Objective Analysis of Jaswant Singh's Mind

Jaswant Singh   is one of the few Indian politicians to have been the Minister for Defence, Finance and External Affairs.  A self described social democrat, he is also one of the few BJP leaders who don’t belong to the Parivar (I mean “Sangh” ).  It was rumored that  he was  Vajpayee’s  first choice as  Finance Minister ,  but was  vetoed  by    “folks  @ Nagpur”   (  7 Race course Road power centre for  BJP).  Even though,  his performance  during  NDA rule was  quite creditworthy,  his  critics say  his lasting legacy was the picture  of  India’s  External Affairs Minister   escorting   Terrorists  to  Kandahar, which according to me  is highly unfair.

The purpose of this essay is not to go into the merits   or demerits of his Kandahar Trip.  But  rather this is an attempt  in analyzing  his  thought process   during those  tense moments  of  Kandahar  hijack  episode.    I did see his NDTV interview on that episode after 26/11.   He said his decision w.r.t Kandahar was taken with the principle, that the lives of 166 people who were held hostage in that Indian Airlines plane are precious.  You can’t argue with that.  

Let us go back in time machine and be flies on the wall   in the meeting room of Cabinet (i.e.  GOI Cabinet ministerial meeting room.)

You could hear, Mr. Singh in his baritone voice, arguing for the exchange of terrorists in lieu of hostages.  His arguments are really impressive. 

Lives of 166 people vs.  the harm Mazood Azhar  and his two  colleagues can bring  to India.    The first part is absolutely certain.  As  someone  who  bored even  Strobe Talbot  to  death and agreement  in marathon  negotiations  about  Indo – US  friendship, Mr. Singh can talk to the folks  at  Kandahar  and ensure the safety of our citizens.  For the second part of the equation, we need to bring in people who are good in   Probability theory as well as sooth saying.   Who knows, transformed by the magnanimity offered by Govt.  Of India, L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh,   Mazood Azhar might decide to turn into a    “Father Theresa” and serve the humanity here after.   If he goes back to his old ways, then let us keep requesting Pakistan   governments   (plural is intended, because at any point of time, Pakistan is known to be ruled by   5 – 6 power centers!)  to return him to India, so that any future Govt.  @ Delhi can use him   as exchange material   for future hostage crises.

So it was quite an easy decision to make.   A certain present vs. “an uncertain future”.    

Send Mazood Azhar to Kandahar.   “Curtain” on Act 1.

Come back to the present interview. We should salute the integrity of Mr. Singh who did own up the responsibility of the act. (Unlike   Mr. Advani who t don’t  (can’t ) remember  that episode at all, even though  he wrote  an  800 odd page volume about rest of  his life (except the Kandahar). ).   Also we should   appreciate the value Mr. Singh ascribes to Lives of Indian citizens.  He was not a soothsayer to predict that instead of those 166 lives we saved @ Kandahar,   Mazood Azhar took away a bigger number through the mad acts of his lunatic Fanatics.   

 What  I really don’t appreciate  ( &  understand ) is  the  second part of the statement  which said “if a Kandahar hijack-like situation arose again, he would do the same (release terrorists in lieu of hostages)”.

There is a fair chance that Mr. Singh may return as a Cabinet Minister in the next government.  (Either if Advani gets lucky or MMS does an Obama act). Now those terrorists know what to do.  Whether we have a TADA /POTA/ Strongest Law in the entire universe (which I would call   a – Run – JET LI law), hijack a plane /bus / auto rickshaw, and fax/email the demands to the Govt.

 Govt.  Of India should appoint a Protocol Officer to take care of such requests and exchange procedures, instead of assigning the responsibility of escorting the released prisoners to External Affairs Minister…  

Rahul Dravid and Cricket's soul

This article on Rahul Dravid ‘s predicament was published (in Tehelka) immediately after the IPL 20 -20 tournament. Probably Dravid’s not-so-good-times started after the disastrous IPL tournament stint for Bangalore challengers and the humiliating appraisal by his "Employer". With due respect, i wanted to acknowledge that Mallya is someone who has built a big  business empire with some classical shrewd strategies  (Even Sun Tzu would have been proud of!).. He also competes with the likes of Pirelli in dishing out spicy calendars and flying the Tricolor quite high in the sky. .. But it is altogehter a different game to face the likes of Allan Donald, Bret Lee & Shoaib Akthar etc on the fast bouncy pitches and score some 8001 runs @ No. 3. To paraphrase  a famous vernacular expression  "one needs a different kind of kidney" to acheive what Rahul "the Wall" Dravid has achieved.

