My Take

My Take

Ever since the Prime Minister demonetized the higher currency notes in India people have ascribed different motives to this move. Some called it a brilliant move to cut out Black money and corruption from the economy. Others termed it election politics and that which could have been implemented better. The Prime Minister Mr. Modi, himself has assured citizens through his speeches that the intention is to clean the economy off black money.

Analysts and the who-who of creative thinkers have dared to write their piece on why and how it is a masterstroke or cursed this move which caused misery to common folks. Enough has been written and debated on the pros and cons of this move and its intentions or ill intentions. I have a different take and will explain why I think the analysts are ‘missing the wood for the tree’.

The first question I ask is will it help curb black money- My answer is No- Why? Well black money is not something that was once made and remains buried somewhere. Black money is a continuous process and the fall out of systematic loopholes and mans curiosity to beat the system. Black money is generated through the system and therefore the banning of high currency notes will not in the least stop this flow. Let’s say I am service provider and bill, Mr. X an amount that is lesser than the agreed value which means that the tax calculation suffers to the extent the bill value is reduced. The treasury is cheated while the service provider and person X benefits by not paying tax on the full amount of the agreed value in the transaction and by paying less tax since the amount is reduced. This difference so scammed, off the treasury books forms black money. Now will someone tell me how banning of high value currency notes will stem this rot?

Corruption has a long list of meanings best amongst which I like is “the process of decay”. It comes from the Latin origin- “Corrumpere” or “Corruptio” which means mar, bribery, destroy. When the original is changed it is corruption, be it the thought, word or deed. Now how can the banning of high value notes stop corruption? I fail to find an answer. So neither will the generation of black money stop nor will corruption vanish from our living spaces. Doesn’t the Prime Minister know this then and why is he still persisting? This is why I say a lot of us are missing the wood for the trees.

Our economy has been suffering a lot through the injection of fake currency from across the border. The machinery on the other side functions with impunity while scrupulous and anti social elements at home helps in the distribution process. The malice is so rampant that a substantial portion of the circulated money in high value currency is counterfeit. It is this that is worrying the Prime Minister and the country and that is why he has taken on himself the task of shutting this tap across the border through this move.

Extract from an article in Indian Express dated June 8, 2016-

“As many as 250 out of every 10 lakh notes in circulation are fake, according to a study conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute. Typically, at any point in time, banknotes with a face value of Rs 400 crore are in circulation in the country. The study revealed that fake currency notes with a face value of Rs 70 crore are infused into the system every year, and law enforcement agencies are able to intercept only a third of them — a fact that is acknowledged by the agencies themselves.

The detection rates of fake 100- and 500-rupee notes were found to be about the same or 10% higher than the detection rate of 1,000-rupee notes. The study added that fake 1,000-rupee notes constitute about 50% of the total value of fake notes.

Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been raking in an annual profit of around Rs 500 crore by circulating counterfeit notes in India, according to a report prepared by the IB, R&AW, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and CBI.

The ISI has been making a profit of 30-40% on the face value of each counterfeit Indian note produced in Pakistan, according to the report. The cost of printing a Rs 1,000 counterfeit note, for instance, is Rs 39 (the RBI spends Rs 29 to print a Rs 1,000 note), but it is sold at Rs 350-400, according to the report. The total fake notes that came into India in 2010 from abroad were pegged at Rs 1,600 crore, and going by this estimate, the report put the ISI’s total profit at Rs 500 crore”.

End of extract-

The prime minster is simply playing to the gallery and reaping political mileage through this move while we common citizens scramble to keep up with the system. For Black money and corruption to be eradicated, the thought process has to change. All of us have to imbibe non corrupt mind sets and be truly nationalist (not the kind felt when you unfurl the national flag or when someone across the border shoots down our soldiers). At best what the nation can thank the Prime Minister for is shutting the tap for the time being, but at what cost- the debate rages on.

Robin Varghese- robin_vargh@yahoo.com

16^th November, 2016

The Burden of the mighty

The burden of the mighty

Just read a small little clip a while ago here is how it goes-

One Sunday morning an old cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin. Although the old man and his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore jeans, a denim shirt and boots that were very worn and ragged. In his hand he carried a worn out old hat and an equally worn out Bible. The church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most beautiful church the old cowboy had ever seen. The people of the congregation were all dressed with expensive clothes and accessories.

