“Promise is a Promise” – Guess who?

Yes your guess is right, this post is about Tata group chairman, Ratan Tata.

I always have highest regards for Ratan Tata, except for Nira Radia tapes!! J. 

       Its very rare and difficult to find corporate heads who is ethical, social conscious and not greedy. Year on Year the head of conglomerate’s salary sky rocketing and number of new new acquisitions, new ventures and so on… to name few Sun Net work, Adani group, ADAG ..etc.. All these corporates prosper in this society, through this society and from this society.  But in return what they give back?  No clue… or its hardly anything.

To the contrary, Tatas run Jamshedpur including water, not to speak of electricity et al. Please remember Jam nagar is not run by Reliance!! For that matter no city is adopted by any other corporates including Govt PSU’s.

Almost two years passed since terrorists held the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. One of the most heinous acts of terrorism in India. Total of 173 people martyred, hundreds injured, and crores of property destroyed. No sign of justice for the victims, no sign of punishment to the guilt.(Thanks to the largest Democracy in the world)

But one man has done what the politicians, the media and the law could not do – restore a semblance of dignity and hope to the victims.  Ratan Tata – a giant among men, an icon in the business world, and a great humanitarian. When his HR team brought forth a proposal on what the Tata Group could do to compensate the victims (an amazing list by itself), Ratan Tata asked – “Are you sure we are doing enough?”

    Enough Mr. Tata? You got to be kidding right? Please don’t compare Tata with Gandhiji, Gandhiji is no more a business man and Tata is not a social activist, you may call Tata as magnanimous philanthropist (Title given by me!!).  In a nation that treats its politicians and actors as Gods(Aishwarya Rai’s pregnancy news taking headlines), citizens as dust, and citizen rights as negligible as the fly in your khichidi.

The Tata group has done not just for its employees who were affected by the attack, but to even the “pav-bhaji” vendor across the street.

·        Manoj , was working at a roadside shop when the firing at Leopold Cafe injured him. He got Rs 5000 from the Taj Public Service Welfare Trust (set up within days of the 26/11 attack by the Tata Group) for six months, and then got a job as a waiter at the Taj President in Colaba, Mumbai. His children’s education is taken care of by the Trust. So is his wife’s higher education.

·           Diagnosed with terminal illness while being treated for injuries sustained by the taxi blast, Shyam, 36, was given Rs 10,000 for a year, and his entire medical bills are being paid by the Trust.

  This is not to say the Trust forgot employees of the Taj who died in the attack. The families of these 12 employees will get the last drawn salary as long as the spouse is alive. This is apart from the lump sum amount (in lakhs) paid to the family, free education for their children, and complete medical insurance. And there are many many I can list here….

 Ratan Tata and his company has touched the lives of every victim of this attack, and ensured their families  get to live a life of relative peace and security.

Among the corrupt leaders, and Greedy corporates Ratan TATA stands as a real Hero.

HUMANITY

A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. 

      “Your son is here,” she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened.

      Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man’s limp ones, squeezing a message of love and encouragement.

      The nurse brought a chair so that the Marine could sit beside the bed. All through the night the young Marine sat there in the poorly lighted ward, holding the old man’s hand and offering him words of love and strength. Occasionally, the nurse suggested that the Marine move away and rest a while.

      He refused. Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital – the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other patients.

      Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words. The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night.

      Along towards dawn, the old man died. The Marine released the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse. While she did what she had to do, he waited.

      Finally, she returned. She started to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her.

      “Who was that man?” he asked.

      The nurse was startled, “He was your father,” she answered.

      “No, he wasn’t,” the Marine replied.
 

      “I never saw him before in my life.”

      “Then why didn’t you say something when I took you to him?”

      “I knew right away there had been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn’t here. When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I stayed.”

      An example of true humanity.

Why the decline of the West is best for us

I came across this article by PROF. R.VAIDYANATHAN PROFESSOR OF FINANCE, INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT , BANGALORE, Worth reading...enjoy reading.

Ten years ago, America had Steve Jobs, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash. Now it has no Jobs, no Hope and no Cash. Or so the joke goes. 

