Excuse of a Party

‘I did not know that excuses we made in school to avoid strenuous exercises during physical training would also be useful later after we grew up’ said my son in genuine bewilderment. Peering from my newspaper mentioning comments of the Indian captain for his loss in the match I joined in his amused conclusion. ‘At least our excuses sounded prima facie genuine’ he complained perhaps projecting himself and his generation as experts in excuse creation. ‘You found the logic of late parties telling on the body strength as unconvincing?’ I asked in amazement. ‘When you are part of IPL and Party is your middle name, how can you blame parties?’ I nodded; understanding that the sponsors would like the players to meet their influentials like bottlers and other influential people to promote their business in return for the bushels of notes they pour in the sponsorship. ‘No.. no..’ my son shook his head in disagreement. ‘Party is their middle name isn’t it?’ As usual he confused me, so he elaborated. ‘Doesn’t everyone know IPL stands for Incessant Party Lover?”

That ignited my muse of the mind on excuses that people make to explain their failure which is not convincing prima facie.

Excuse for losing chess game – ‘I was playing with the wrong colour of pieces’.

Excuse for a jockey to lose a race – ‘The shoe was lose; not the horses, mine which made me fidget in my seat.’
Excuse of a famous golfer to lose a tournament- ‘My swinging lifestyle took a toll on my club swing’.

That is enough of sportspersons. Let us see unconvincing excuses in corporate life.

Excuse by CEO for dismal performance – ‘Two building in US fell down and so did our order book even though we are in domestic market and not international.’

Excuse by Marketing manager on his inability to expand the market ‘We were so busy planning and strategizing that time just flew and competitors breezed past us.’

Excuse by a party caterer/ Event Organiser – ‘We were so busy attending parties that we did not realize that we made bumper profits’. Now this party excuse is perhaps made to Income Tax officer on why they did not pay advance tax.

Pay 2 Sell

Two of my students from Management college accosted me in the corridor of the college with a newspaper folded at a news of a joint venture gone sour. I smiled at the juvenile attempt to butter me up by showing they took to heart my advice to scan news for the subject of amalgamation, mergers and takeovers which was the subject handed to me as a visiting faculty. ‘Not just to impress you sir’ spoke Sunil, ‘But to appraise you what we stumbled onto’. Ushering them to an empty classroom, Sunil showed me extracts of the joint venture which had the standard clause of equal sharing of profits and losses. Then he calculated the shares owned by the outgoing co-venturer. The carried forward loss of the joint venture was so high that the capital was completely eroded. Then came the punch line ‘Sir, if the capital is negative, will the seller have to pay the receiver of the shares when he exits the company?’ I swear my arteries froze cold as I had no explanation for this unique situation where the seller will have to pay!

Bidding for time, I reached deep into my memory to search for parallel situations where the seller would have to pay instead of receiving money. There are such rare cases. I was shocked to realize that I had myself paid to sell – my old fiat car. It was in running condition but the new Korean-Japanese models flooded the market and no-one wanted to buy a second hand fiat which once was selling more than the showroom price. So I had to pay the scrap dealer to take the car away.

The Indian social custom/structure of wedding especially in the north is very similar. To make your daughter go to her in-laws place, you have to bribe the in-laws to take her away with dance and song. I believe it is called dowry. Though frown upon and declared illegal, the economics of the situation is perhaps stronger.

Then there was a situation where we paid indirectly to cart away unwanted from our office – our egomaniac boss. We hijacked his profile from the computer and spread it over HR firms and paid them to offer him a lucrative job. Only with his departure could we breathe and actually do something constructive instead of just feeding his ego.

E-error

‘What is the use of making you file my return when I have to see such outrageous demands !’ screamed an exasperated client in our Chartered Accountant’s office. ‘I imagine you must have made some junior calculate my tax and you signed without looking’ he continued. I signaled for water and held out my hand to receive the paper he was waving like an enemy flag. It was an ordinary demand notice which normally sets off the panic button of the clients but routine for us. But looking at the newly designed computer print instead of scribbled handwriting on a printed sheet, even I jumped to my feet as I read the demanded figure. ‘See?’ said the client sipping the cold water. Now I gulped down a glass. ‘Must be computer error’ I mumbled. ‘The tax calculated by them works out in 14 digits my dear man’ scolded my client. ‘But your 3 year turnover also does not add up to the tax amount itself’ I countered.

