A Factory or an Ashram?

By Girish Menon

In the Malayalam cult classic Chintavishtayaya Shyamala, Mukundan the protagonist wishes for a carefree life playing and hanging out with friends despite having a wife and two school going daughters. As the pressure grows, from his wife and other members of his extended family, to change his ways Mukundan runs away to an ashram where the sadhus are known to meditate for moksha (release from worldly cares). After 6-7 months at the ashram, the head sadhu (note the hierarchical corporate structure) invites Mukundan for an interview (6.17). The head sadhu mentions that Mukundan had not yet volunteered to either teach at an ashram school or offer to take care of the ashram cattle. In the following scene Mukundan mentions to a fellow sadhu, ‘I did not know this was a factory. If I had to work, I could have stayed in town and not come this far’.

Today, in an increasingly religious India, such ashrams seem to burgeon all over the land. Amazingly, these ashrams seem to be run by unpaid volunteers who work from 5 in the morning to 9 in the evening, seven days a week. Many of these volunteers are retired from corporate jobs and have chosen to spend the rest of their lives obeying the diktats of a saffron clad guru and his managers. More importantly, these volunteers claim that their minds are at peace doing seva (service) for the guru.

There might be some inner need which the ashram job seems to fulfil and which the modern corporations are unable to do so with their workforce. I have seen some of these ashram volunteers complain incessantly when they were working at their corporate jobs. Today, the same person uses all her waking hours advancing the cause of the ashram without any material gain. Some of them have been known to give up their personal homes and even pay rent to the ashram for an opportunity to provide seva.

Of course, there is a difference in the profile of the volunteer as compared to the corporate worker. The volunteers are usually retired, have an empty nest and are at a loss to spend their waking hours. The corporate workers are younger, aspirational, have demanding partners and kids and are perennially short of time.

David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister, made a good point that volunteers need to be encouraged to take over large sections of society. This has increased the number of volunteers running sports clubs, charities etc. in the UK.  Usually, some of the older volunteers bring a lot of worldly experience which could enable their voluntary organisations to perform better than with younger paid employees. In India, the saffron clad gurus have shown their smartness by recruiting such zero-cost volunteers to enhance their corporate goals. However, this begs the bigger question i.e. is India forcibly retiring its experienced workforce too soon?

Why the UK and the BBC are 'outraged' by Article 370 changes

Do and be damned; don’t and still be damned

Girish Menon

It’s been a week since the BJP government abrogated Article 370 and included Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. Most of the reaction to this move has been positive within the provinces of Jammu and Ladakh. It is difficult to gauge the views of the population in the Muslim majority Kashmir valley because of the news blackout. I’d guess there should be a significant number of people who may be upset by this decision. In mainland India, the move has been welcomed by most of the people and a majority of MPs in both houses of the Indian Parliament.

Outside India, Pakistan politicians including their selected Prime Minister have been venting their spleen on this surprise move by India. Opinion in the rest of the world has been muted much to the chagrin of Pakistan. It is rumoured that the US President was forewarned by India of its plans.

So what next for the protesting Kashmiris? The Kashmiris living in the valley could be divided into the ruling elites, those families directly affected by the violence since 1989, and other citizens living in the region.

As far as the ruling elites are concerned, they must admit that it is their actions since the 1950s that has enabled the Indian government to get the support of the rest of India for such a move.

As far as Kashmir residents who have lost their family members in the intermittent 70 year old war with Pakistan there is no likelihood of an immediate peace in the region. Pakistan’s proxies, along with some local politicians will make it difficult for the Modi government to boast that they have solved this perennial problem with a piece of legislation. This means that in the short term there could be more deaths in the valley.

Those valley residents who have only been indirectly affected by the war so far, in the short term some of them may be unlucky to get caught up in the fire exchanged by the warring forces. I hope that their bad luck will run out soon and they will be able to experience a ‘normal’ way of life soon.

