understood this perfectly, an understanding that set the standard for ESOPs in Infosys. He distributed Rs.50,000 crores among his employees and made all of them shareholders of Infosys. Even when he founded Infosys with his and his wife’s savings, in a first ever in India, he made his top employees top shareholders of Infosys, making many multi-millionaires. That’s socialism at its best – upholding dignity and ownership from the topmost to the lowermost in a flat employee structure. But that doesn’t mean he did not pursue capitalism – Murthy created wealth through capitalism and prudently distributed it to his people as an exemplar of socialism. His motto of following capitalism in his mind and socialism in his heart was thus fulfilled. Truly, this set the pattern for many others in similar businesses; and Indian entrepreneurs, at large, now follow his exemplary principles as Murthy showed that it is possible to build a business empire with socialist values. Read More....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles SC slams AICTE's illicit control on MBA coursesMBA, MCA courses no longer under AICTE 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
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With another forgettable budget being presented in India, let me show how real commitment for the downtrodden can alter a country’s economic landscape! When the capitalist West won the Cold War against Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, it became an underlined conclusion among political pundits and in fact a common perception that capitalism was the real path for success – rather than socialism, which was made to appear as a sure shot road to economic doom! However, this self-ratified superiority of capitalism and the entire Western chest-thumping exercise that existed during those times and even the succeeding decades are all but gone. United States is grinding it out through an extended recession streak and Europe is literally struggling to keep the eurozone in one piece, with the entire eurozone on the verge of collapsing like a broken jigsaw puzzle. The recession in Europe and North America, which started in 2008, is like a never-ending nightmare with no sight of revival whatsoever! Reports of frequent protests all across Europe with people ransacking and vandalizing public property tell volumes about the distorted economic model of the entire region. One such set of protests – the Occupy Wall Street movement – epitomized the public outrage against the capitalistic style of governance in the United States. What worked for Barack Obama during these times of instability, were perhaps his pseudo-socialistic doctrines, which marked the beginning of a new economic era in a country that was once considered an unrelenting proponent of and for capitalism. In similar lines, the current chaos in developed economies too is speeding a transition towards a new economic pattern... a pattern that is gradually reinstating the very essence of socialism once more! Spearheading this latent movement forever has been Cuba, which has shown incredible resilience against the American tirade and in many spheres is much better placed than most capitalist countries across the globe. The US trade embargo against Cuba – which the Cubans prefer to call an “economic blockade” – with its entire wherewithal could not destabilize their economy. An example typifying how the United States has continuously bullied Cuba was when America stalled the passage of a Swedish medical equipment consignment on the ground that the filters attached with the instruments were patented under US law. In similar fashion, America has regularly curtailed transactions of Cuba with various countries and corporations – whether it was to do with importing diagnostic instruments from Japan, chemicals from Italy, or X-Ray machines from France. But in spite of such attempts to distort and damage the Cuban economy, the country discovered many avenues to bypass the truant American meddling, by entering into joint ventures with foreign corporations and infusing investment in their home turf. The tie-ups Cuba managed included corporations from Germany, France, Brazil, Canada and even UK. The total project outlay from foreign collaboration in Cuba has surpassed $5 billion and is ever increasing now, involving around 60 different countries in 40 different sectors with the total number of such projects exceeding 240! That’s an incredible feat considering that Cuba has been economically isolated by the United States for decades now, with very few political and economic patronages worth mentioning. They did it on their own and did it with a socialistic approach! They escaped the clutches of recession, which shaped the misery of most Western nations, with their committed socialistic bent; and their economy is now advancing at an astronomical rate of 9.6 per cent per annum. Read More....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles SC slams AICTE's illicit control on MBA coursesMBA, MCA courses no longer under AICTE 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