As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him. No one greeted, spoke to or welcomed him. They were all appalled at his appearance and did not attempt to hide it. As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor: “Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what he thinks would be appropriate attire for worship.”

The old cowboy assured the preacher he would. But the next Sunday, he showed back up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored. The preacher approached the man and said, “I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church.”

“I did,” replied the old cowboy. “If you spoke to God, what did he tell you that the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?” asked the preacher.

“Well, sir, God told me that He didn’t have a clue what I should wear. He said He’d never been in here before.”

This reminded me of the man who walked with his dead wife on his shoulder all the way to his village because there was no hearse van in the hospital or the available van was on some other duty, or probably he was carrying about him the worn out hat and bible like the cowboy. Alongside was his young daughter who was weeping silently and walking with the father. The look on their faces told a story of everyday life captivated and stilled in the moment for the camera. The man had an expressionless face that barely let forth any emotions. 

The girl cried beside him not because they had to carry her mother home like a heavy log slung on the shoulder, but because of the uncertainty facing her on the morrow. Her only channel of communication has extinguished and there lay in front of her a highly uncertain future. The very poverty that prevented them from getting assistance, their non existence that fueled the thought process of the hospital authorities were very much holding onto the skyline. Life was the same for the poor rudderless, nonexistent people in that part of the world. They were like the cowboy who walked in worn and weary out of years of toil and facing a highly dysfunctional society.

Even while we shout inclusiveness, even while we ‘Make in India’, even while we promise millions of jobs for our youth, even while we upgrade the skills of our young ones through the skill India campaign, the ordinary cherished dreams of the poor linger in the air like the morning smoke of a home fire that mingles into the air at short notice. Nobody would remember the path it took, the twirl of its body as it rose into the air. Its existence would be but only for a moment and before anyone notices, it is lost. Such is the existence of poor people, like that villager with his wife straddled on his shoulder.

The issue faced by the poor villager was very much akin to what the pastor and his ilk had adapted to, having cocooned themselves into a corner not willing to recognize the disadvantaged, feeling shamed at worshiping with the downtrodden. How many times have we scorned the lowly, the people who walk in with the scent of their toil dismembering the fragrance of our holiness, our understanding? Aren’t we ashamed of standing in line with such less lucky brethren, Oh, how we screw up our nose at the first scent of the lowly?

Aren’t we reverberating the ways of the pastor and are we not behaving like the congregation that does not see and feel the unevenness of life? Next time you see the cowboy with his expressionless face, next time you see the lonesome girl lost in the present, next time you feel the aura of a sophisticated existence, stop a while and draw in the air around you, to feel the numberless toiling bodies that live a life of non existence.

Allow them to sit next to you, to inhale the fragrance of your mightiness. Ask if you may share in their emotions a while, ask if you may partake in the toil, ask if you may help shoulder the weight of their misfortune, failing which we would be nothing more than the weight the villager was carrying, nothing more than the self flattering contours of the church which even the almighty chose to give a miss.

Robin Varghese

26^th August 26, 2016

Robin_vargh@yahoo.com

Luckily unlucky

Luckily unlucky

What is luck? Is it something that follows you if your adhere to a certain routine? Is it something that sticks to you because of your perseverance? Is it a dame smiling down at you because you have an outright personality or because you are irresistible? Or is this something that rides on the wheel of time and crisscrosses every doorway once in a while?

Luck comes to those who persevere on the route to perseverance. Only if you keep at it will luck ever whizz past you. To keep at it one needs mental strength and admirably strong focus to be able to keep going in the face of strong odds and results that are not favorably inclined. Therefore luck is is a by product of the mind. Everything that goes right is because you think right and everything that goes wrong happens because there was no conviction in the argument.

So through aside luck and train your mind to be luckily unlucky because this takes away the thought that luck is something waiting to happen and will happen at least once in a life time. Some argue that it is being there at the right place at the right time. I would prefer to be unlucky always so that I can place my efforts in a more focused and directed way rather than wait for that little bit of extra to be added to taste.

