Enhancing Employment in India Should Be the First Priority for Indian Politicians!

What should we Indians expect from our successful political leaders who chance to become our heads of governmental functions in our central and state governments?

How are we going to evaluate their performances?

In an election year, how would we decide whom to vote? There are so many candidates forced on us by the numerous political parties all with highly ambitious chiefs who are interested in getting in to the seats of political power and governance.

They are spending millions and millions of rupees from their individual and collective coffers to reach out to the Indian voters. All parties get the money to spend on their party leaders and for election propaganda by what is known as donations from the Indian people or the Indian business organizations who make money by various economic activities.

So the circle is like this. The individuals gain money by doing various economic activities. Some of them get paid for their work as employees of some organizations of people formed for doing making profits from various economic activities. These economic activities are numerous. Any activity of human beings which is carried out for some cash benefit is an economic activity. 

So activities related to agriculture, mining, production, manufacturing, transport, communication, entertainment, health, sports, education, administration and governance, insurance, accounting, auditing, policing, politics, law making, law practice, tax collection and administration,  research and development, software development, quality control, etc, and even religious activity are all economic activities. Some of these are economic activities directly involving production of goods and materials while a large number of other activities involve some kind of service. In short economic activities are all about goods and services by people and for people all done for some kind or remuneration or advantage or profit.

Food, clothing, shelter, health, entertainment, security, justice, spiritual comfort are all essential for human beings and as humans progress in body and mind, his requirements and aspirations also increase. Food is the primary requirement of a person who is hungry. But when hunger is resolved, he needs clothing and shelter. When these are also fulfilled, he wants to improve and aspire for other comforts and entertainment.

No human can be self sufficient. God has created humans to exist and prosper under mutual dependence.

Modern economic activities with money as its measuring unit is one of the greatest evolutionary achievement human beings have made. Human progress of any nation is measured by the sum total of the value of the economic activities of its people that our economists define as the Gross Domestic Product or GDP.

The more the GDP the more likely the country's prosperity. Alternatively, the more the people are engaged in economic activities, the more the country's GDP. So, GDP grows when more people are involved in economic activities and their individual gains also keep growing.

Organizations of people help in organizing the economic activities of individuals and to gain collective synergy.

If these organizations make more money than they spend, they make profits. If they make profits, they can afford to enhance their economic activities by employing more people by paying them salaries or even enhance the salaries of their employees. Such business organizations are legally known firms or companies. The companies pay salary to their employees and divide profits among their share holders and promoters. The companies, their employees and their share holders all pay taxes to the government and the governments also get money when business firms progress. 

The money generated through small and big business gets further distributed to people as money never gets accumulated any where, but only accounted. So if some one makes lots of money it will be reflected in his bank accounts but the banks in turn lend that money to some one who uses that money elsewhere for some other economic activity and in turn help others to engage in more and more economic activities.

Thus the more the economic activity, the more the people get opportunities for getting involved in some kind of such activity and gets paid in some manner. Only when economic activities increase, then only employment opportunities enhance. Enhancing the economic activities should, therefore, be the primary concern of all people who come to occupy the seats of decision making in governments.

People occupying governmental positions have many functions. They have to first get money for themselves through collection of taxes and by promoting other economic activities. Then they have to spend the money for various purposes such as defense, policing, infrastructure development, health, education, etc. All functions are important. Income generation and income distribution are all important.

But the primary thing to remember is this: if the income is less then expenditure would be affected and the government would not be in a position to give attention to all of its functions and responsibilities properly. This kind of government would soon become a problem for its people and the nation suffers because such governments would try to do foolish things that kill economic activities. Employment opportunities in the nation come down when the governmental authorities take foolish decisions under stress, ego, incompetence or immaturity to visualize the effects of their decisions wisely.

In my opinion, all business men should be honored because they are the agents and key-drivers of economic activities and employment generation. Businessmen and women are driven by the passion to achieve and move against the odds. The greatest thing they do is tapping the small potentials of individuals to contribute in in a larger way in economic activities under the companies and firms they have created and nurtured. 

