Wit Wisdom and Whoop

A disclaimer to begin with is that whatever analogies given below are meant to effectively convey a point and have no negative or insulting or other undertones. Talking of the Indian economy and its underbelly I had written two blogs that can offer a foundation to my thoughts and the links are given below. http://rvasisht.blogspot.in/2014/11/congress-and-nehru-legacy.html http://rvasisht.blogspot.in/2014/12/crony-capitalism-indian-style.html It is often said that you must never wrestle with a pig.  It is you who gets dirty and the pig enjoys it.  Likewise here the government, the systems, the existing order, the polity, the administration, the establishment as it is called is to me the pig. We the citizens grapple with it and they enjoy it, we get dirty. Soon status quo is established and we citizens adjust to the new normal – being dirty, hungry, deprived, handcuffed is perfectly OK. We don’t think that anything otherwise is better. Our status quo turns into i...

An early lesson I learnt when dealing with customers was that invariably there is a Stated reason and there is a Real reason. Not always easy to even know such a situation exists and very difficult to know the real reason.  Over time I have realised that this behaviour extends to even strategic decisions of companies, decisions by politicians and sometimes even within family and friends. My most interesting lesson in this was in dealing with a giant multi billion dollar corporate where they needed an electronic consumer product “reworked”. The estimated size of the deal was hardly Rs 2 Million but someone two heartbeats away from the Chairman was talking to me and putting pressure to close the deal. Sensing that there was something I didn’t know – the Real reason - I doubled our price estimate, he agreed without batting an eyelid. I then said extras not included and he further increased price by about 15% and I had no choice but to agree. We did the work, didn’t lose money and ...

It’s one of those days when a few random tweets or blogs create a unifying thread within you to share some thoughts on a variety of issues but again bound by a common thread – the future of India & our children. I was motivated by the following blogs early in the morning on a Monday. http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/six-point-agenda-to-fix-hate-riot-hit-bengal-must-cure-this-disease-mamata-must-move-beyond-wait-and-watch/ http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/shooting-straight/flagging-off-our-northern-frontiers/ http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/yieldcurve/not-islamophobia-but-justice-what-hindus-want/ http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/Undertheinfluence/open-letter-from-lutyenswood/ http://www.nandinibahri-dhanda.com/wordpress1/2017/07/23/kuch-nahi-hone-wala-hai/ Now one may wonder what is the common thread between these blogs. It is the realisation of the truth that the citizens of India are waking up, that soci...

In this the 4th and last part of my 4-blog series on doing business in India I try to cover what it means to succeed in India. What you need to do. Importantly, it must be understood that doing business in India means dealing with different types of industry classified, treated and protected differently resulting in different behaviors. So, you have the small-scale sector, medium scale, large scale, public sector, large private sector, government sector. Apart from the idiosyncrasies of different types of people, geographies that I have spoken about earlier, you now need to factor in these idiosyncrasies of industry type. First a small secret that must be known. When an entrepreneur starts a business, it is always small and gets classified as small-scale industry. He gets tax breaks, gets lesser paperwork and gets many more advantages. Normal human behavior is to expect that he will grow, become big and thus not only outgrow the hand holding but also become more socially responsible. B...