Imagine you are going for a job interview, think about the job profile, the company and the scope of activities after you join. Do not even for a moment think about losing out to your competitor. When this happens the strength and confidence in yourself, your voice, body language all add up to present a perfect you and the interviewer sees in you a person who can be hired. You may still lose the race but that will not be on account of ill luck or plainly being unlucky, but because the other person held their side of the bargain better than you.

The mind is the most powerful and potent force in your system, train it to yield results and erase the word ‘Luck’ from your memory. You are what you think you are and if you stay that way you will finally end up exactly as you thought. Caress the mind to yield results, and they will all come in time. If it doesn’t come to you then it is not because you didn’t try but because you gave up just at the nick of success.

Imagine a man trying to uncork a bottle that has been stuck severely and not giving way in spite of all kinds of human pressure. You try it with your right hand and then try it with the other hand just in case. Still it does not yield. You try to unscrew it holding a piece of cloth yet it does not yield. You give it your last bit of energy and it still holds. Frustrated you ask your friend, partner, bystander for help and they unscrew it easily with aplomb. Why does this happen? Were you doing something wrong? Or did the other person unscrew it in a new defining way? - No.

What actually happened was that every time you put pressure the cork was unscrewing a bit but not enough for it to yield. You were not prepared to open it bit by bit and so you felt frustrated and unsuccessful. Finally you gave up just when it was ready to yield at the next pressure. That was the time your partner, friend, bystander took over and achieved that which you had vainly tried. You curse your luck when you should be cursing your lack of perseverance your lack of application. Had you kept at it the next pressure exerted would have opened the bottle and you would have been successful. So banish luck and stay focused on what you want while adding perseverance to your virtue. 

Written by- Robin Varghese – robin_vargh@yahoo.com

Stepping into the Dark

Stepping into the dark

When he sat under the apple tree he must have been dead bored, in all probability idling time, lost in the process of reconciliation with the past or the future. Whichever way, he was quite oblivious to the present, or so it seems, since it took a falling apple to wake him up from his stupor and start the churn in the mind.

Like Sir Isaac Newton, most of us are always in stupor lost in the past or mired in the future, but without having the power to change course on both accounts. It takes a Eureka moment for a new thought to flash across in the mind and give birth to new innovations much in the mold of Sir Isaac Newton. However for flashes of brilliance you must be living in the present. To live in the present we have to be thinking animals of today and not get lost in the maze of yesterday or the inconceivable of tomorrow.

Flashes of brilliance or ideas that flash across the mind are mostly considered stupid enough to be bottled up inside the person for fear of being ridiculed by others more so by experts who carry on the everyday rants. The majority of people are happy churning out the same recipe for everyday life. The thought process and the motions are mundane and boring but done in a flurry of everyday activity that we are quite accustomed to.

To suggest something contrary to acclaimed and accepted views and something that has not crossed the expert minds would be akin to teaching a fish to swim. However innovations and improvements have only happened when you break the trend, when you force yourself to be strong enough to air your views. Sooner or later the brave one will find a supporter, and then their numbers swell to form a caravan, this is how innovation takes place. The only effort required is perseverance that is unfortunately hard to come by and missing in a lot of adventurous people.

While working in the garment Export industry I found that many of the daily routines were undertaken and taken over by the so called experts whose expertise spanned a lifetime of monotonous routine. They in turn dished out the wares to newcomers. Since most of the new comers in production lines and on the floors came from a non-too enlightened background, they lapped up the dishes irrespective of the sweetness or the staleness. In later life they would swear by them and challenge new thought entrants since it did not sync with the ideas they were introduced to or grown up with. The supervisors and Managers manning these lines and floors rarely do a peep into the staleness of prevailing systems or experimenting with newer ideas.

The result being that for time unending they tend to carry on with the daily chores unmindful of workers satisfaction, or freshness in commitment or routine. Over a period of time, daily routine has turned out to be more mechanical than conscious driven, simply because it lacks freshness of ideas and innovations. Two examples of debates being stilled in the conceptualization stages are explained.

The finishing section has workers who are segregated on the basis of skills like; thread cutters, initial checkers, measurement checkers, final checkers, folders and taggers etc. Realistically speaking all these are skills that do not need specialized training. A routine training to teach each individual worker the method, would suffice and this segregation can be erased making them unified finishing workers for all activity mentioned above thereby increasing their satisfaction and raising motivational levels along with productivity, bringing down the cost of production.

