Jack Welch: Prime Minister of India

With India all geared up for another election , the debate has begun. Who is it going to be this time BJP, Congress or the new jokers on the block, ‘The Third Front’? And with the congress manifesto out and Dr Singh being their prime ministerial candidate, the battle is on, face to face with Shri Advani. However, I want to interject at this point and propose a new idea, that of a fourth front?

I would call it the ‘Business Front’. The members would here look at running the country pretty much like a huge enterprise. Only the complexity and the magnitude is ten folds more.
In India, politics is either termed as a “dirty business” or as politicians themselves call it “social service” and “God’s work”. But what politicians have to do is manage the resources of the country, maximize utility and production and make profits from it. And is this not exactly what is done in any business organization?
Politics is about using the nation’s resources so as to enable the citizens to lead a better life. If we start thinking about the governance of a nation as a business venture rather than addressing it with high sounding words like patriotism and God’s work, we would be better off in terms of the work done. After all politics is like any other job, where you go to office and use your talent and knowledge to get the work done.

When political governance becomes a business venture, the finance minister will function as the CFO, home minister as the COO, cabinet ministers as board of directors and the PM the CEO. For this post the best candidate would be Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE.

Born in 1935, Welch did his Bachelor’s Degree in chemical engineering and completed his Masters and PhD from UIUC. He joined GE as a Junior Engineer in 1960 and resigned from his post a year later, due to the prevalent strict bureaucracy and lack of appreciation of good work in the company. He was however persuaded to stay back and promised a free hand. In 1972, he went on to become the VP and by 1977 he was the Senior VP. He was elevated to the post of Vice Chairman in 1979 and emerged GE’s youngest CEO at the age of 46, in 1981. He served in the post till 2001.

During his tenure, GE’s revenue grew from $28 billion to $130 billion. Its market value shot up to $410 billion from $14 billion making it the largest and the most valuable company in the world. May I add here that in comparison, India’s GDP (nominal) is $1.1 trillion, roughly three times more than the market value of GE.
Back to Welch. How did he achieve this? What made him the manager of the century?
Welch was result oriented and did whatever it required to achieve them, he was faced with much criticism but he silenced his critics by showing results. He had to take tough decisions like shutting factories to mass firings, but he achieved his goal. He was a man with a plan and a plan to achieve it.
The first thing he did was dismantling the old strict bureaucratic management style under the previous CEO and encouraged the managers to produce more. He shut down factories, reduced payrolls and cut lackluster old-line units, his ideology was to be on the top of a particular industry or altogether leave it. He received much contempt from his employees and critics, but won them over with the results.
He was brutal. Every year he fired the bottom 10% of his managers, but at the same time rewarded the top 20% of managers with extended stock options and bonuses. He extended the stock option to nearly half the company and erased bureaucracy.

Ultimately, he was a visionary. He sustained short term self inflicted difficulties for long term benefits. His workers and managers responded to his call, because they started seeing result even though they had to sustain difficulties. He was brave and had the capacity to take decisions, the kind that others couldn’t. This is exactly the kind of leader we need in India right now. If you show confidence in people, reward hard and smart work and be result oriented, people respond to you and are ready to make sacrifices for the country. They are willing to work longer hours, get paid less and sustain short term loss in return of some hope; hope of a better India . An India that is on top of the world. And to do this we don’t need a patriot or some sacrificing neta, we need a brave visionary who loves his job and is ready to take risks, who considers it a bonus if he is elected again in 5 years, who is unbiased and fair. Therefore youngsters like us who dream of being a CEO of a company should start dreaming about being a CM or a PM and help the country grow. For that we need to work our way through the system, like Jack Welch did – Junior Engineer-Manager-VP-SVP-Vice Chairman-CEO.

Jai Hindh!

Love Letter attacks…..Ram Sena in schools

Love letters have always been a source of trouble. Give a letter to a girl in school, the next day you are in front of the principal explaining your ‘heinous’ act, give it to a girl in college,it's the same scene, only it's the parents or another suitor who is enraged that you dared to give a letter to his future girl friend,that you are faced with. And try giving it to a girl who already likes you, there are chances of her mother finding it in the notes and so on. But the ever problem causing lover letters were written, is written and will be written.