So, the Ambanis, Adanis and the Saharas of India have done greater contributions in India by fighting the odds to create large business organizations that employ thousands of Indians. In the process they might have influenced many in the decision making hot spots of the Indian governance and administration by various means. But that is essentially that they do and what makes them different from others. That is why they are business leaders.

It is foolish for any one to kill the organizations that they have created by accusing them of corruption or breaking the rules. It is not good for any country to put such businessmen behind bars for any so called economic offenses. Economic offenses should be deemed as only business errors and it is not fair to equate business errors with felony. It is not good for any democratic country, whether it is the USA or India, to make and implement laws that kill the enthusiasm of people to to do business and enhance economic activities. 

In my opinion, punishment for economic offenses or errors should be only fines payable to the government and such fines should not be such that it would kill the organization for ever. People who violate the laws by taking willful decisions should be taken to task. But that should not kill the organizations that they had created. That would be sheer injustice to the employees , the shareholders. and clients.

In my opinion, it is not at all harmful to the country if any Ambani or Adani or Sahara has achieved huge profits for their companies. Through their companies and their employees the country has made billions as taxes of various kinds. Their businesses have made great dynamism in the economic activity scene of India directly and indirectly. That is what all businesses are doing. If they make profits it is good. Viewing that with jealousy is not good.

Remember, none of these businessmen and women are not going to take all the wealth that they have created with them when they die. The money and the systems that they had created would remain in the country for reaping economic benefits to the people of India.

That is the reason why I adore the visions of Mr Narendra Modi more than that of Mr Arvind Kejriwal. Mr Modi speaks of economic development through companies while Kejriwal speaks of corruption by companies. Modi stresses more on growth while Kejriwal stresses more on putting some breaks on economic growth by trying to cleanse the economic systems from possible violations of rules.

While I do honor and respect Mr Kejriwal for his honesty and spirit of principles, I do have doubts about the practicality of his visions in a country like India where the people are not essentially idealists nor mature enough in mind and body. I think he and his associates are wise enough to understand this and make corrections.

There is no point in talking idealism to people who are deprived from earning a livelihood by involving in some kind of economic activity. Generating economic activities to the maximum should, therefore, be the first priority of any politician who comes to occupy the hot seat of decision making in India.

Let economic activities grow first so that all Indians are gainfully employed and earn a livelihood. 

Other priorities can follow later.

Suicidal Corporate Drivers Who Over Speed To Destruction !

Today morning I was reading the views expressed by the lady CEO of Axis Bank as published by a leading Indian business newspaper. She had opined that Indian Businessmen and entrepreneurs are intrinsically risk taking. So long as they are risk taking, there is not much problem for the banks to disburse their monies as business loans with potentials for good earnings.

On the other hand there are news in the media regarding the resignation of the lady CEO of an Indian Public Sector bank -the United Bank of India. This bank is burdened with a heavy non-performing asset or NPA. NPA is nothing but the unrecoverable loans of the bank. The bank officials perhaps had distributed heavy amounts as loans to many 'risk taking' entrepreneurs who had taken the risk of pleasing the bank officials with 'necessary' documents and the bank officials had in turn taken 'the risk' of clearing those loan applications expecting big success of the risk taking businessmen. But in this case, the risks actually became real and the money has become non-recoverable!

People are of essentially of two kinds. The majority are non risk taking and less adventurous. They will not risk their lives by venturing in to dangerous adventures. But then there are another group, a minority who are risk taking and adventurous in nature. They are the brave men and women of our world. They are the ones who move ahead for achieving their goals. Their goals could be anything. Exploration, travel, sport, business, politics or anything of that sort. In these, business and political risk taking are a bit different from the others as these two are determined by what is known as greed. The greed for money and power! 

The minority of people who are greedy for money and power too are essentially risk taking in their nature. However, their risk taking nature is not only detrimental to them, but also catastrophic to several others whose lives are directly or indirectly dependent on them. 