However people experienced in the activity refuse to toe this line because it disturbs their equilibrium and forces them to realign anew. So engrossed and programmed are they with the routine that even peeping out of their comfort zones, gives them the shivers, as a result an Eureka moment is lost and forever melts into uncertainty.

A second thought - Finishing workers are all across the industry forced to stand continuously on their feet for an entire working shift of 8 to 10 hours with a lunch break of about 30 minutes. Does anyone realize the damage it does to their morale and enthusiasm not to say about physical strain they undergo to be part of this daily routine. Can’t they be provided with stools where they can be seated and do their work. Ask the supervisor and the manager and they will come out with familiar stories of how a seated worker loses the will to work and how seating turns them into lazy folks, thereby reducing their efficiency and productivity.

Not thinking, in terms of improvement is losing out on moments of flashes of brilliance. The learned in the modern world are turning more and more to startups than traditional forms of work, because they have an advantage of being their own masters. An idea that is born in the mind and when implemented that bears fruit is like giving birth to a baby and see it growing, an individual that does not characterize the known, a being that thinks and acts independently, more so when it is given the freedom to fly sky high.

Robin Varghese- robin_vargh@yahoo.com

21^st November 2015

Holi Holy Holy

Holi Holy Holy

 

The chill lingers in the air as I get up in the morning and drawn aside the curtains, push the windows outward to receive a fleeting feel of the air. This reminds me that the morning chill still holds and as is tradition can be offset with the advent of Holi which my country celebrates tomorrow.

While I celebrate the festival of Holi I stop to reflect on the various hues and colors of my country. The bonhomie of the green and saffron held together by the peaceful nature of the white seems to be a thing of the past. The white; a symbol of peace is having a harrowing time trying to separate the saffron and green from grappling with each other. The younger generation simmering at the brim because their freedom is restricted. The teachers turning out as willful dissidents to the concept of nationalism as defined by the ruling dispensation.

It’s an open war of words and gamesmanship between the so called morally upright haves and the revolutionary and therefore immoral have nots. The morally overflowing haves cannot bear the indignation at the hands of the have nots. The reason being the challenge to one’s way of thinking. Put straight as in the now famous words of former American President George Bush - “either with us or against us”. A peaceful middle path has been bombarded beyond use by forces on both sides and made redundant with the bombs of destructive words and inferences on either side.

People are sent behind bars at the slightest whiff of deceit, a deceit that is termed and framed according to the Majority party in parliament. Judges are not to be left behind doling out lessons on morality and nationalism even while delivering a verdict that seems too lopsided to be considered as delivered from the portals of the blindfolded lady of justice.

All around it seems like a family matter where the parents are hovering over their little ones and purposefully seen as leading the way so that the young ones learn to live life their way. The politician acts like a parent to the students. The judges dole advice as a guardian alongside their judgements. The cops turn the rule book on its head to prove their case and the opposition painstakingly wades through this mayhem to make sense of what’s going on.

This is also the time Christians reflect on the Cross the enormous perils and suffering undertaken by the Lord to rid man of his sins. As we approach Good Friday it seems history is being repeated. The ruling dispensation in cohorts with the majority taking turns to prosecute the Messiah. As in the modern times the rulers and their cohorts raising a loud crescendo about the vagaries of an alternate thinking. The man called Jesus went through all this so that truth may prevail and justice may be delivered to the common people. Truth as prophesized and justice, with relevance to a new and alternate way of life. Today it is the dissenting voice that is up for prosecution.

So even as we celebrate the rich colours of life amidst the vibrant season, there seems to be a connect between the two occasions. One that lets the free flowing colours into the open and asserts it prominence over the chilly mornings, and the other that talks of sacrifices as a potent means to deliverance. let us agree to let each one drawn with his own colour the words LIVE AND LET LIVE.

Let the seasons mingle and merge in a free flowing pattern that beholds their prominence without stamping out the others relevance. Let sacrifices on either side sow the seed of change and an alternate way of life and let peace transcend into our inner beings much in the way of heralding of seasons and His ascension into heaven.

Wish everyone a Happy Holi and a Holy Good Friday culminating into a Happy Easter and beyond.

 

Robin Varghese

Robin_vargh@yahoo.com

23^rd March 2016