to believe or not to believe

The last lecture someone asked me about the posturing that India Pakistan was doing across borders. There was a terrorist attack on a military base in India and India retaliated by conducting ‘surgical’ strikes across the border on alleged camps. Uff… that was just the thig to get me started off. A long short history about right wing governments versus leftists and the centers. How right wing governments thrive on conflict and the perceived threat perception from an outsider.

I just explained how the marketing theory will typically right wing governments. Why there is always some escalation of conflict that rallies a population when right wingers are in power. For some reason – there was Kargil war after which in the election they could cobble up a majority for a relatively stable coalition.

 In the second term there were the ‘attacks’ on the Indian Parliament. Some believe that these were staged.

I quote from an article published here

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/afzal/afzal13.htm

“We know this much: On December 13, 2001, the Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The NDA government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.) At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an Improvised Explosive Device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed too.

The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the Parliament building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence – weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards, photographs, packets of dry fruit, and even a love letter.

Not surprisingly, PM A.B. Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11 attacks in the US that had happened only three months previously.

On December 14, 2001, the day after the attack on Parliament, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police claimed it had tracked down several people suspected to have been involved in the conspiracy. A day later, on December 15, it announced that it had "cracked the case": the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Twelve people were named as being part of the conspiracy. Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual Suspect I), Maulana Masood Azhar also of the Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed (a "Pakistani"); five deceased "Pakistani terrorists" (we still don't know who they are). And three Kashmiri men, S.A.R. Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru, and Mohammed Afzal; and Shaukat's wife Afsan Guru. These were the only four to be arrested.

In the tense days that followed, Parliament was adjourned. On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and banned over-flights. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than half-a-million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. (All this cost India an estimated Rs 10,000 crore of public money. A few hundred soldiers died just in the panicky process of mobilisation.)”

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And then somewhere else in the article she argues

“On the basis of this illegal confession extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were moved to the Pakistan border at huge cost to the public exchequer, and the subcontinent devolved into a game of nuclear brinkmanship in which the whole world was held hostage.

Big Whispered Question: Could it have been the other way around? Did the confession precipitate the war, or did the need for a war precipitate the need for the confession?”

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Whatever the truth, after the attack, the Indian army saw a mobilization where two nuclear powers eye balled each other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001%E2%80%9302_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_standoff

Wow. That was two nuclear powers eye balling each other! Let that sink in for some time.

Now this time around as well, we have some posturing and in the ‘surgical’ strike one army crossed the border, ‘destroyed’ camps and came back. This was celebrated in the media and everyone in India rejoiced that finally as a country we have teeth. Jingoism all around you!

And now look at the centrist party. When they came to power, they implemented socialist schemes with a gusto. Right to education, right to food and right to employment. The last one was “MNREGA – the world’s largest workfare programme - formed the backbone of the UPA government’s anti-poverty programme, and may well represent its most important legacy in the long run.”

 - See more at: http://www.ideasforindia.in/article.aspx?article_id=292#sthash.1WVnU4gw.dpuf”

In the last paragraph the article states “It is no surprise therefore that MNREGA helped UPA gain re-election in the 2009 general elections. There is detailed RD-based evidence showing that UPA reaped electoral benefits from rolling out MNREGA in 2009, and that MNREGA budgetary allocations across districts and blocks have been manipulated in certain states to increase these benefits. “

So yes in the end, it’s up to you to weigh the substance of the propaganda and the schemes thrown at you. You can’t accept anything blindly.

I explained all of this to the class. In marketing I keep teaching, the first thing is to understand yourself and your brand and understand what it is that you are selling. Similarly if you are a consumer, you have to understand who is it that is selling something to you. What they seem to be selling versus what they are selling. Political parties are amongst the most dependent on marketing for survival. They have to understand their core philosophy so as to keep their core base intact and after that they go after the fence sitters. Without a detailed and vivid understanding of who they actually are, no political party can hope for long term survival. Funnily worldwide the philosophies seem to converge across three types – viz right left and center. The core principals are also very similar across. Rights tend to favor minimal government and are pro-business, while the center tries to lean left and increase governance and welfare for the underprivileged. The left of course, worldwide is stupidly rigid and completely veering towards state owned. You can understand world economics, trade, politics and news through the interplay of these thoughts and ideals.