The Income tax matter was just the tip of the iceberg. The office where the return was filed said that this was sent Centrally. It was at the other end of the city and I spend half a day to reach there. They in turn said that they merely housed the computers and printers. In case of any error discussion I must go to their Computer Planning and Implementation cell which again was in a third area far away. ‘How can such a preposterous error occur here” I asked the PR at the computer cell when I finally reached the place. ‘With 14 decimal point accuracy of the chip, one does not expect this’ I continued. Now, the hitherto crestfallen face brightened up as if he had found the answer. ‘See, the demand also is in 14 digits. The computer is doing its technical duty well.’ After meeting half a dozen of their staff we concluded a programming error but I could not talk to the programmer cause it was contracted out and the programmer was sitting in his private office and not the premises of Income tax. I believe that is what they call ‘outsourcing’.

Just then my cell phone rang and my office staff was screaming for my help as if riots had broken in my office. ‘Lost of people here including your wife!’ whispered our receptionist. My wife was seated inside perhaps as a demand of her conjugal right. ‘After all these years of marriage I see this?’ she too waved a paper in front of me. ‘If it is an Income Tax notice do not worry , something wrong with the computers’ I said easing myself in my chair. But the paper she flung was not from Income Tax but a well known pathologist. As I picked it up she made her dramatic announcement ‘You are pregnant’. I started sweating trying to remember which seminar I had attended when I must have strayed …. but wait a minute, I was a male and males do not get pregnant. This report was part of my annual checkup. I called up the Doctor and he said it was a computer error. Perhaps the data of patient before me was mixed up with mine. I swore never to go to any annual check up and die early perhaps but atleast without such a scandal.

As my wife left, my outside office started sending the mob members one by one. This one looked like a Government official. ‘Please ask your Doctor to be careful in filing certificates since we have yet to received one from him’ he said. I laughed, ‘you want a certificate from him that I am pregnant?’ He made an apology of a giggle and dropped his bomb, ‘No – that you have died seven days ago.’ No sound came from my open mouth so he introduced himself and the issue. ‘I am from the registrar of Births and Deaths. Our computerized system threw up your name as one which was not supported by a Doctor’s certificate’. ‘But..’ I countered, ‘you are here talking to me.’ ‘Computers cannot be wrong’ is one of the statements you wrote in a press article in the 90’s when you were alive’ he started talking to me in the past tense now. ‘How can I be dead when alive?’ I mused loudly. Then it hit me. Somehow the flag against some names in the computer database must have been activated to ‘dead’ due to some error. ‘Check when you have last re-indexed your database’ I recommended him to come back after this exercise was done.

Before the next person came in, my landline jingled. My Banker was on the phone and was asking if I wanted to covert the huge balance in my savings account to a time deposit. ‘Huge Balance?’ I was puzzled as I monitored my balances well because there was so little to monitor. ‘You have 2 deposits of 50 lacs over the past 4 days’ he replied icily. One crore in my account? I had half a mind to withdraw it all before they realized they had erroneously deposited here and rectified their mistake. As if reading my mind, the Banker continued, ‘We have studied it and noted it is no error on our part. It is an ECS (Electronic Clearing System) deposit from your Life Insurance company.’ ‘Huh?’ My policies were due to mature for next 20 years. I picked up the other phone to dial my insurance agent while I put the Banker on hold. My agent clicked some keys on his computer and came up with the winning answer. ‘Since our computers have registered you dead, we have paid the policy amount to your wife. Perhaps the account is jointly operated by you.’ ‘But on what basis have you arrived at the conclusion that I am dead?’ I asked. ‘Since last month, we are linked to the computer of Register of Births and Deaths to obviate any bogus death certificates and in interest of customer service; we do not wait for claims.’
Now I appreciate the phrase of silver lining to clouds. My silver lining was cool one crore in the account. Only problem now that I was dead, I would not be able to sign any cheques to use the money once the Banker came to know my status. Just my luck. The silver lining was just a sliver.

