Appreciated in Brazil, Booted In India

A homeless couple in Brazalian city Sao Paulo living under bridges & temporary shelter did something remarkable. On one of their night strolls they found $10000/- in a trash bin by the roadside and promptly returned the same to police. The man in the couple earns less than $7/- per day. When quizzed about his exemplary act, he simply stated that his mother had taught him never to steal.


Well..! quite inspiring at a time when integrity has become such a rare commodity. Not everyone is as upright as the Brazilian couple and even if they are, not everyone is appreciated as this couple. On the contrary they may get the boot. Take for instance, Mr. E.K. Bharat Bhushan who was removed from the post of DGCA (Director General of Civil Aviation) a couple of days back. His removal raises eyebrows considering the fact that only last week he had been given an extension for one year, effective from Dec. 2011, or till the appointment of a regular incumbent. So what transpired in this one week that turned the tables for Bhushan, who has the reputation of being a honest and strict administrator.

Is it incidental that only a day before his removal, Bhushan had issued orders to the debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines to either pay its employees their past wages (the airline is said to have not paid its employees’ wages since February) in the next 15 days or shut operations?
One hopes the two are not connected…having said that one has to be naively foolish to believe the same. The matter of fact is that Bhushan was not lucky as the Brazilian couple and the Airlines not as upright as them…

Disengagement of similar honest IAS officers like Bhushan and of the employees of these airlines, from their respective organizations, should not come as a surprise.

Not so 'Good Times'

Bump has come-out with a new app called the bump pay for person-to-person mobile payments. So now if you want to split the restaurant bill with your friend or pay him some money that you owe & vice-versa you don’t have to write a cheque or withdraw cash from ATM. All you have to do is to type the amount you want to send, bump your phones together (physical contact of phones) and do the PayPal confirmation. And voila! the money is transferred. That easy!


Wish it was that easy for Kingfisher employees to get their salaries. The airline hit by turbulence and in the midst of a financial crisis had not paid their employee salaries for the last four months. The employees had threatened to shut down work if not paid immediately. After marathon parleys between the employees and the management, the company agreed that the salaries were ‘seriously overdue’ and the Chairman of the crisis-hit airline Vijay Mallya had last Tuesday assured his employees that their salaries would be disbursed in a staggered manner from April 4 to 10. The payment comes as a relief to the employees and their families.

One can never fail to empathize with a company and its chairman that is in the midst of a crisis, much of which it has to do with the way the airline industry is structured in India. However one can never justify non-payment of salaries to employees, because it directly affects not only them but also their families. The monthly expenses, groceries, school fees of kids, rent charges, EMIs for loans taken by employees, and much of such critical expenditure does not stop because a company is not doing well.

In Kingfisher case what looked even odder was that it continues to own an IPL team, pay through their noses to the players, own a formula one team but delays employee salaries by four months, all in the same period.

The Photographer’s Curse

The greatest tragedy for a successful photographer is perhaps that he cannot shoot himself. Not that he would always want to but for the breathtaking photos that he clicks of others, both animate and inanimate, he would perhaps be tempted to pose for his own camera, atleast once. An automatic timer is his only chance but that short span would hardly allow him to use his expertise to explore various angles and perspectives. Success has its own failings. Every success comes with a limitation, a blind-spot that fails the successful. Hence everyone, even the most successful one, needs a sounding board, a different eye to help him explore the unknown perspectives and angles. Ditto for organizations that are successful. And, those who fail to realize this, start a downward slide, many a times unknowingly, and reach doom before waking-up. I call this the ‘photographer’s curse’.


There are countless individuals and organizations that have fallen trap to this curse and met their ignominious endings. Air India is under heavy influence of this curse and faces extinction like never before. Kingfisher airlines acquired this curse that has made it untouchable amongst the investors, partners and passengers alike. And now, Indian Railways has invited the ‘photographer’s curse’ with open arms. Railways, that was started in India by the British in 1853 and since then it has served as a effective means of cheap transport, linking the nook and corner of this nation. But years of populist policies have started to take their toll on railways. The recent booting given to Dinesh Trivedi after he increased the rail fares could prove catastrophic for Indian Railways in the long run. Trivedi, who’s predecessors had not increased the rail fare for the last ten years, had made a brave attempt to take railways out of the financial ditch that it has got itself into and save it for the ‘photographer’s curse’ hastening it’s perpetual doom. The railways minister fell prey to populist politics that counts votes but not the real issues. That ultimately if railways also face a situation like Air India then it would perhaps hurt the poor most; talking-away their only means of cheap long-distance transport is overlooked conveniently.

Imagine the plight of the 1.6 million people employed in Indian railways. If the highest governing authority can be thrown away for showing the organization the ‘right perspective’ then who would be left with any motivation or courage to do anything similar in the future! Nothing could be more unfortunate for an organization than a situation like this and for millions of its stakeholders, be it the employees, the partners, the customers etc.

An organization’s chances of avoiding the ‘photographer’s curse’ depends primarily on two factors –

One, has it got enough talent who can show the unknown perspectives and angles to their organization which has been more successful in the past?

And, second, does an environment or more precisely a culture prevails in the organization where it not a blasphemy to differ, sometimes even radically?

In short is there an engaging culture that allows its talents to express radical differences without fear and the organization is open to accept them if they are right, even if it means taking tough decisions at times. If the answer to any of the above two questions is ‘no’ then the ‘photographer’s curse’ is imminent. One last observation, most of the times the answer to the second question is ‘no’, which means that organizations generally have talent to help them explore the various perspectives but they often do not create the right culture to give their members enough freedom to differ & express, whether in words or in action.