So when the world is going bonkers and you have strong ideas on what is wrong and right and you want to box the crap out of your neighbors, sure, do so, but think again. Or as Arundhati Roy in the article says very very nicely – “To hang Mohammed Afzal without knowing what really happened is a misdeed that will not easily be forgotten. Or forgiven. Nor should it be.

Notwithstanding the 10% Growth Rate.”

The last line is the hardest hitting one that she has written. It’s a dig at the right wing which normally is super pro-business and pro-growth. The growth rate is an important metric on which they win votes and allegiance.

Yes – you have the freedom to vote right, left or centre. You have and must exercise the freedom to shout slogans, support war, surgical strikes, place of worship or whatever you want to do in a peaceful non violent way. You have the right to spew vitriol and choose sides. But all I tell the kids that I teach – listen carefully, not just to the message but also to the carrier and the originator? Within this itself there are many, multiple agendas. Look carefully!

It also amazes me that how much of a pacifist I have become. From a mother India lover who wanted to join the army and serve the motherland, I have become a skeptic. The fun bit is that I don’t know when this happened. No I am not disillusioned with the politicians of the country. That doesn’t work me up. We deserve the jokers we elect. Public service is very difficult, taxing and definitely not rewarding (if you are honest). We make life difficult for the guys doing public service. We believe that all problems come to their doorstep and we absolve ourselves of any solution. It also doesn’t help that most people in public service drive their own agendas and their own ways of doing things. They don’t allow for participation and block everything else. But yes, people inherently are to blame for the shit they get.

I have been involved with the Swimming pool of the gymkhana as an office bearer. It is a dam tough thing to do. People have strong agendas and counter agendas. They don’t help when needed but come across to criticize whatever you do. I think a few years of public service should be a must for anyone. Once that’s done you will do a better job of discharging your duties as a citizen, benefitting the collective whole.

But yes – I have over a period of time become an agno- nationalist. I don’t care about your nationality or mine. What I care about is how humans react to one another and treat each other. How people have to get involved in how they debate and conduct themselves in public. These are simple and important principals from which I want to draw the line. I love my city and my country but not in a jingoistic way. I love how my culture and my thought has been shaped by our geography and our history. I know what I am by knowing my past. But I also know that I have to shape my future and that of the generations to come from me. It cannot be shaped by propaganda but by listening to logic and to question everything. It can come from a deeper understanding of people and their emotions and their selfish interests. It comes from within. I have been lucky to be in marketing. It helps me understand the core of human behavior and their motivations. It makes me skeptic and dreamer at the same time. It is interesting.

In the aftermath of the terror attacks, Pakistani artistes are being singled out and have been asked leave the country. Producers have been told not to take them in their movies or songs. There is enough indian talent they say.

Here, listen to this absolutely amazing cover by a Pakistani band. Tell me, if they come to India and play a song, how would we not end up being enriched? Would we be poorer? But hell, thanks to youtube, they are broadcast across the world. I just love the song, the cover version which I argue is better than the original. I love the sitar notes which reverberate through the song giving it a strong constant sound lending a kind of stirring to the guitar. The crisp tabla creates an interesting contrast to the more muffled drums used. The contrast and the richness is there to be heard. Like Indian classical jugalbandi style, every instrument is given its two minutes of solo with the rest giving it beat support. This takes a song that was essentially a solo to a group effort, making it unforgettable. Seriously brilliant.

While watching TV over the weekend, we chanced upon Haider. Haider is an adaptation of the Hamlet and Jispa with her new found love for English thanks to her amazing teacher Mrs Ayesha Thomas was keen to see the Shakespeare adaptation. We had seen Omkara, the Othello adaptation together and now Hamlet. It’s fun watching the movie with her. I had to explain certain parts of it and the language is a bit difficult for her to pick up completely on her own. But nevertheless it was awesome fun. At the end of the movie, we went through Wikipedia to understand the original story better and therefore to better appreciate the adaptation. While reading the explanation, I chanced upon this paragraph that explains all that I have written so far in this blog – “The idea that nothing is real except in the mind of the individual finds its roots in the Greek Sophists, who argued that since nothing can be perceived except through the senses—and since all individuals sense, and therefore perceive things differently—there is no absolute truth, but rather only relative truth”

learn all the time

I was explaining to some guys from my team that as a child my unhappiest memories are when we shifted from Dubai to Mumbai when I was in the fourth grade. We went from a land of everything to a land of nothing. It was just so trying on us kids.