Cue to Queue

When my boss interrupted my 120 second lunch, I knew it was a bad omen. ‘Why do you think this cash rich organization is resorting to such measured?’ he asked indicating to the charge proposed for queue jumping by a temple trust run by the Government. ‘Perhaps because it is no longer cash rich and due to the downturn in the economy, maybe the hundi collections have gone down despite the footfalls being the same.’ I made sure I always threw in latest management jargons as he often complained I was too old for my job. ‘We too are affected by the downturn in the economy so, investigate how this idea can be adopted to our company’ he uttered as he waved me out off his cabin.

I sat at my desk wondering how a company like ours which was in a highly competitive field of light engineering can apply this idea. As I kept hitting a brick wall, I thought it best to investigate from the source and find how this all started. I called up an old colleague in the Legislative assembly and asked whose brain child it was. He laughed and told me that I would not believe that it was the brainchild of the peon of the honorable minister. ’Huh?’ is all I could respond. It seems the minister’s peon was fired for accepting cash to jump queue of the visitors to meet the minister. There is where the minister got the idea. Still refusing to believe that a lowly peon was the inventor of the VIP darshan fee, I decided to check up history.

Meeting the King

We have often heard of persons seeking audience of the any King to bear gifts. What one never heard was the number of gifts scattered on the way for the benefit of the influential ones like the guards at the town gate, the palace guards etc. The ultimate is the gift to the King as if it is the price paid to him for his ears for the specified period of time. If the first citizen of the kingdom was this corrupt, what can one expect from the lowly subjects?

Ubiquitous Queues in India

Till the present day, the queues are everywhere in India. The ration shop. The lone pipe in the hutment colony. The admission into schools and colleges. On the romantic front, the most attractive girls also has a queue of boys. To jump the queue the one with the biggest diamond as a gift gets her date on valentine’s day! Promotion queues are common in every office. Each senior seat has 500 aspirants. And all of them thought getting in the company was the only queue they had to beat. In each of these cases, there are the imaginative and non-patient few who device methods to jump the queue. The Air traffic Controller of every airport is alleged to benefit a few airlines. The cost of fuel burning waiting for take off is really high cost for the airlines. While this queue jumping is intended for profit, the other queues of soup kitchens is to pacify a growling stomach where acids are poured by the glands merely due to the smell of the soup!

No queue here

I wondered if there was absence of queue anywhere. Though there are scattered few examples, none the less, these examples exist. I was always blessing my forefathers for the surname to start low down when there were oral (verbal) examinations in the school. The methodology of the teacher would be revealed by the ones who had finished first while I was nicely in the last 5 of the class. It gave time for last minute revision. Here, no-one in his right mind would want to jump the queue!

However, there is one solitary case where when one reaches the head of the queue, one prefers to give way to the person behind. This is no reflection of any chivalry but a selfish act. This is the place where you are standing in queue to the door of death. Here is where no-one wants to jump the queue forward; but would gladly jump the queue backwards.

Taxing Attitude

The person who conjures up names for taxes may not be the same person who designs new taxes is a definite conclusion since it would be rare to find a living person with dual lobotomy. That was my line of thought when my son had asked, ‘Are taxes named after the source of the tax or the area funded by the tax?’ Wow. He had analysed it more than I had, perhaps being of the age where the pinch of Income tax, Wealth Tax or even sales tax did not overcome all other analytical senses of the harried taxpayer. Frankly, India rarely named their taxed under any logic other than the source of the tax…. like Income Tax, Sales Tax, Excise etc. Not sparing even the dead, it restrained from calling it the death tax or inheritance tax in which case, it would clearly offend the already grieving relatives, but named it the Estate Tax. We had however a recent ‘Education Cess’ which implied the field of beneficiary which after a year of operation revealed non funding of education.

‘Why is an attitude taxed in US now?’ my son messed up my foregone conclusions. ‘Perhaps, the Banks paid bonus to their Managers despite taking a bailout package from the US Taxpayers which is not a responsible act.’ I summarized. ‘Then it is more appropriate to call it the IRRESPONSIBILITY TAX’ he remarked.

