What's your number?

I have been an admirer of Janaagraha's work for a while now and like many successful entrepreneurial efforts, this one too is inspired by one person who decided to follow through with his passion & energy. Ramesh Ramanathan pens a regular column in MINT, published in Bombay. His articles always provoke thought and at times ask subliminally uncomfortable questions. Below is his latest as it appeared last week

What is the Number?

One morning, early in my banking career, a business manager publicly chastised a colleague for what seemed like a fairly minor infraction.

“Man, I wish I didn’t have to take this from him. Wish I had enough money to tell him what he could do with his opinion”, Pablo said.

I asked, “How much would be enough? What would the number be for you?”

This got the conversation going among our group of young associates. Chris, the American wanted a million, so that he could get a sports car and a summer home. ‘The number’ was different for each person. Pablo wanted two-and-a-half million, so that he could go back to Ecuador and start his own tennis club – his original passion.

Soon, other senior colleagues got involved and highest value that The Number got to was ten million, with justifications about children, parents and mortgages. By now, the discussion was loud and lively, with a lot of ribbing and day-dreaming, when the head of the trading floor saw the cluster and walked over.

“What’s going on?”, he asked. When told about The Number and what it was at, he said, “Sounds reasonable”, and then added, “I’d say double your numbers, just in case you get divorced”, as he walked away.

That was seventeen years ago. Since then, my own relationship with money has gone through many phases. Eight years ago, my wife and I returned to India to start what a friend called a “no revenue model” phase to our lives, with the security of having made our Number.

Beyond our personal journey, however, what has been extraordinary in these past eight years is watching the changing relationship that Indians are having with money. From a time not too long ago when overt financial aspiration was frowned upon, it seems now that middle-class India is trying to make up for lost time. I suppose this is inevitable - we will become a developed country only when millions of individuals improve their financial position, across the social spectrum. This means the poor become less poor, the middle-class become rich. And a few become extraordinarily wealthy.

There is much work left at the lowest end - evidently, we need to supplement trickle-down with bubble-up economics. However, the middle and upper income brackets seem to be like the Australian cricket team of a few years ago – they just can’t lose. And boy, are the numbers beginning to add up. Last week, Forbes announced that India had more billionaires than Japan – already 36 in number, having a total wealth of more than $191 billion. The financial fever is evident everywhere, from 1 crore salaries for IIM students to freshman design graduates asking for 5-lakh starter pay packages.

When it explodes onto a society’s consciousness, money changes all the old rules of engagement. It becomes an obsession that insinuates itself everywhere. Writers, artists, scientists, spiritual leaders, no one is untouched. It’s like everyone suddenly acquired a personal mental calculator that is constantly whirring away, creating one giant humming sound. I wonder at the pressure this must be placing on people, and how they are coping with it. For instance, in my interactions with senior government officials, I wonder, “How can this person be expected to support liberalisation and private enterprise, change laws so that people can become millionaires, and yet go home with Rs 30,000 a month? Won’t his daughter also want Nike shoes and summer holidays?” It would be naïve to ignore the attendant temptation of corruption, and the moral consequences of the corrosion of character.

This is to be expected. It is impossible not to feel disoriented and unhinged. We are getting knocked off our feet by the onslaught of a new order. I am not suggesting this is all bad, or that we reverse the clock – how could I, given my own comfortable fiscal perch. I do however wish – with little hope - that there can be measured change. Little hope because I recognise that when the people of an impoverished country finally discover economic empowerment, it’s like a dam breaking. We will just have to wait until this thing washes over us for the next few generations.

I think about our country’s historical relationship with wealth – after all, we dominated world trade for centuries – and wonder if we can recollect any subliminal consciousness of this relationship. I sense this often in Indians - most people know that money isn’t everything - but I sense it as a yearning for an old mooring that has been wrenched away. As hard as it is to get on to the financial treadmill, I guess it is equally hard knowing when to get off it. Knowing The Number. After all, even John Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire and for long the richest man alive, when asked “How much is enough?” replied, “Just a little more.”