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This article is not about Shiv Sena bashing, because enough people are doing that; and personally, I can’t imagine how Mumbai could have possibly had a normal day on the streets when two million of its citizens were genuinely mourning the death of the Shiv Sena supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray. In fact, before I get into the main article, let me also first say a few things about the Mumbai bandh and the Balasaheb legacy of absolutist fear. Yes, post his death, the fear factor was surely there... and that was a key reason why, even without a formally announced bandh, there was a total bandh in Mumbai. Yes, I also believe that the rest of Maharashtra should have been more normal. However, it is also a fact that this vexing fear that we are talking about and such quasi-bandhs are not really the monopoly of Shiv Sainiks. Bangalore was at a standstill when Rajkumar died a few years ago; there have been bandhs and equal fear of SP goons in UP, and far more fear, door to door, all over West Bengal about CPM goons; and now the same insidious mantle is steadily being taken up by importunate Trinamool party cadres. In India, hero worship is a culture and the loud existence and fear of suppressive political goons almost a pathetic norm in every corner of the nation. What was however very different about Balasaheb Thackeray was that he was the only leader that we have seen – in the midst of all hypocrites and chameleons – who, as my colleague Sutanu wrote in his blog, was always perspicuously consistent. BJP leaders will agree; they have seen all bigwigs – from Omar Abdullah, Mamata Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik, Prafulla Mahanta, M. Karunanidhi, Chandrababu Naidu, Ram Vilas Paswan to J. Jayalalithaa – change sides from being BJP allies at one time, while Balasaheb, along with the Akali Dal, remained their only constant partners. Thus, his cult following has quite strong reasons, and it’s a fact that the so called secular media has been harsher about the Shiv Sainik goons than about the Samajwadi and so called secular Marxist goons. Having said that, it is shocking how a professor can be arrested in Bengal for forwarding a cartoon on Facebook; how a cartoonist can be arrested for making a cartoon on the government; and unbelievably, how a young girl – Shaheen Dhadha – can be arrested for posting something as basic as: “With all respect, every day, thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. Just due to one politician died a natural death, everyone just goes bonkers. They should know, we are resilient by force, not by choice. When was the last time, did anyone showed some respect or even a two-minute silence for Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Azad, Sukhdev or any of the people because of whom we are free-living Indians? Respect is earned, given, and definitely not forced. Today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect.[sic]” – while another girl can be arrested for liking the post! Shameful! Disgusting! Dictatorial! I am appalled how power makes people go peremptorily crazy and intolerant. It’s childish and gallingly immature of top leaders of this country to not have even a smattering ability to withstand cartoons made on them or to allow people to joke about them and vent their anger at their policies and thoughts, however correct the politicians might feel they are. At one point of time on Google, when you searched the word ‘idiot’, the name of ‘George Bush’ used to pop up on the first page. And why not? When he or Obama become the president of the United States, there are about 48% of Americans who are against them – from mild to extreme haters of their personality, policies, cult, and ideologies. And when these individuals go on the net and abuse, it’s only logical that even the president of the most powerful nation becomes the most abused man on the internet. Same is the case with Wal-Mart, the largest corporation in the world; and the most abused one too. Our monocratic politicians and leaders need to realize this veridical truth and thank those 51% (often, as low as even 15%) who support them, due to whom they are in power. Our politicians should nurture these supporters and think of ways of doing outstanding work so that they can win the rest over, instead of being in the picayune illusion that arresting the naysayers will solve the problem. It never did; and even if it superficially did in the past, it never will in the new munificent age of internet freedom. And thank god for that, for freedom of speech and expression is the biggest cornerstone of and for an emancipated democracy and humanity. Our iniquitous politicians need to type “Barack Obama Jokes” on any search engine once to see how tolerant that man must be, a gentleman who is the President of the United States. From pestiferous dark humour to odious sarcasm to below-the-belt ripostes, Obama is the butt of all jokes, with numerous belittling joke sites on him and millions of individuals sharing them all the time. And it’s this virtuous ability to never bother about who says what and the incumbent ability to keep doing great work and winning over more and more people and customers that make an Obama, a Bush, a Samsung and a Wal-Mart what they are. In fact, these are the greats who use all the disparaging criticism to their advantage by searching out the real areas for improvement. Read more....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles SC slams AICTE's illicit control on MBA coursesMBA, MCA courses no longer under AICTE 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