I am one of those old fashioned  who prefer Test matches compared to the wham-bham variety of Twenty Twenty. One can’t get better thrills than the sight of Tendulkar (& Yuvraj Singh) chasing England total on a fifth day Chennai pitch, a Lara battling alone (almost) in turning tables against an abusive aussie Attack , and Laxman waving his magic wand at those bewildered Kangaroos. These are the memories , which are going to linger in our memory for ever. (Btw how many of us remember Yuvraj Singh's six sixes or Yusuf Pathan's heaves @ IPL. It is like the new Hindi Tunes. We refresh our "RAM"   with the new catchy tune evey second day. But the main memory is reserved for those ever green hits. )
I was (still I am) a big fan of Dravid, even though do believe Rohit Sharma can be groomed to be a good No. 3 batsman.

And I am glad Rahul batted quite resolutely back to form today at Mohali.  Sincere Best Wishes to him. 

Now  the article i was talking about:

Rahul Dravid’s loss of dignity in the IPL tells of a deeper malaise in the cricketing world where talent is judged against the weight of money, says NISSIM MANNATHUKKAREN http://www.tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=hub210608sellingcriket.asp

Maps in our Mind

This post is not about Mind maps, rather the borders/maps we create in our own mind.   And this is in response to the statement made by our Hon. Home Minister, PC.  "Original Nagaland Maps lost" - http://ibnlive.in.com/news/original-nagaland-maps-lost-chidambaram/80773-3.html. 

I sincerely pray, at least we have Map of India in safe custody :-). 

Having said that, it is interesting to wonder whether “Mother Earth” keep a Map and differentiate between Countries.  Like all mothers (or most of them), Mother Earth too could be quite impartial and love all her sons and daughters in equal measure. 

  It is known that certain animals do mark their territory and guard it quite zealously. But Human beings are supposed to be "Evolved further” compared to Animals.  We boast about Self Awareness which Animals does not possess.

 At the same time, still we retain some of the animal Instincts intact with us. 

Probably we created the Maps in our mind and then in paper.  There are Maps which delineates Nations, States, and even Districts within States.  It helps us to distinguish between "Us" and "Them"...  Anybody within the line is “Us” and anybody outside the line is “Them".  I worked in Germany for almost six months in 1998.  It was almost 9 years, since the demolition of the Berlin Wall.  One of my German Colleagues was discussing about the Integration between East and West Germany.  His brother who was a communist chose to live in East Germany. Even though they started meeting again in family reunions, they recognized the fact that the walls in their mind were not yet demolished. He was jokingly telling me that it is tougher to break the walls in our mind compared to the Berlin wall. Also I do follow with interest, the stories about reunion of Korean families who were separated after the Korean War.  

While we talk about Pakistan and Bangladesh, we forget the fact that they were part of the same country not long back.  People complain about Bangladeshi infiltrators (which may be valid), but I don’t see anyone talking about the need to seal our borders with Nepal.  Don’t they think, Maoist elements in Nepal could be helping to fan the naxalite strife in India? What about the support we had provided to LTTE over the years.  Even though after the Rajiv Gandhi murder, our support was not overt, I am sure still there are elements in Union of India who support the cause of Tamil Elam in Srilanka.  

  Hardly we realize, that we apply the same perspective, mentality and attitude within our own country.  How is it different from   Amchi Mumbai, Mannina Maga, Namma Bengaluru, Madrasi and Ente Keralam etc?  When the enemy from outside takes central stage, we forget our own borders, just for the moment.  The moment “the perceived threat” from outside, wanes, it is back to square one.  Mumbai for Marathas... and Bangalore for Kannadigas...  I was asking a friend of mine from Mumbai, why there were only  posters of  Hemant Karkare, Salaskars and  Khamte in Mumbai.. Don’t they think a   Gajendra Singh or Sandeep Unnikrishnan deserve the same  treatment?  Why the coverage of election from Mizoram was so poor in our national channels compared to even Chhattisgarh?   Chinese seems to be wanting  our north eastern states more than we do. :-).  

 Regionalism, nationalism, Linguistic chauvinism & Jingoism are some of the Isms along with a lot of Religion "isms" and   Economisms (capitalism and communism); we created to separate us from one another.  

  I understand there are no easy answers to this.  It is not easy to change the structure of our thoughts and the way we live that easily.  

 It is not easy to transcend the boundaries in our mind.  Very few people in the history of mankind were able to achieve that.   A  Tagore, A Bertrand Russell, A Gandhi... 

 One thing I am sure about  is, the candle lights Barkha Dutt started lighting  in Mumbai may not be enough to drive away the darkness in our minds.  We may need Search lights.

 

$ 50 Billion Fraud ? A New Low for Wall Street ?

