A World on Sale

Vijay Shiva, a bright chartered accountant, recently married and working in a big 4 firm in Chennai wore a countenance of concernment the other day. He had chosen direct taxation as his career path and kept himself updated and armed with all the intricate provisions of the Income Tax Act, the Appellate Tribunal decisions and case laws, all keen and gung-ho to add value  in his area of expertise and provide solutions to clients. In one such meeting, his senior in the firm admonished him for giving his thoughts and ideas freely before discussing the professional fees. A callow, but bright youth full of conviction, he was taken aback and remonstrated that the client will more than happily pay the professional fees if he has perceived value in his advice. Expectedly, he was rebuffed and given a lecture on the ways of the firm and the world. Everyone in the firm interfacing with the client has a revenue responsibility and he better learn it early on in his career if he wishes to grow. 

As a person well acquainted with the ways of the consultancy world which is as budget driven as any manufacturing or trading or service companies, I could understand the youngster’s pensiveness and empathise with him. The increasing competition, as elsewhere in other sectors, has gradually seen the primacy of billable hours and fee generation potential take precedence over the importance of core competencies and expertise and delivering value in any interaction or conversations with the clients and prospects. Everyone is a salesman first and a professional later, quite simply and emphatically. Growth in any professional firm is linked to the revenues that you are capable of generating for the firm. Those who can handle the immense stress manage to stay on, those who cannot either burn out or exit. Shape up or ship out, if one were to jargonise. A counselling session with his father, himself an ex-big 4 partner, and the writer, with more than adequate experience in the consultancy and corporate worlds, and practical tips to handle such situations assuaged Vijay somewhat, but hardly can provide a lasting succour. No law firm or consultancy or any other entity or company is free from this monetisation malady.

Your friendly bank relationship manager is no different. You are as important to her or him depending on the balances in your bank account and the fixed deposits (possibly the lowest interest yielding financial instrument) you place with the bank. Banks are merely traders in your money and without your money they cannot exist or earn any spreads in their lending or other banking activities. This is the reason that every bank works towards shoring up its balance sheet by increasing CASA amounts (current accounts and saving accounts) and fixed deposits.  One of the key result areas of a bank’s RM is to shore up these and their incentives are linked to that. I recently got a fervent call from my RM, a newly assigned one, requesting for FDS to be placed. She can view the bank balances of any customer and must have seen the floats available in my account. September being a quarter end, the bank needs to shore ups its CASA and FDs and the RM was under immense pressure to deliver. In spite of all the logic against parking funds in FDs, I relented in a spirit of helping out a stressed RM. 

A week ago, I was approached by a so-called ‘global’ organisation, professing to give a low down on laws governing companies and directors, to register for a digital conference free of any charges. Little wonder it piqued me enough to register, only to be dismayed at the introduction stage itself that it is all a PR and self-promotion exercise to advocate and lure people into paying for expensive courses and pie-in-the-sky kind of opportunities. Since then, I have been spammed with repeated messages enticing me to sign up for their course. Eventually, I had to block it to get a reprieve.

Many of us would have seen too-good-to-be-true flagrant posts on FB or WhatsApp, dishing out tips on multi-bagger shares or investment advisory, promising you stratospheric returns. These are all posted by dubious entities and persons. Just imagine lakhs of people falling for it and paying up subscription fees in the greed to earn high returns. They will simply disappear after they have lured you into paying up thousands of rupees. Just imagine the multiplier effect on these cons’ coffers. 

Many would have similarly seen thousands of posts on social media offering some exciting product or the other. The canny would know that any of these posters (or imposters, if one may) who does not offer ‘Cash on Delivery’ system of payment as an option is a scamster for sure. Many that I know have been made lighter by a few thousands by these cons. If earlier you were satisfied with a few square feet of living space and roof, today the builders will make you feel inadequate without having a second and a third house and for good measure a fourth one in a different city. 

Even the charitable space is with cases of such pitches for your hard-earned money. You would be assaulted with overtures from all and sundry entities badgering you to pay for some cause or the other with striking and grotesque images of babies or disfigured faces or the disabled. Many of them, if not all, are dubious entities as you would soon discover.  They work on your emotions and you are their ‘sale’ target.

Hospitals and pathology and radiology centres, anyone? You go for some simple tests and they will hand out reports pointing out multiple health issues across myriad parameters. One will be half dead with worry reading these reports and soon do other expensive tests and ingest medicines with debilitating side effects rather than any cure. All these medical care entities are revenues and profits driven and every doctor and specialist are tasked with budgets, that would explain why most times the estimated cost of surgery or ICUs or stays in hospitals are a multiple of what is originally estimated. Suffice it to say, you cannot get an entry into any hospital unless you have coughed up substantial monies upfront. No one is a patient, everybody is a milch cow.

Who is not aware of some spiritual organisation or the other offering life and living skills and spiritual salves, across faiths and religions.  Even if you are at peace with yourself, they will start sowing seeds of doubts and stress you out for no rhyme or reason. The billions that these organisations earn could put some small countries’ GDPs to shame. I have lost count of the number of missives that I have got peddling expensive workshops, seminars, training and what not, from these spiritual organisations, based in Mumbai or Coimbatore or Bengaluru or Chennai or Delhi or Kerala or wherever else. 

These ‘sellers’ and ‘buyers’ in all of us succeed or fail due to multiple forces at play. It would be quite hard to pin down specific reasons, given the situational and contextual realities of each seller and buyer. If one were to look at it from a spiritual lens, it could be attributed to the kaam (lust ) , krodh ( anger), dhan (wealth) and lobh (greed) guiding our actions or the four levels of consciousness that pervade human existence and behavioural tendencies – jaagrat avasta or the waking stage, swapna avasta or the dream stage, sushupti avasta or the deep sleep stage and thuriya avasta or the pure consciousness stage. 

While staying away from a deep-dive spiritual analysis and rigour for now, it will be safe to say that no one can sell you anything unless you wish to buy something.  Nirvana is free!