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Woodrow Wilson once said that, “A nation that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender. Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon the nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist.” Rebutting the same, decades later, Omar Bongo, former President of Gabon, argued against the use sanctions, commenting, “...It is important to observe that when Europe or the United Nations impose sanctions that are supposed to be aimed against a certain regime, usually millions of people end up being directly punished.” With time, the very objective of sanctions has undergone a full transformation – today, sanctions are used mostly for strategic gains than anything else. The United States and its allies (particularly Israel) are closing in on Iran! With a thumping majority (100-0), the US Senate last month approved sanctions prohibiting foreign financial institutions from undertaking any business with the Central Bank of Iran. After a series of sanctions that have been regularly imposed on and off, the US government’s latest sanctions against Iran (signed into law by US President Obama on December 31, 2011, as a part of the act titled H.R. 1540, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012”) are clearly the strictest ever. In his official statement on H.R. 1540, available at the White House website, Obama uses the word ‘military’ 14 times, with ‘defense’ being used only 9 times – this makes the aim of the law very evident! For records, more than 15 sanctions have been imposed on Iran till date! Post the latest set of sanctions, the Iranian national currency – Rial – immediately lost its value by almost 15-20 per cent and is currently being exchanged at its lowest-ever rate of around 17,000-17,500 Rials to a dollar. The sanctions curtail other countries too from buying Iranian crude oil. The US through the latest sanctions can also debar parties that are trading with the Central Bank of Iran from having correspondent banking operations in the United States. The National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) has been passed by President Obama with an ensured funding of $662 billion that apart from imposing sanctions on Iran will also review Iran’s military capabilities. This is of utmost importance in case US plans to wage a war against Iran in the near future! Not surprisingly, all this is amalgamated with one of NDAA’s main objectives – which is to ensure energy security of NATO. The most audacious part of the Act is that NDAA has unilaterally slapped these sanctions in such a manner that it can impose penalties on any third party that dares to trade with the Iranian Central Bank! The official aim of this sanction, as cited by the US administration, is very basic, yet highly tactical – Iran’s revenue streams are expected to be stifled, and consequently Iran is expected to have no money to advance its nuclear program! However, such a reasoning seems silly and juvenile! How on the earth would US be able to strangle Iran from achieving its nuclear ambition when they have gloriously failed in the past to deter even poor and impoverished countries like North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, in spite of imposing several sanctions on these nations? The situation may soon boil up to a scenario that resembles the implication of Iraq in the 1990s. Failing to ruin Iraq through sanctions, US ultimately resorted to war. As I mentioned earlier, this is not the first time that America has targeted Iran. On June 9, 2010, the Obama administration had slapped extremely hard sanctions on Iran; banning the delivery of major military equipment to Iran and prohibiting international financial and asset transactions of Iranian corporations. In fact, Iran is not the lone target of America in the region as Syria has been party to the NATO’s ire and has been facing sanctions since 1986. A month and a half ago, the European Union and United States imposed new and renewed sanctions on Syria on the ground of suppression of its rebels, but interestingly remained silent on the same kind of repression in Yemen and Bahrain! US has always imposed sanctions and embargoes on the pretext of national security and eventually invaded the target nations after making them economically and politically weak. Iraq has been a crying example of the same. And in Iran’s case, neither has US been able to prove any negative use of the atomic and nuclear facilities that Iran possesses (the International Atomic Energy Agency has no concrete evidence against Iran), nor were they ever able to prove the presence of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) some years back in Iraq. The entire fable created around WMDs in Iraq ended with a mere apology from America’s end. As a matter of fact, the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudi and Pakistani nationals. Pakistan is internationally infamous for harbouring numerous terror groups and was shamefully responsible for providing sanctuary to even Osama Bin Laden. But neither Saudi Arabia nor Pakistan had to face sanctions post 9/11 like those being faced by Iran. Reason? They have been following US diktats word by word! And the lesser said about Taliban, the better for the US, as it’s quite well accepted that the Taliban has been America’s own creation. The US trade embargo against Cuba is five decades old and was described as “ineffective and detrimental” by Obama himself in September 2010. Pakistan also did face military sanctions much before by the US (a 15 year embargo that ran from 1990 to 2005 on the sale of F-16 fighter/bomber aircraft); but that didn’t deter the country from purchasing weapons from elsewhere. In similar lines, sanctions have had results quite opposite the objectives for which they were enacted. Human rights abuse and societal demotion were strongly visible in nations like South Africa (faced sanctions between 1960s-1970s), Haiti (1990-1994), Iraq (1990-2003) and the former Yugoslavia (1992) and went against the very objective of the sanctions that aimed at protecting of human rights. The arms embargo imposed on South Africa (during the 1960s) was also found to be counter-productive. The then Pretoria regime responded to the sanctions by developing a large-scale domestic weapons industry called Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor). Similarly, the sanctions on Yugoslavia didn’t prevent the Bosnian war and eventually pushed the nation into poverty and destitution. Read More.... For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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United