Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .
. . . home.
. . . soil.
. . . rain.
Use those words in the title of your post.
There are so many words that comes to my mind as I think of these three prompts.
Home: Heart, Family, Happiness, Comfort
Soil: Life, Patience, Roots
Rain: Elixir, Joy, Water, Flood
But if I try to associate these three prompts with my life, the word that comes to my mind is, ‘Journey.’ Please continue to read on about my journey.
Like a child eating his favorite candy happily, I was enjoying the pleasant comfort of my home. Years flew like seconds which I could barely acknowledge or recognize. I was jealous of the eagles that were flying, the horses that were running and the fishes that were swimming. But I never made an effort to figure out if I was an eagle or a horse or a fish. Soon enough like a loose soil, I was swept away from home by the winds of change. No goal to pursue and no destination in mind, but yet I continued my journey.
And like a voyager lost in the sea, with every additional step I was more lost than ever. Every time I tried to make a course correction or return, hope triumphed over experience. Years passed and here I was; sometimes stuck on the root of plant or sometime stuck on a rock but always wondering if this is where I wanted to be. But one fine day, there was rain. A rain like nothing this loose soil had seen before. A rain that brought back the loose soil back to where it started from.
It looks like the journey is over. What is most valuable thing that I earned in this journey, is it fortune or fame? Is it love or legacy? It is the ‘experience’ that I gained in pursuit of all these. And in this journey I learned as much about myself as I have learned about this world. A journey with no destination to pursue but which leads to self-awareness is much better than a journey that leads to an intended destination but with no self-awareness.
All human beings are in their own unique life-long journey with no permanent destination. The journey is the only constant thing, all destinations are only temporary. If I look back at my journey so far and have to assign an adjective to it, what would it be? ‘Interesting’. It was an interesting journey. It is an interesting journey and it will continue to remain so in future as well. The journey continues from another temporary destination.
The other day when we were having lunch in office, one of my colleagues brought the topic of philanthropic contributions by some of India’s richest men. Apparently a list of top Indian philanthropic contributors had been published recently. It struck me that it could serve as a topic for a blog post. The fact that the Oxfam report was also published around the same time served as an additional fodder for this thought. The institute that had published the report is a Shanghai based company, ‘Hurun Report.’ The company’s website has motto/ tag line: ‘Passionate about Chinese Entrepreneurship.’ The company has published two reports on India’s Ultra-rich towards the end of 2014: ‘Hurun India Rich List 2014’ in September 2014 featuring 230 Indians with a minimum wealth of $300 MN and ‘Hurun India Philanthropy List 2014’ in December 2014 featuring 50 Indians with a minimum contribution of INR 10 Crores (~1.63 MN USD, 1 USD = 61.49 INR and 1 Crore = 10 Millions).
I decided to take the two lists and see how many of the top fifty richest Indian’s have contributed to Philanthropic causes (Taking top 50 richest Indian’s from ‘Hurun India Rich List 2014’ and checking if they are present in ‘Hurun India Philanthropy List 2014’). More importantly I wanted to figure out what proportion of their wealth they have contributed to Philanthropic causes. I had to extend the list to top 53 richest Indians, as there was tie between 4 people at number 49 and at number 53 was N R Narayanamurthy, one of the founders of Infosys, a charismatic business leader and a role model/ inspiration for a lot of youngsters. I have given the details of methodology followed by Hurun Report in notes section at the bottom of the post. The complete list is attached in the form of two pictures with the details of the top 25 in the first picture and the details of the next 28 in the second picture.
Donations by India’s Top 25 Billionaires
Donations by nest 28 Indian Billionaires
My findings paint a dismal picture about contributions by richest Indians towards charitable causes. Out of the top 53 richest Indians, 32 are not present in the ‘Hurun India Philanthropy List 2014,’ a whopping 60%. Of the remaining only 4 of them have made contributions above 1% of their wealth, an uninspiring 8%.Azim Premji of Wipro Technologies tops the Hurun India Philanthropy List 2014 with donations of $1,990 MN, which amounts to very generous 14.3% of his wealth. Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Resource comes in at a distant second with a contribution of $291 MN, which however translates to an impressive 8.6% of his wealth. Kavitark Ram Shriram, a board member of Google and Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies come in at number three and number four with contributions of 2.9% and 1.5% of their wealth respectively.
India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries has only donated 0.4% of his wealth to charitable causes in the assessment period. This is in stark contrast with China where the country’s richest man Jack Ma of Alibaba has donated an impressive 9.6% of his wealth towards charitable causes and the U.S. where the world’s richest man Bill Gates of Microsoft has (been estimated to have) contributed (life time contribution) of about 38% of wealth (as per 2013 article by Forbes).
While researching for this blog post I came across other interesting articles on India’s Ultra-rich. According to a Credit Suisse report, ‘India is home to 11th largest population of Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, but also figures among countries with “very high wealth inequality” with a large number of its residents being in the lower wealth strata.’
