On A Loose End

A friend of mine once told me about the futility of Collective Bullshit. He was talking in terms of a boss bullshitting his subordinates collectively. He said, “It is simple, whenever the boss is bullshitting collectively, one needs to just look at some other person in the group and the entire bullshit gets deflected to that person.” In other words, everyone looks at some other person as if that person is the culprit and that way every one can keep his/her own conscience clean. The same holds true for collective responsibility also. Let’s take, for instance, the Mumbai terror attacks. When the question of responsibility came up everyone right from the Home minister of India, the chief minister of Maharashtra, the deputy Chief Minister and Director General of Police and the Mumbai Police commissioner refused to acknowledge their responsibility. The Home Minister of India had to be forced to resign by the congress part and did so very reluctantly, as did the Chief Minister and his deputy...

Satyam Fraud, Mumbai Attacks! It may surprise some, using the two incidents in the same line or the same breath. Fact is, irrespective of how different the two incidents might be, they have affected many people across the board. So what is the common factor that the two have? Complicity and/or connivance of Government agencies including Politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, regulatory agencies, enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies and whatever else one can think of. Essentially, both were classic example of failure of Governance, one political and the other corporate. After both the incidents happened everyone feigned ignorance and indulged in shameless blame game. It happened in the case of Mumbai Attacks and is happening right now in the case of Satyam. If Mumbai attacks were not a lesson in importance of coordination and joint efforts, the State and the central governemnt are hell bent on stealing the thunder and making any kind of investigation impossible. First the state Polic...

Update - Mr Raju has been granted bail in the Rs 25000 Crore fraud. This after nine months of treatment, for God only knows what, (He couldn't have been pregnant) in a hospital. What he was there for, what kind of disease was this which could not get cured for nine months and will get better now that he has been granted bail. The health dept is obviously in connivance with Mr Raju. The judiciary too seems to have now joined hands with the rest of the governing agencies and has granted bail to Raju. Satyam - the word means truth in Hindi. The company sure did not live up to its name. The Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju’s has admitted that Satyam Computer Services Ltd’s Balance Sheet was manipulated rather fabricated had its usual effect on the market, the sensex went on a downhill slide and no one knows where it will stop. It is a fraud worth Rs 50 billion, no mean amount. In the long run, the Satyam fraud will have long reaching consequences on how the markets operate, corporate gover...