Only, its no joke. The line is pretty close to reality in the US . The less said about Europe the better. Both the US and Europe are in decline. I was asked by a business channel in 2008 about recovery in the US . I mentioned 40 quarters and after that I was never invited for another discussion. 

Recently, another media person asked me the same question and I answered 80 quarters. He was shocked since he was told some sprouts of recovery had been seen in the American economy. 

It is important to recognise that the dominance of the West has been there only for last 200-and-odd years. According to Angus Maddisons pioneering OECD study, India and China had nearly 50 percent of global GDP as late as the 1820s. Hence India and China are not emerging or rising powers. They are retrieving their original position. 

In 1990, the share of the G-7 in world GDP (on a purchasing power parity basis) was 51 percent and that of emerging markets 36 percent. But in 2011, it is the reverse. So the dominant west is a myth.

Similarly, the crisis. It is a US-Europe crisis and not a global one. The two wars which were essentially European wars were made out to be world wars with one English leader commenting that we will fight the Germans to the last Indian. 

In this economic scenario, countries like India are made to feel as if they are in a crisis. Since the West says theres a crisis, we swallow it hook, line and sinker. But it isnt so. At no point of time in the last 20 years has foreign investment direct and portfolio exceeded 10 percent of our domestic investment. Our growth is due to our domestic savings which is again predominately household savings. Our housewives require awards for our growth not any western fund manager. 

The crisis faced by the West is primarily because it has forgotten a six-letter word called saving which, again, is the result of forgetting another six letter word called family. The West has nationalised families over the last 60 years. Old age, ill health, single motherhood everything is the responsibility of the state. 

When family is a burden and children an encumbrance, society goes for a toss. Household savings have been negative in the US for long. The total debt to GDP ratio is as high as 400 percent in many countries, including UK . Not only that, the West is facing a severe demographic crisis. The population of Europe during the First World War was nearly 25 percent and today it is around 11 percent and expected to become 3 percent in another 20 years. Europe will disappear from the world map unless migrants from Africa and Asia take it over. 

The demographic crisis impacts the West in other ways. Social security goes for a toss since people are living longer and not many from below contribute to their pensions through taxes. So the nationalisation of families becomes a burden on the state. 

European work culture has become worse with even our own Tata complaining about the work ethic of British managers. In France and Italy , the weekend starts on Friday morning itself. The population has become lazy and state-dependent. In the UK , the situation is worse with drunkenness becoming a common problem. Parents do not have control over children and the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation in London said: There are all signs of arteriosclerosis of a culture and a civilisation grown old. Me has taken precedence over We and pleasure today over viability tomorrow. (The Times: 8 September ). 

Married couples make up less than half (45 percent) of all households in the US , say recent data from the Census Bureau. Also there is a huge growth in unmarried couples and single parent families (mostly poor, black women). Society has become dysfunctional or disorganised in the West. The government is trying to be organised. In India , society is organised and government disorganised. Because of disorganised society in the West the state has to take care of families. The market crash is essentially due to the adoption of a model where there is consumption with borrowings and no savings. How long will Asian savings be able to sustain the western spending binge? 

According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal (10 October 2011), nearly half of US households receive government benefits like food stamps, subsidised housing, cash welfare or Medicare or Medicaid (the federal-state health care programmes for the poor) or social security.

The US is also a stock market economy where half the households are investors and they have been hit hard by bank and corporate failures. Even now less than 5 percent of our household financial savings goes to the stock market. Same in China and Japan . 

Declining empires are dangerous. They will try to peddle their failed models to us and we will swallow it since colonial genes are very much present here. You will find more Indians heading global corporations since India is a very large market and one way to capture it is to make Indian sepoys work for it. 

A declining West is best for the rest and also for the West, which needs to rethink its failed models and rework its priorities. For the rest like us the fact that the West has failed will be accepted by us only after some western scholars tell us the same. Till then we will try to imitate them and create more dysfunctional families. 

We need to recognise that Big Government and Big Business are twin dangers for average citizens. India faces both and they are two asuras we need to guard against. The Leftists in the National Advisory Council want all families to be nationalised and governed by a Big State and reform marketers of the CII variety want Big Business to flourish under crony capitalism. 

Beware of the twin evils since both look upon India as a charity house or as a market and not as an ancient civilisation.