The Indian government appears intent on a hard stance on law and order matters while being liberal on incentivising industry to start productive activity and employment in these parts. Both parts of this strategy needs to succeed to convince the Kashmiris that their interests are better served with India. This could lead to the chants of ‘azaadi’  (freedom from both India and Pakistan) to die down.

The current Indian government has five years to get this brave decision right. If the situation deteriorates then they further jeopardise their dreams of continuous power for the next decade and beyond. Already the weakness in their handling of the economy is manifesting itself in the Hindu rate of growth with deleterious consequences for employment. If they fail on Kashmir as well, there will be a rising number of citizens who will soon call Modi’s Article 370 decision the second time when he has been foolhardy.

Just wait and watch.

The Kashmir Territorial Dispute Explained

Imran Khan in Pakistan Parliament

Pakistan, Abdullah, Mufti...should apologise to Kashmiris

Adv Hamid Bashani

Are Indian businessmen being unfairly targeted?

By Girish Menon

Following revelations in the suicide note of V G Siddhartha - the founder of Cafe Coffee Day, the corporate world has started a whispering campaign that Indian businessmen are being unfairly targeted by government bureaucracies. This piece will try to examine the elephant in the room.

Indian businessmen are not one cohesive group. There are many sub groups varying in size and population; from the one man tea vendor to Ambani who aspires to be the biggest tycoon in the world. Not all business-persons receive the same treatment from the governments they have to encounter in their daily endeavour.

As far as the Ambanis are concerned, it was rumoured that his office would receive a copy of any government initiative even before it was announced in parliament. Some even suggest that policies are often drafted in their offices. Clearly, such businessmen are like the Goldman Sachs of the USA i.e. too big to fail. Rivals of Ambani envy the unfair distribution of advantages to this group. However, they don’t want it to be stopped but wish they could replace him instead. This group is large and growing.

If the free market mantra is to be applied then governments should not be indulging in such behaviour. This logic states that governments should recognise property rights, make necessary rules and let citizens pursue their self interest. They should not favour any businessperson.

Economist Ha Joon Chang attributes the growth of Toyota, Samsung and many other global MNCs due to the nexus between governments and businesses. He suggests that developing countries follow this strategy else their domestic firms will lose out to already existing western MNCs. Others term this government corporate nexus as crony capitalism.

The Indian corporate world has enjoyed the benefits of crony capitalism since 1947. Under the socialist policies till 1990s the Tatas, Birlas and Bajajs were among the few recipients of licences to do business. In the 40 years of their protected status they did not produce any world beaters. They even formed ‘The Bombay Club’ to lobby against the opening up of the Indian economy.

Even after the Indian economy opened up corporates lobbied the government to make arbitrary rules that gave them an advantage over their rivals. These corporates received loans from government banks and even more loans to avoid loan defaults. It is almost thirty years since the opening up of the economy and yet there are no world class products that have emerged from these corporates. Often, such corporates have only aspired to the takeover of monopoly public sector firms so that social profit can be converted to private profit.

However, the above group do not represent Indian business-persons. The largest group of Indian business-persons run small and medium enterprises. They definitely have a rightful claim to harassment by the government. They are victimised by the government’s bureaucracy in so many ways that I am surprised they still continue to do business. S Gurumurthy, the RSS ideologue on the board of the Reserve Bank of India, is right when he advocates that the Indian government should ease the conditions of doing business for this large group. Demonetisation was a recent  tsunami that further overwhelmed this group of drowning businesspersons. Often, their only plea is that their outfits should be outside the scope of government bureaucrats. And there is some merit in their argument.

It is an irony that the pleas of persecution by large Indian corporates are being aired when the real victims of government harassment, i.e. the small and medium enterprises, die a silent death. It used to be said of the Christian church,’The church complains of persecution whenever it is not allowed to persecute’. The cries of India’s large business houses seem to echo the Christian church.