It was made even worse as we as kids saw a side of our cousins which was different. In any case we weren’t so dam close. We stayed far away and came to India once a year for two months. At the time, coming to India from Dubai, you were royalty. You were the guys with all the foreign stuff that you gifted or stuff you brought on request. The bags would open and that would be a lovely thing as everyone would crowd around. When I grew up I made it a point not be around when bags open. When Jasmine’s brother or aunt would come in from US, I would be doubly sure not to be in the same room. I don’t want to be that person wanting something from abroad. Of course, India too has changed a lot. We have a lot here that we can get and we too got a bit richer than what we were and hence can afford it without being gifted – but still – no hanging around in anticipation. I don’t like it.

To add to that I think a little bit of political play happened. We would come and stay at our grand mom place – my Mom’s mom. She was extremely rich and my grand dad was a self-made millionaire with two buildings and a factory that printed labels. My granddad passed away many years before I was born. In fact he passed away before my mom and dad were married. The family steadily went into decline from then on. We were still rich, the factory was managed but the brothers couldn’t get along and slowly – nothing was really happening. So by then it was a household that was rich – but the fighting was slowly being brought to center stage. Then my grand mom contracted cancer. That was a bloody blow. That was the final hinge in the family door coming loose.

I think a wave on insecurity passed around the cousins. I was too small but in hindsight and from some of the conversations that I heard later, I realized that it just dint do too good for the family. In that atmosphere, I came in to Mumbai to settle down. Dad took another year and mom shuttled a bit.

Suddenly as I was telling them this story it struck me that in my office and in my own team the same is true. Around a month back I announced to the team that I was leaving. At first it was shock followed a little sadness and soon enough - given time – cracks started surfacing. Insecurity is such a big thing in our heads. People started bitching, back biting, started wondering about their roles, their future – power struggles started and funny things started happening. I am so upset with all this.

In many ways this is no different than the death of my grand mom. Here too a person is going with notice period. Here I can’t even settle the affairs completely as I would have wanted to. I don’t know whom I am handing over the stuff to. This uncertainty is what driving my office kids nuts. I hate how some of them have behaved and how they have easily declared war and how they decided to make space for themselves. The spoils are there for eating and to wait is to end up being late. So make your move.

All insecure people have a standard ploy – they build allies with others. Typically other insecure or weak people. They create trouble by building teams of us versus them.  They feed off each others insecurities or rather feed into each other’s insecurities. They waste their time and effort in trying to plot, plan and gather as much as they can for their own clan. This is a self- killing spiral. Of course it works well in many cases. Especially when the person on top is also insecure. Then he likes all these jokers. In fact many bosses I know like their kids to be insecure. They like it if they fight off each other. In secure people never ever build long term allies. They are busy plotting and scheming all the time that they don’t see anyone as full time allies. Their enemies are other insecure people and funnily – other extremely secure people. They can’t understand why anyone can be really secure. They think these secure people are put on and are not genuine. That makes them even more prone to plotting against them.

It’s a vicious circle. I see this everywhere… even amongst kids and adults alike. Cliques and gangs are built. The only real remedy is to stay away from these. There is no hope for them and there is no hope for you with them. As I have said before – even listening to them is damaging for yourself.

At 40 I learn new lessons. People are like this all the time. I give out a lot of love with my kids at office. But some of them love you back and some of them just create more issues for you. some have not really loved you but have only used your love to get themselves more secure. And as you leave they search for security elsewhere. Bah!

You learn… all the time!

worth its while

In life a public service post is extremely critical for a whole rounded experience. A not for profit, free charitable public service post. That is the toughest thing to do.

My friend and I got involved with the swimming department at the gymkhana a little over a couple of years ago. The pain is immense. If I thought that the idiots at eth office were a bit, these guys at the gymkhana are to be seen to be believed. Everyone and his grand dad would have an opinion and most of the time they are not controlled or driven by facts. Most of these guys come from business backgrounds and used to running their businesses in their own way. Controls, processes and scale is something alien to them. Most of them haven’t run retail customer centric business and have no clue on anything. These guys then get elected to various posts and then all hell breaks loose.