This innocuous observation startled me into the realization that while commercial transactions were hitherto subject to taxation, now, attitudes are subject to taxation. The ball is set rolling by a person none less in stature than the President of United States! When USA does something, it has a far reaching impact all over the world not sparing even India where it is common to denote currency in millions and not just in crores. Perhaps some old fines and penalties may be also renamed even in India as we attempt emulation of USA. Indian tax penalties may perhaps be named as Evasion fee or Concealment fee or dishonest reporting fee? ‘What scares me is the imagination of the taxing authority’. I muttered. In India, cricket is being considered as entertainment just for the levy of additional tax. After the initiation of Responsibility Tax in USA, our legislators will have a free hand and even have new taxes and formats of calculation. They need not hide their fetish needs behind the garb of an established tax. How wild the imagination will run cannot be predicted but we can certainly forecast the definite ones.

Name of the tax: Eye Refreshment Tax

If cricket is entertainment then the Cheerleaders are certainly not sport. Since watching them is a pleasure to most men, watching them should be taxed. This is expected to be calculated as a percentage of payment to the cricket cheerleaders. The number of inches exposed above the knee, or below the neck, will be the basis of the tax. The higher the distance of the start of the uniform from the knee or neck, (slab per centimeter) the higher will be the tax.

Name of the tax: CO2 Tax (also dubbed as alive and breathing tax)

This will be the first tax to be introduced by the Ministry of environment in this century. To be levied per nose. Penalty for contributing to the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere by merely breathing out the Carbon Dioxide. Rates will be highest in metros and none in villages as it is assumed that only farmers live there and since agriculture is never taxed, so, this shall not extend to the villages. The rest of the world is expected to be ‘gasping’ at the innovative spirit of India to contain the Green House effect.

Name of the tax: Aloof witness fine

While some countries are making it compulsory for witnesses to a crime to aid the victim, we shall make that a money spinner instead. All witnesses will pay a token fine for not involving themselves to save the victim. Exempt categories will be the Police and Cabinet ministers. Since Police always arrive last on the scene as depicted in the Hindi movies, it is assumed they are not witness to any incident. Cabinet ministers are busy running (the country) and therefore cannot stop to aid any individual. Rates will vary with the extent of injury with the highest if the victim dies. A ready reckoner will be published each year with the Financial Budget.

Name of the tax: Nil Findings Fine. (also dubbed as Honesty fine)

A survey of the Income Tax and Customs department revealed that 80% of the surveys and raids resulted in nothing unearthed officially. The high cost of such survey/raid had to be borne by the department and thus the citizens till date. Being unfair, the appointed foreign management consultancy firm suggested expenses be recovered from the surveyed/raided person itself. So, in case you are under survey and nothing is found due to your honesty and good housekeeping, a daily charge will be levied. Rates for raids will be 10 times the survey rates since a larger team is mobilized and transport cost is additionally incurred by the Department.

After all the taxes and fines, if you are able to survive, I am sure someone will develop a ‘survival surprise tax’ since it would surprise the authorities how you were able to find money for survival after paying such taxes and fines. Trust me, this is not far from reality because once the corporate tried using every legal angle to save tax and the authorities came up with Minimum Alternate Tax. Since we are working to earn and pay all these taxes, I do not think any one of us should display any resistance since we are earning for the Government anyway.

Wages for an Honest Rest

‘Being in the first batch of the new syllabus, I could sympathize with some of the spelling error though I must admit they created havoc in Maths but now the economics text book has got its facts awfully wrong’ muttered my son to no-one in particular as he threw down a text book. Being the only other human in the room I assumed I was intended to hear his words and thus asked him the cause of his frustration. He opened his text book and pointed out to the first sentence on a chapter on factors on production which was on ‘Wages’. ‘It is defined wrongly as compensation for work done’ he complained. I was confused. ‘But son, even the Webster and your more familiar Wikipedia will also define it similarly so what ails you so gravely?’ ‘People also get wages to rest at home’ he dropped a bomb. I pondered and started laughing. ‘You call that pension my dear boy and not wage. Besides it is cut during the productive period of the worker.’ I thought I pacified him. Hands on hips he declared that his knowledge on the subject of was not as lame as not to be aware of the concept of pension. ‘Today, India is perhaps the only country which pays wages for an honest rest at home for periods as much as 3 years. So do not tell me that this is the leave period during which the worker gets wages.’ Seeing the puzzled look on my face he slid the paper in front of me which had carried this news in an inside page which I has missed having dismissed it as a mess of red tapism. Here now was a ‘living’ example of a Private sector organization paying salary to 600 employees to sit at home. ‘Should I aim to get employed in such wonderful organizations?’ my son dropped a bomb.

