Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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On 15th Oct, Jet Airways took a decision to retrench about 1900 employees (800 had already been asked to leave with another 1100 on the line). Obviously the decision was not personal and was taken to help the company battle the profitability and sustenance woes.

With all the media hype and popular delusions about the upcoming recession and job losses, the entire world went into a frenzy. From news channels to blogs to twitter to phone calls to SMSes, everyone had opinions. Opinions on how to save jobs to finding new ones to saving money in case you are retrenched by your company.

Employees obviously protested, spoke to political parties, Mr. Thackery even asked Jet to reconsider and company was held to ransom by MNS, CITU, Aviation Industry Employees Union and I dont know who all for this retrenchment.

I expected the company to stay confident and justify the move. Surprisingly, they did not. Infact, Jet Airways gave up and called back all the sacked employees. People touted this as the victory of morality, common mans’ win, employees rights and other such things. I beg to differ. In my humble opinion, India Inc lost again. A company was yet again held to ransom and was made to take a decision that does not do any shareholder any good. If I was a Jet Airways shareholder, I would have asked them how could they roll back retrenchment. How could they not work towards enhancing the shareholder value? How could they take decisions that were not in favor of the business.

Naresh Goel said that he was unaware of the decision. Makes me wonder what kind of management runs the company that forgets to update the Chairman about such a big decision. And was Mr. Goel deaf and dumb to have not heard all the news reports and noises? Mr. Goel clearly separated himself from the top management of the company and put the entire blame on them.

Obviously sacked employees would cry. There would be heart burns. Political parties would go any length to get free publicity and aligning themselves with causes. Politicians would have opinions. However, capitalist need to be firm and confident. A business owner needs to show confidence in the decisions made by him and his company. I find it absolutely ridiculous to first let go these many employees and then blame everything on the top management. I should ideally be writing this post criticizing media and politicians but with one move, Mr. Goel has lost all respect what-so-ever I had for him.

With the recent controversy around Tata and its Nano project, this comes as yet another rude shock to the business fraternity. We are clearly sending out signals that conducting business in India is getting more and more difficult. I do not want to pump in hard work and time and effort to create a company and then see it being forced to take decisions that are irrational and populist in nature. As an entrepreneur, I am skeptic. And I am scared to even think about creating businesses.

I ask why. India asks Why.

Originally written for Mutiny.in. Posted here.

Mr. Raj Thackery has now said that all the shops and establishments in Mumbai Maharashtra (or is it Maharashtra Mumbai) have to have their signboards in Marathi (IBN, TOI). He has also gone ahead and said that

Two days is what the shopkeepers have. Consider it a threat or whatever

I obviously respect Mr. Thackery’s enthusiasm and affection for the Marathi language but he has ignored a few very important things in his blinding excitement. Things like law and order in the state. Things like livelihood of these business owners. Things like putting the nation of a billion people first (compared to the proverbial Marathi-Manoos). Things like development of his beloved state of Maharashtra. Things like dividing the country into pieces.

I understand that with proliferation of media and advancements in technology, people, especially the youth today, are forgetting our rich culture and adopting things more western. It is creating a huge divide in the generations and newer generations are actually forgetting what Indianness is all about. A time might come when we would loose our centuries old traditions. When the kids would not know what joy Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and other regional languages are. And a time like that would totally suck. But forcing people to adopt regional languages and dividing people on that criteria .. ?

The implications of this seemingly politically motivated move by Mr. Thackery are very huge. To start with, it will create a divide between Marathis and Non-Marathis. It will disturb the law and order situation in the state of Maharashtra. It will create unnecessary and avoidable clashes between the groups. It will do everything but promote the Marathi language.

What about a Marathi Manoos? Do they really care? Are you trying to say that Marathi Manoos is so dumb that he cant read what’s written in English/Hindi on signboards? That he can’t identify global logos/brands from a distance?

What about the businesses? For them this is just one more nuisance that they have to cope up with while conducting business in India. They would incur one-time expenses in painting the new boards. And they would retain a life-long disgust for a political party and would hate with all their might. Who losses in the end? The political party, its workers and supporters.

Lets for a second assume that we go all-Marathi in the financial capital of the country. Fast-forward 10 years. No foreign company would want to open businesses in India. No investment would happen. No intellectual and/or academic and/or business exchange would happen and Marathis would remain where they are. Backward, poor, still fighting for Roti, Kapda and Makaan. Do we really want to remain there?

And yes, I love India, Hindi and my roots. I am as proud Indian as I can ever be. Yet at the same time I am forward looking and I don’t mind accepting new things that the world has to offer. I look forward to a day when people would introduce themselves as Indians rather than Maathis, Punjabis, Bengalis, Asamese. I look forward to a day when we would have a communal harmony and “leaders” like Mr. Thackery would have to find new ways of getting those idiotic votes.

And in the end, may be I am too blinded with the thoughts of development and progress and I am ignoring something very important. Can someone show me the missing pieces?