The risk taking politicians could drive the entire nation and its people to miseries for generations. Businessmen manipulate money, men and materials (the so-called 3 M's of management) for making more money while trapping more men and materials. In their high enthusiasm and high ambition many of them set high and achievable targets for them to accomplish. They dislike the word, impossible. For them there is nothing impossible. If there is a will, there is a way. That is what they prefer to believe!

Short and long term success of some others are their examples that they wish to emulate. Per se, it is not something bad. But what actually happens to such people is the manner in which impatience becomes too visible in their actions and decisions. They fail to recognize the fact that impatience is a mind poison.

Thus their business enthusiasm and ambition become poisoned by impatience. Impatience for achievement of high targets. Impatience for doing things or achieving results in the shortest time. 

What happens when you drive a vehicle at 100 km/hr speed when the road conditions do not permit you to drive more than half that speed? Even when your vehicle is capable, you are bound to make accidents and destroy your vehicle and yourself! But if you happen to be a good driver who knows well about your vehicle, the road and the rules, you would not venture into such an adventure of over speeding.

In a similar way, there are over speeding businessmen and chief executives who try hard to push their business organizations to impossible tasks and performances. It they are knowledgeable about the intricacies of the business and their business organization (the company or the firm that they manage or own) they may not take such a risk that might eventually cause great harm.

Unfortunately, in the world of high competition that we have today, there are chances that the businessmen and their chief executives are mere manipulators who are not competent in many other aspects of their own business processes. They may be good in one or two aspects but not in all. Since they are successful in their own areas, they tend to consider other areas of work also to be like their own and force others to fall in line without realizing the consequences.

Let me explain this by a simple hypothetical example. Imagine that there is a real estate developer.He is not a technical man but he knows the technique of getting the land purchased and also getting the approvals from the statutory authorities by hook or crook. He has experienced that the approval process which takes usually a few months time got reduced to a week because he could 'manage' the authorities. He had seen that the architect who asked for three months time to develop the drawings finally agreed to give all the drawings in a month's time when he put sufficient pressures including some inducements. But in this process he failed to understand that the drawings the architect now supplied were some quick copies with some quick manipulations and not something specifically made for him by applying proper mind. The result was that this builder was going to spend much more money, efforts and time to complete the work later, though he apparently made a quick success to get the drawings much earlier.

In a similar manner this builder could force the civil contractors to speed up the work to such levels which are neither practical nor technically justifiable. If he forces them, they are likely to adopt short cut methods in construction to speed up the work. They may even start building the higher floors without giving enough time for curing of the lower floors or reinforced cement concrete (RCC) construction. This could cause heavy structural weakness  to the building which might even cause total failures some time later. If that happens, this builder might even land in jail. But if he a risk taking sort of a man, these eventualities may not deter him. He would proceed in a haste and make some quick bucks. If nothing serious happens, that becomes his benchmark of success. 

The organizations of today's world are more and more getting created or managed by people of this sort- the so-called successful leaders who maintain their success projected by hook or crook till proved otherwise by some untoward happenings. Since organizations are more and more getting responsible for the economic activities of people, their failure is bound to affect people adversely.

Organizations are essentially to ensure long term sustainability of collective work and activity of people and hence they are supposed to last for a few generations. If organizations are created only to disintegrate in a few years, that is not a desirable thing and if it happens too frequently, it is a sign of ill health of the society or the nation where it belonged.

If organizations are disintegrating, it is often the top directors or top executives of the organization who are responsible for such breakups. And often, it is the suicidal risk takers at the top decision making levels who are responsible. They are like the captains of the large ships who pilot the ship to destruction and escape using the only one life boat in the ship leaving the rest in the ship and the ship to destruction. The maritime laws consider this as a punishable offense. Unfortunately, the captains of large organizations who do such acts to destroy their organizations are not often taken to task.

It is a serious issue and the right thinking should think about it for some solutions.