A $ 50 Billion Fraud ? A new low for Wall street ? Probably, this is what Obama meant when he stated " It is going to get worse, before it is going to get better "... My worry is how much worse it can get and when it is going to get better. How many more skeletons are going to tumble out of those Wall steet cupboards..

From the Wall Street Journal:
Bernard L. Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and a force in Wall Street trading for nearly 50 years, was arrested by federal agents Thursday a day after telling two senior employees that his investment advisory business was "a giant Ponzi scheme."In separate complaints filed Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the federal government alleged that Mr. Madoff had bilked his investors out of tens of billions of dollars.The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil complaint, accused Mr. Madoff of an "ongoing $50 billion Ponzi scheme," asking a judge to seize the firm and its assets."Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions," said Andrew M. Calamari, associate director of enforcement in the SEC's New York office. Out of more than $17 billion in assets under management by Mr. Madoff's firm at the start of 2008, essentially all the assets appear to be missing, the SEC alleged.In a separate criminal complaint, Federal Bureau of Investigations agent Theodore Cacioppi said Mr. Madoff's investment advisory business had "deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars."...The FBI complaint quotes two senior Madoff employees as saying that Madoff Investment Securities' proprietary trading and market-making activities are run separately from its investment advisory business. The complaint said investors' losses came from the firm's asset-management arm, which Mr. Madoff ran on a separate floor of the firm's offices. These employees said Mr. Madoff kept the financial statements from the firm under lock and key and was "cryptic" about the firm's investment advisory business, according to the complaint....The criminal complaint says Mr. Madoff told the two that he believed losses from his fraud exceeded $50 billion. That figure couldn't be confirmed.....Earlier this month, the criminal complaint says, Mr. Madoff told one of the senior employees that "clients had requested approximately $7 billion in redemptions, that he was struggling to obtain the liquidity necessary to meet those obligations."...Mr. Madoff told investors that he returned an average of 15.7% per year going back to January 1996, according to Hennessee Group LLC, an adviser to hedge-fund investors. Between January 1996 and December 2004, when Mr. Madoff's fund provided monthly returns, there were only three reported down months. Most months chalked up returns between 1% and 1.5%Mr. Madoff told investors that his strategy was trading in and out of large-cap stocks and buying options on those shares. When the firm did not see opportunities in the market the strategy was to shift to U.S. Treasuries, according to fund marketing documents and people familiar with his strategy.
From Bloomberg:Madoff faces as much as 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine if convicted. His New York-based firm was the 23rd largest market maker on Nasdaq in October, handling a daily average of about 50 million shares a day, exchange data show. It specialized in handling orders from online brokers in some of the largest U.S. companies, including General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.
According to RealMoney.com columnist Doug Kass, general partner and investment manager of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Short LP and Seabreeze Partners Short Offshore Fund, Ltd., today's late-breaking report of an alleged massive fraud at a well known investment firm could be "the biggest story of the year." In his view, it is bigger than Enron, bigger than Boesky and bigger than Tyco. It attacks at the core of investor confidence -- because, if true, and this could happen ... investors might think that almost anything imaginable could happen to the money they have entrusted to their fudiciaries.

Are you a Leader ?

I believe, it is apt to start with the following quote, which in my opinion captures the essence of leadership beautifully.  Let me quote Dee Hock, founder of Visa “Here is the very heart and soul of the matter. If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself -- your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers. Use the remainder to induce those you "work for" to understand and practice the theory. I use the terms "work for" advisedly, for if you don't understand that you should be working for your mislabeled "subordinates," you haven't understood anything. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia. 

My own experience suggests that we need to invest that more than 90 % of our resources (time and energy) in leading ourselves. If we do that part (leading ourselves) with integrity, then everything else falls in place.

 To answer to the question,” Am I a leader?”,   I would like to state  every human being has the potential to be a Leader and no one can  label  himself /herself   as a   Leader  all the time. Leadership is nothing but a state of mind.  When Life offers us tough questions, if we are in the “Leadership state of mind”, it enables us to answer the question fairly and justly.  When we fail to do that, then we cease to be a leader for that moment. In another words, every human being in this world has the potential to be a leader and Leadership is nothing but the “Momentary responses” we offer to the challenges and opportunities life offers us. 

The anonymous person who faced Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square was a great leader at that point of time. At the same time the so called “Leaders” of our time cease to be a Leader many a times. 

 My own ideas of Leadership (Leadership is a state of mind, everybody has the potential to be a leader and momentary leadership) have evolved from my own experiments with Truth . 

So I would like to redefine the question “Are you a leader at this moment?” 

I truly believe “You Are , at this moment of time”.