Fasgaya – Criticizing Demonetization and GST.

13 October 2017

  The root cause is discomfort with the two opposites, short term and long term.

My ebook "Success through Opposites" published by smashwords.com (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/375624) describes an energy process that works on our mind from the time we are born. We get attached to the one opposite that gives us comfort. This in itself is not bad at all. But simultaneously we start disliking and then hating the opposite of the one opposite we get attached to. This is the real problem as our mind is clutched and blocked by the one opposite we love and make our mind think that the only right thing is whatever our mind thinks!

If someone else had experienced comfort in his early childhood and life with the opposite of what we think, we think this other someone is wrong and only we are right. But situations in life do not take permission from us before they occur and so a situation may arise when the opposite we hate is the appropriate response to the situation in hand. We are not able to give the appropriate response because our mind blocked by one opposite we love says we should not give that appropriate response as this involves use of the other opposite that is ‘wrong’. If we give inappropriate response to a situation that arises in our lives, we fail and we become unhappy.

The point I am making is: we have isms that we think are right and that other isms are wrong!

In Nature, two opposites are present to make a system functional – say dogs and cats or any food chain. Nature triggers one opposite when the other opposite crosses a limit or a threshold. Thus when cat populations increases beyond a limit, the dogs have more cats to eat and so they become stronger and produce more dogs that in turn reduce the cat population.

All systems created by man cannot violate this fundamental energy law that says you need two opposites in a system to create, make and keep any system functional. Take automobile for example. The engine-accelerator and the brake systems are the two opposites that keep the autos functional. If the driver says one opposite say the accelerator is right and the other opposite brake is wrong, he would hesitate to apply brakes when situation arises that warrant instant application of brakes and the result is a crash. And if another driver says that brake is the only right thing as it saves lives and the accelerator is wrong, he would be driving at 30 kmph in a freeway. In any case one cannot drive a car with only one opposite in it!

What is true with automobiles is true with human systems too. The two opposites are the body and soul and the driver the mind. It is because the driver – our mind- gets tuned to one opposite as right and its opposite as wrong, our driver namely our mind, drives us through our lives inappropriately in much the same way as a driver who loves accelerator and hates brakes or vice versa. The result is we are unsuccessful and unhappy in our lives!

We would now see how this affects our thinking in our political system in India.

In our last blog we had considered religions . Now let us take another great pair of opposites that creates enormous impact, namely short term and long term.

In many cases, what is good for short term goes against the long-term interests and what is good for long term goes against the short term. The discomfort with either of these opposites can be seen in the field of politics and in politicians. Obsessed with coming to power-because they are not comfortable with the two opposites of power and no power (opposition) in a democratic set up - they promise fulfilling, if elected to power, essentially the acutely felt, short term needs of the electorate: promising jobs, free power, subsidized food, unemployment doles, less taxes or no taxes, writing off loans taken from banks etc. etc. in their election manifesto. Such people think that the vast majority of people - implying vast majority of votes - will have to be given promise of what they normally want in the short term, particularly in poor countries. After being voted to power, they find the treasury management impossible if they give whatever they promised.

There are others in politics, relatively well meaning, who think they have to focus on development issues if they have to sort out these very short term problems in a long term, that is, permanently. Many times they are shocked by the defeat in the next elections when they focus and publicize the long term positive aspects of their preceding rule. A case in point in India is: Acknowledged as the best to date Govt. in the country even today, the Kamaraj Government in Tamil Nadu, which went to polls on an enviable actual achievements record but mostly focusing on the long-term, was shockingly knocked out by a party that promised among other things one rupee a measure of rice to people. This was in 1966. Even in the elections in 2006, the same party resorted to the same stratagem to oust the ruling party - this time promising Rs 2 per kg of rice. Another example is that of Telegu Desam's Chandra Babu Naidu Government in Andhra Pradesh. In an interview the ousted chief minister agreed that he was probably years ahead of time. (Meaning he was focusing on long term).

The congress is trying to exploit the short term discomforts of people due to demonetization and GST, two great reforms of the Modi Govt. The congress has been largely deaf to the cries of the common man that these short term inconveniences are the least they can consider as their contribution to nation-building under Narendra Modi.

The point is that a mind, which is comfortable with both the short term and long term, is what is required in a leadership. Such a leadership understands the need for survival - and therefore emphasis on short term on selected short- term agenda, only the most burning current needs of the vast majority of population; they also understand the need for building long-term stability of that survival - and therefore the need for emphasis on long term. The leaders without this comfort with both the short and long term are no more there to accomplish whatever they strongly believe in or future - after the next elections!

Of course, the other classic example of being comfortable with only situational, short- term results is America's foreign policy. Its enemies today have been its closest friends of yesterday - be Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Iran, Iraq or what is going to be shortly true - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. By supporting without brake these individuals or families, in the interests of serving American objectives (over what period of time?), America itself created and is responsible for achieving exactly the opposite of what America set out to achieve—the American objectives—culminating in Sept. 11 th and the Iraq war, which has already resulted in more nations of the world not at all to care for American objectives, including some of its closest NATO and EU allies. America has yet to realize, and to put into practice, the simple fact that supporting an individual or a family is short-term, and supporting a Nation and its people at large is long-term.

The disaster is prevalent in the industries and corporations as well. To beef up the next quarter's bottom line, unimaginably low- quality decisions are taken at the highest level - knowing fully well that these very decisions could spell disaster in the long term. But by then, like the politician, this chief executive is no more the chief executive. It is for someone else - his successor or successor of his successor to do this unenviable and Himalayan job of repairing the damage. (Something like what the BJP Govt. is trying to do – repairing the evils of the six decades of Congress misrule.) In deed, the chief executive's performance comes out only in the longer term but he gets paid and enjoys the compensation that should have been deservingly given to a chief executive at least a few years before his tenure started! A chief executive whose mind is comfortable with both long term and short term is not over anxious to show how the bottom lines improve during his leadership - leave alone the next immediate quarter's bottom line like the temporary dip in GDP in India as a result of the reforms of the Modi Govt. namely demonetization and GST. At the same time such a chief executive who is comfortable with both the short and long term, does not mind improving the next quarter's bottom line if the survival of the organization is threatened because of the just-to- be-reported bottom line. (See the response of the Modi govt. to discomforts caused to certain sections of business and the timely changes in decisions and actions of both demonetization and GDP.) He is equally anxious to see that the improvement in bottom line is enabled to happen in future also by the decisions and actions that he takes - now and today-for future.

Unfortunately the so-called intellectuals in the opposition are not those that are comfortable with both the short term and long term. With their eyes focused on votes and therefore the short term, they blindly oppose the Govt. citing short term setbacks as dooms day for ever for India! Those who cannot be comfortable with both the short term and long term cannot be leaders at all- either of corporations or of Nations. Because they see only short term problems, they end up suffering from policy and execution paralysis of those that will do enormous good to people in the long term.

The short term and long term aspects are to be seen in the fight between people who are for "quick development" and the environmentalists. A mind free from the clutches of one of this pair of opposites of development and environment protection, decides appropriately the right one on the right issue rather than getting wedded to just one thing being right and the other being wrong.