Mention love letters and two instances from my school days come flooding back. When I was in 7th standard there was this classmate who liked a girl in our class.After guarding the secret for a long time he decided to open his heart to her. As you might have guessed he wrote her a love letter, in an Inland postal sheet. If you don’t recollect, it is the one which is blue in color and has two pages. He was well prepared, he had seen a lot of movies and knew exactly what to write and how, he drew a huge heart on one sheet with an arrow piercing through it and on the other sheet he tried to write a poem on his lady love's beauty. I remember some of it and it saidsomething about her blue eyes and long hair, she had neither, and how she looks like the moon ( she was only as pale as one) and all the creative stuff a 12-year-old can think of.
I don’t know if he had the intention of giving it to her or not but that’s when destiny intervened. He had kept it in his book which was accidently seen by Kartik and me. It was too good a chance to miss and we picked it up from there and as soon as the class was over we went to the Xerox shop and made a few copies of it. This we distributed among a few friends. This was the moment of 7th standard for us and some brilliant guy got the idea of pinning it on to the bulletin board which was immediately approved. I couldn’t wait for the next day; I had goose bumps and hurried my father to take me to school early. But from here everything went downhill. First by the time I went to class the girl was already there and was crying and was being pacified by the rest of the girls and all the boys were standing around and looking at her. Still we had a few laughs and congratulated each other, but the tension of where this will lead to started creeping in. Then our Bangarappa made a grand entry and got to know the situation and couldn’t handle the teasing and took his bag and was about to leave when the bell rang and he had to go to the assembly. The girl didn’t come to the assembly and so didn’t half the girls in the class. When we came back, things turned for the worse.
We were welcomed back from the prayers by our class teacher,head mistress and the principle. The boy was asked to stand out and was asked whether he wrote the letter. He didn’t answer, the teacher asked again, he didn’t answer, by the this time the PT master had entered the scene, again he asked the same question,but the guy didn’t answer and then there was a huge sound of a hand making contact with the cheeks. I almost peed in my pants, now we had two people crying. I could understand why the boy was crying, he was embarrassed and moreover he was at the receiving end of one of the most resounding slap (it was even rumored that he lost his hearing capacities because of this), but why was she crying? Later I got to know that getting a love letter was equal to being raped in 7th standard terms. In half an hour her parents were there and his parents were there and there were a whole lot of closed door meetings and after about two hours this boy walked in followed by teachers and his parents, then the girl came with her parents and he was made to apologise to her in front of us and he had to apologies to us, for what I don’t know, then he started crying and then his mother started crying and I suddenly felt really sick in my stomach. Later we came to know he was trashed by the PT master in the principal’s room. Finally this guy failed and left the school and the girl never received another lover letter in her entire life, infact I think if she gets hold of that letter now, she will treasure it for life!


The second incident happened when I was in 10th standard, there was this junior in my school, I forget his name. He gave a letter to his classmate and it ended up with the teacher. As we passed this guy this guy, who was with the teacher and an ‘aaya',we noticed that there was something pinned to his shirt .The teacher had pinned the letter to his back and was parading him throughout the school.The tearful guy stood there while the teacher told everyone what he had done.We had a good laugh, but not before our teacher gave us a sermon about how studies should be our priority and how God won't appreciate acts such as these.

Cutting to the present day, I am reminded of another happening. Ram Sena, the self proclaimed protector of the society trashed a group of partying youngsters in Mangalore because that act was "against our culture". They entered a pub on a Saturday afternoon and ransacked the building and trashed the people inside. They had various reasons, protecting the culture, teaching youngsters the right ways to live, protesting against conversion etc. I am not debating their intent though I strongly oppose it. I am talking about their actions. Even if the youngsters were indulging in activities that were anti-Indian, there is way to handle things and to put your thoughts across. Duly Ram-Sena was attacked by all sections of the society and it became a political issue. We even had a women’s group send Pink-Shorts to them and Ram-Sena sent sarees in return, pink or not I don’t know. I am very happy Ram-Sena was reprimanded and labeled a terrorist organization.


What I fail to understand is how the third incident is different from the first two. You have children,13-15 year old, who are having hormonal changes and who were hit and paraded throughout the school like criminals for writing a letter. They are left scared for life because of this. Once again I am not debating whether it was right or wrong, though personally I see no wrong in expressing your feelings. I am talking about the treatment meted out to these two boys. Why are these teachers any better then Ram-Sena? I even had a teacher who told us that we can’t be taken on a two day excursion because the girls and boys in the class would then mingle freely. No wonder Ram-Sena has its supporters. We are breeding them in our schools. I leave it here for you to think about it and form your conclusions. Personally, when we have teachers like these in our schools no wonder we have Ram-Sena on the Streets.