As I read the news I appreciated that even the new school of economics had to be abandoned perhaps to be more rightly replaced by a Modern School of Indian Economics. Since I searched the net and did not find any parallel examples in other countries of a similar action for such volume of employees and such period of time, I had to restrict this new school to the territory of India. As an optimist I would like to view every situation with an eye of opportunity and now I fancied myself in the ‘dream team’ of the new school of Indian Economics. As I mused, I thought it best to jot down a few instances of Indian wages paid for no work done. Believe me, in India there was no dearth of examples in all sectors. However, such category of persons were actually already employed in organsiations for which they received the wages though their labour was in other fields.

1. Every body’s boss: All of us have bosses who get work done through us and other exploited colleagues while taking the credit for themselves. All of us remember the frustration when a Europe tour was gifted to him for a work done by us – his juniors. To add insult to the injury such an action has sanction of all the management schools by calling such hijack of credit as – delegation.

2. Most Government offices in the city: Whenever we needed to meet any person in an emergency, we never could find such identified person at his desk. In fact on a floor of 10,000 square feet there would be perhaps a maximum of one person at his/her desk. Such a person would have a standard answer to any query ‘I do not know anything. I am new here.’

3. Festival days: On days before and after Diwali, persons in departments interfacing with vendors are mysteriously found at their desks not doing any actual work. However they even do the unmentionable of liaison with accounts department to settle the outstanding payments to the vendors who shall feel instant gratification for an action they had shirked on the plea of matter of ‘other department’.

4. Housing Society Watchman: The watchman is never at his post when some visitor has parked in your designated parking place. His plea is that he is at the water pump when the trespass occurred. This situation occurs unless you are elected as Chairman of the Society. So much for democracy where all citizens are equal.

5. Any police complaint (non murder): When you greet the comfortably sitting and gossiping gentlemen you are supposed to feel guilty for spoiling their party, is the look you get, In case you did not get the point, after listening to your précis of the matter, you are asked to ‘settle the matter with the other party/insurance’ which stops at their noting. If you still want to persist in the matter, suddenly the men in uniform become philosophical extolling the virtues of forgiveness and release from material items of this world. Whatever be their method, it all aims at ensuring we do not start any work for them. Ever seen the smug faces when you get convinced by them and leave without escalating the matter?

I am currently building a team to start a website called ‘phukatpagarnaukri.com. I am sure I can sit back and rake in the moolah as there will be many takers. The only catch is that which employer will admit his listing under this website with a name as blatant as this.

Profit by Chance

Before I could even get a chance to learn anything about carbon credits, my son asked me a question. Since one asks questions only to those we hold in high esteem of knowledge, I did not want to lose face; as it would be lost forever. ‘Dad, how did Arcelor get excess credits? Is it life imitating art or art imitating life?’ He was referring to a serial I never saw, entitled ‘Sukh by chance’. ‘Son, accidents happen’ I pacified him. ‘In your career have you seen such errors in audit?’ he asked point blank. I hummed a bit and realized that I had indeed seen few instances of small amounts being deposited in wrong depositor’s account. But what took the cake was when ECS (Electronic clearing system) was introduced when the software vendors responded in a hurry and company dividends were deposited even in closed accounts. In our audit through the computer, these accounts showed up as sore thumbs. However, a similar large amount was admittedly rare.