States’ finely tuned images of ‘land of opportunity’, ‘land of the free’ and ‘home of the brave’ – all have in recent time received a major jolt with protestors pouring in from all over the country in thousands. It is probably the biggest protest since anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations in the 70s! Finally their police are finding it tough to control their own people. This time they are failing to smoke them out, because the enemy lies in every other house. I wrote about the coming end of capitalism – the way we know it – in 2008 itself as an aftermath of the latest recession that has hit the world due to its blind belief in free market profiteering and was surprised why (despite people around the world, from countries in the Middle East to a laid back country like India, showing a tendency to come out on the streets to press for their rights) people in the western world were delaying coming out in the streets to press for what was their right – the right to stable and dignified living. But finally the streets in the western world are slowly starting to look like streets of Egypt, with thousands out on the streets, protesting against the shameless profiteering of the Wall Street – the symbol of capitalism at its greediest best. It is a movement of the working class – which forms overwhelming majority of the American population – being deprived, ignored and cheated by the greedy corporations, which forms the top one per cent of the population. The growing protests that have spread its tentacles all across the nation indicate a serious problem in the financial districts of the American cities. The conservatism that has put unchecked and deep crony capitalism to almost heavenly pedestal is the root cause for such economic injustice, which has literally forced thousands to come out on the streets to protest. No wonder, the gradual transition of American capitalism to crony capitalism is a result of inherent shortcomings that the financial system and capitalism on the whole has been experiencing since decades. For the last 30 years, the United States is suffering from erosion of jobs and corporate big shots renouncing the values and spirit that once made America as great as it is perceived today because of short term profits – a classic case of uncontrolled deregulation practised in this crony capitalist system. This system has made a class of minuscule super rich even richer, driven by the Wall Street, but has marginalised the vast majority who faced the albatross of dead end jobs, lay-offs, lack of future and other destruction of the very tenets of any functional democracy! One of the reasons that led to this out-cry is irresponsible lending by the banks and very high consumer debt. It has eroded the purchasing power of the common man. Lack of consumer demand is halting new investments and preventing new job creation. Obama’s steps to steer the economy to safer ground – mortgage refinancing, healthcare overhaul, student’s loan minimisation programmes – have not seen any breakthrough so far. The reasons are Republican’s opposition and consequent blocking of government’s intervention in the economy. The Gini coefficient (that measures the income divide in a country) of the US is at par with that of undeveloped countries of Africa like Uganda. In 2010, the top 20 per cent of all Americans owned 49.4 per cent of the nation’s income. The top one per cent of all Americans owned 40 per cent of the total wealth of the US and 24 per cent of all income – most importantly an increase by 31 per cent in the last four decades. Moreover, in these four decades the income of wealthy Americans have increased by 300 per cent while that of middle class has increased by merely 20 per cent and that of lower strata by merely five per cent – thus increasing the Gini coefficient from 39.7 in 1967 to 46.0 in 2005. A report by IMF titled ‘Leveraging Inequality’ published back in December 2010 concluded that ‘long periods of unequal incomes spur borrowing from the rich, increasing the risk of major economic crises’ in the way it did during the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2007. This income gap kept many poor Americans away from schools and proper medical facilities, eventually affecting their productivity and income per se. The executives at the Wall Street enjoyed hefty pay packages and impressive compensation while others had to struggle for a decent salary. Studies show that in 2004 the top 25 highest paid hedge fund managers on Wall Street collectively earned more than the combined income of all of the CEOs from the top 500 large-cap American companies. The employment rate still lingers around 9.1 per cent with 4.5 million people still unemployed, which is at a historically high! More than 6,000 protestors gathered on October 15, 2011 at Times Square and around 100 were arrested after the protest went violent. The protests have just been gathering steam. Chicago police also arrested more than 150 protestors. Similar phenomena was seen in London too and the police had to debar people from entering Paternoster Square (London Stock Exchange). The protests have crossed the domestic borders and reached almost all the continents of the world. Recently protestors were found displaying their anger outside Reserve Bank of Australia. Similarly, protest rallies have graduated into violent riots in Rome and other European nations and more than 100 protestors were arrested. People also got violent in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea. Read More.... For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’
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IIPM: Management Education India
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