They don’t understand service, the ability to keep your audience first and they definitely are alien to marketing concepts. All the bums are a legacy of the Nehruvian era where the man who controls the resources is hell bent on preserving his control over them and believes in the scarcity of resources. Anything is looked upon as a privilege that is given to the members. Hence they will put barricades everywhere. They will first put in rules that don’t allow stuff to happen. They will never bother about the demand side of the equation. Creating a  demand is alien to them. In fact in many ways it is an anathema. They are those people who have bought membership cheap and then want to extract the maximum benefits exclusively for themselves. They like their empty pools, empty courts an dempty spaces. Buzz? … that is an alien concept to them. Attracting youngsters to the club? OMG that is the greatest sin on this world. Guests – let’s stop the members from getting them. Let’s charge higher! What will you give for that in return… oops that’s another bad question! The next thing we know – they ban shorts in the restaurant… hell knows why! I got thrown out of the restaurant. They tightened the rules about guests along with raising the fees… and boom – now the restaurant is empty. Now sit and enjoy eating in a ghost town. The quality of food will suffer, the service will suffer and the menu will slowly shrink. Who will bother about that.

They started redesigning the restaurant.. and no one is bothered about redesigning the menu. So whats the experience going to be? What is the theme of the place? What is the average serving size and the number of people per table that we are talking? Is there going to be a peak and a non peak time… how are we going to maximize revenues and have bar nights with live music or match screenings. Is the place designed for that? Nothing. If we have larger tables should we also have a few larger portion plates? Should we have enough starters and do we have enough on follow-throughs. Are we using light to generally zone out the place? Wow… I told them all this and they didn’t have a clue.

Then on pricing… they wanted to increase the pricing for using the general facilities. The club has a reverse problem. we have a large corpus that’s sitting and doing nothing. Just… a large corpus. So we DON’T need the money. And in any case, from all the monies collected to run the place on a daily use basis doesn’t pay for the maintainence. This comes from the interest on the corpus. So your biggest revenue is not this stupid yearly fees but new members who have to be suckered into coming in and joining. In fact you need more BUZZ in the gymkhana. More use of pool, more use of restaurant, more use of bar and then more use of all the sports. You must have training programs that attract the bets talent that attract the best money from people who want access to this talent for their kids and themselves. So you problem is different. In fact I was arguing that reduce the fees, reduce it drastically so that more and more people are tempted to pay off and believe that they will use it. and get people to use it… You need a problem of plenty and not scarcity. And this is the only option. If you believe that you should build walls around your scarce resources then these resources will only deteriorate and will eventually die. You lose in the long run.

But alas.. I am tired of these jack idiots. But I also learnt that this is the Indian Democratic system. Nothing moves. There is a log jam everywhere. And there is merit in it. I mean, I am the secretary of the pool but I report into the Chairman who reports into the general Secretary who really has no powers over the swimming pool directly but can stop us from doing a lot, who reports into the managing Committee which consists of all the chairmen, which in turn reports into the trustees who really don’t really do anything. So who is in charge… really… no one. So it does take a lot to move the system and precedence is king. So if you have done something in the past then its ok. Doing new or changing it is a problem. That’s why in legal and democratic systems past precedence is a great thing. This reduces the new thing you can do but also stops all the shit that can possibly create havoc. Its difficult (not impossible) to create dictators, its difficult to have idiots blowing up money, and every risk is answerable to almost anyone who asks a question. But I have also learnt to game the system… you can keep asking questions and as long as I am replying them and following due course, you cant do jack. And there is no limit to the number of replies I can give to the number of question you ask. And to add -  I can keep whining on in the replies and it can go on forever. Plus there is no real time frame in which we have to reply. In fact there is no real compulsion in which I have to reply. I can always defer and defer and just let matters sleep.

But at the end, it’s been frustrating and enriching. I know exactly why the system is designed so and I know how it works and its loopholes. And I leant to deal with more nitwits! And not lose cool…Worth its while :)