‘If the company is in steel manufacturing, it must be using fossil based energy generating high heat. So how does such energy glutton smoke belching unit get credit?’ ‘Perhaps it is due to the effort taken to reduce the colour of the belching smoke’ I joked. ‘I get it’ answered by son brightening up my day with the hope that his questions would be finished. ‘Some organization does the calculation of what pollution is prevented and credits are given.’ I nodded, trying to pick up the newspaper to continue my reading. ‘Where do you suppose the calculation went wrong in these days of computers with floating 14 decimal points in the ALU of the chip?’ Now he had bombarded me with the Information Technology mumbo jumbo. ‘I doubt very much if computer were used for calculation of such a task at such an early stage. I think they used only calculators’. I speculated. ‘And were the calculators ever wrong?’ he demanded. ‘They were not wrong since they were marketed’ I pacified him but we had seen genuine revenue gains for our clients when the discounted bills of exchange were of high amounts running into hundreds of crores.’ ‘So?’ the predicted question came and I paused for effect. ‘The Bank clerk used to be working on an eight digit calculator and never noticed the extra digits not being accepted by the calculator as he used to look at the register only and punch almost blindly.’ We both burst out laughing at the silliness of the situation which translated into lacs of unexpected gain for some. We summarized that since the companies under Arcelor were so many, the calculations must have pushed even a 25 digit calculator (if there is one) to its limit and thus the error. ‘So it pays to be large’ my son remarked stopping my mirth with the dead serious philosophy which countered my favorite one which was, size does not matter.

‘Is a carbon credit worth in money?’ came the fundamental question. ‘I guess so’ I replied. ‘Will he sell the credits?’ asked my son. ‘That is the idea’ I replied. ‘The one not cutting pollution will have to buy the credits and only then he will be permitted to carry on belching pollutants.’ ‘You mean that now we shall see advertisements inviting people to buy such certificates?’ my son concluded. I realized that now this was a new opportunity for advertising agencies to start a specialized ‘Carbon’ department of creativity. My son looked at me with disbelief. ‘Do you mean to say that people will actually sell these certificates so that some others can carry on polluting the world?’ I did not know what to say to this.

‘Perhaps we should endeavor to get carbon credits of our own so that we too can sell our credits and become millionaires’. My son’s bright idea now blossomed. ‘Perhaps you can come up with how non-factory owners like us can get carbon credits’ I pre-empted my responsibility to scratch my head. He scratched his head and came up pointing a finger at a small space near the window we called balcony and said, ‘We can get credit for those four pots of plants Mom has planted.’ I looked at the one broken pot of weeds and a rusty oil tin sprouting a thorny stem of a rose without a rose and shook my head saying, ‘too small to account for any credit whatsoever.’ He continued, ‘whenever we went for a picnic, we used to relieve ourselves near a tree. I know for sure we were adding fertilizer for the benefit of the tree. It will be our right to get credit to reduce the green house gasses by helping a tree grow stronger and taller.’ I advised him to make a list of such actions and maybe we can check on the internet if there is any advisory list on credit qualifications.

‘Do you predict economic downturn after 2 years?’ my son asked as he sat to jot the list I asked him to. ‘Dear fellow, we are hoping to recover from the present downturn and you are suspecting another downturn? I must speak to your economics subject lecturer.’ I almost scolded him. ‘You had yourself written earlier’ my son reminded me, ‘that, now and even in the 80’s, the downturn came after the real estate had heated up’. ‘If you are referring to the Dubai Company then let me assure you that Indian companies may not get affected though the workforce will and we will have exodus of overseas labour.’ He summarized the situation, ‘in Dubai they were reclaiming land from the sea. This has worked in the past like in Mumbai Marine drive and Nariman Point where the buyers are mostly commercial. Even Japan has reclaimed land for airport. But in Dubai, it was done in a fancy shape for commercial profits expected immediately and highly levered.’ ‘If we agree there is no real estate heating up, where is the concern?’ I demanded blindly. ‘Carbon credits’ he answered. I waited for the clarification and it came. ‘Isn’t this, making money out of thin air?’ The basic truth hits always below the belt and believe me, it hurts.

My son had effectively identified a scam of Global Proportions with the official seal of many countries. My mind raced to the future of carpet baggers and scamsters. We are the country where the stock exchange scams have taken place as well as the stamp paper where money was literally stamped. Horrors of horror, this is a legitimate conjuring of thin air to currency. When this is the official version I cannot even imagine what the scamsters will develop for this market.