1 in 365

It's truly a special day when you get phone calls and emails with the kindest & most humbling of words from family & great friends from literally around the world...Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Jaipur, Brussels, Amsterdam, Sydney, New York, Singapore, Warsaw and Rome.

And as usual the people in namma Bengaluru made it that much more special. I now also have some great books, one of which I've already begun reading that's aptly titled, "211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do!"

Muchas gracias a todos.

With a p h

Who would have thought that a 30 odd second clip of a song heard in a Simpson's episode 4 years ago would lead to the personal discovery of one of the most entertaining & heady kinds of music, in addition to just letting yourself go to the experience that is Phish.

$3 there, $15 here

I love wine. Especially a good Red. And unfortunately a combination of socialism, Gandhi, Nehru, Communist morons, protectionist practices & vote grabbing holier-than-thou pretences by politicians combine in a mind bogglingly malicious manner to make all but the cheapest (in terms of taste) Indian wine completely inaccessible to me.

While Indian wine makers try hard and churn out barely respectable stuff costing a ludicrous Rs.1100 or $25 USD a bottle, the grapes grown in Nashik simply aren't good enough. And the prices are unacceptable. A similar wine in the Netherlands would cost me no more than $10 USD. I still remember buying cheap Port for $8 USD which was still pretty decent.

The bottomline is India imposes unreasonable tarrifs and import taxes on Wines that increase the cost of all foreign wines (be it from Napa or Bordeaux or Chile) by an incredible 550 % ! The US and the EU have both filed infringement law suits against India at the WTO and there is a strong lobby at work in India too, to reduce these unreasonable tarrifs.

And I follow these developments with a thirst that will not be quenched until I can pick up that Greek or California Red at a nearby supermarket....*sigh*

Beer's beer, people are people

I just got back from attending a summit in Hyderabad on education & employment issues in several developing economies. It was a first in many ways for me, not least because I hoisted a jar with a Pakistani delegate and also spent a fair amount of time exchanging views with the Pakistani delegation. It was great to see them feel at home in India, talk about how its like any other Pakistani city and how politics is politics but people so similar can & should get along & enjoy sharing culture, food, tradition, music and many other things.

But the beer along with dissecting all the teams & their chances at the world cup was the most fun.

World Café

This was long overdue and its finally here. A blog on food from around the world, my experiences in cooking it, sharing ideas & recipes and other joys in the journey to constantly improve my culinary skills.

Enough's enough

And for the 2nd time in a short time, another innocent little kid has been mauled to death by stray dogs in Bangalore. I find it unbelievable that this happens within Bangalore city limits. I have personally also experienced the dog menace first hand - on my nightly jogs, very often I am faced with a pack of 3 -4 hungry or just plain mad strays who charge at me only to be warded of because I pick up the nearest thing in sight and really try to hurt the damn mongrels. And believe you me, if I didnt do that I would get bitten.

My solution for this has been consistent with logic and inconsistent with karmic laws, religion and all those poor, bloody misguided animal rights activists and so called ''dog lovers''. Either have enough pounds for the dogs to live out the remainder of their lives in peace, ensure they get adopted by these activist types or exterminate them. If you see a rat in your home, would you (even if you were a crazed animal rights activist) sympathize with the fact and spout slogans saying they have a right to co exist? What rot. You would set a trap or just try to swat the damn rat right there.

I cannot imagine if my little niece or the child of a close friend was to be mauled by a bloody stray animal that was left on the streets because some animal rights activist didn't allow it to be exterminated. I am all for animal rights, I love dogs too but this is pushing it way too far. If animal rights activists still continue to oppose more (drastic?) action such as extermination, then they stand to lose all credibility even amongst libertarians & sympathizers. And what's more they stand to be further marginalized by society as a group of crazed idiots...unless that's what they already are.