In his October 2012 blog post in The New York Times, Vivek Dehejia has made some interesting observations quoting a study economists Aditi Gandhi and Michael Walton: ‘The other important finding emerging from Ms. Gandhi and Mr. Walton’s research is that 43 percent of India’s billionaires came from sectors that the researchers classify as “rent-thick,” that is, those enjoying what economists would consider above-normal profits because the companies possess certain privileges. The Forbes list of richest Indians, released last week (in 2012), is full of businessmen and women from “rent-thick” sectors: real estate, construction, infrastructure, media, cement and mining. These are sectors in which the government continues to play a large role, in the form of licenses and other forms of control, and in which there’s a presumption of a government-business nexus – or collusion, to use a less flattering term, according to Ms. Gandhi and Mr. Walton.
There is some heartening news, though, in the study by Ms. Gandhi and Mr. Walton. According to their analysis, the majority of Indian billionaires are “self-made,” and around 40 percent represent wealth that is “inherited and growing,” like the Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, sons of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of the family business empire. According to research, there is a positive correlation between economic growth and the wealth of self-made billionaires, while there is a negative correlation between growth and inherited wealth. It’s impossible to establish a conclusive cause-and-effect relationship, but the finding is at least suggestive of the fact that economies populated by those whose wealth is self-made are more dynamic than those that rely on the perpetuation of existing economic elites and their descendants.’
An October 2014 article in Forbes notes that only four Indians had thus far signed The Giving Pledge, a campaign (initiated by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in 2010) to encourage the wealthiest people in the world to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Out of the four only Azim Premji is based in India. The other three (Vinod Khosla, Manoj Bhargava and Romesh Wadhwani) are Indian-Americans. A study by economists from the University of Southampton who performed an analysis of the pledgers’ letters to The Giving Pledge has found that billionaires who have built their own fortunes are more likely to pledge to donate a large portion of their wealth to charities, than those who are heirs to family fortunes. This doesn’t augur well for Indian Philanthropic scene since some of the most well-known ultra-rich in India have inherited their wealth. To close this blog I will leave with a video of an interview by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates on Philanthropy. To quote Warren Buffet from the video: ‘A Philanthropic family on balance is going to feel better about themselves and their progeny than the family who has been hanging on to every single penny.’
Note:
Hurun India Rich List 2014: ‘A list of the richest people in India with a cut-off of INR 1,800 Crores. Wealth calculations are a snapshot of 3 September 2014 when the rate of exchange to the US dollar was INR 60.33.’
Hurun India Philanthropy List 2014: ‘Donations were measured by the value of the cash or cash equivalent from 1 April 2013 to 31 October 2014.’
About a couple of days ago I came across a news article and a blog post that serve as the inspiration for this post. The news article is by non-profit organization Oxfam and it says that the richest 1% of the world is most likely to control 50% of global wealth by 2016. The report is interestingly titled: ‘WEALTH: HAVING IT ALL AND WANTING MORE.’ The executive summary of the report reads:
‘Global wealth is increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a small wealthy elite. These wealthy individuals have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities in a few important economic sectors, including finance and pharmaceuticals/healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further. The most prolific lobbying activities in the US are on budget and tax issues; public resources that should be directed to benefit the whole population, rather than reflect the interests of powerful lobbyists.’
One key finding of the report caught my eye: ‘The very richest of the top 1%, the billionaires on the Forbes list, have seen their wealth accumulate even faster over this period. In 2010, the richest 80 people in the world had a net wealth of $1.3tn. By 2014, the 80 people who top the Forbes rich list had a collective wealth of $1.9tn; an increase of $600bn in just 4 years, or 50% in nominal terms. Meanwhile, between 2002 and 2010 the total wealth of the poorest half of the world in current US$ had been increasing more or less at the same rate as that of billionaires; however since 2010, it has been decreasing over this time.’ It seems to me that the global recession and country specific recessions since 2008 have not had much impact on the wealth of the global superrich. Another interesting information from the report: ‘In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to equal the wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population; by 2014, the figure had fallen to just 80 billionaires.’ The wealthy are getting wealthier by the day.
The report also finds that, ‘Companies from the finance and pharmaceutical sectors spent millions of dollars in 2013 on lobbying.’ All these lobbying has resulted in favorable results for the companies in these sectors at the expense of tax payers. Again to quote from the report: ‘While the financial sector has recovered well as a result of this bailout, median income levels in the USA are yet to return to their pre-crisis levels. The ongoing cost to the tax payer for “systematically important financial institutions‟– in other words those that are too big to fail – has been estimated by the IMF to be $83bn every year.’ The report goes on to say, ‘In the US, the two issues which most lobbying is reported against are the federal budget and appropriations and taxes. These are the public’s resources, which companies are aiming to directly influence for their own benefit, using their substantial cash resources. Lobbying on tax issues in particular can directly undermine public interests, where a reduction in the tax burden to companies results in less money for delivering essential public services.’
Another interesting observation from the report: ‘The three pharmaceutical companies (GSK, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis) that are members of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) have made the largest contribution to the Ebola relief effort, have collectively donated more than $3m in cash and medical products. But the amount of money that has been spent on Ebola and other activities that have a broader benefit to society needs to be looked at in the context of their expenditure on corporate lobbying to influence for their own interests. These three companies together spent more than $18m on lobbying activities in the US during 2013.’ Did I read that right: $18 MN for lobbying in U.S. but only $3MN to fight Ebola, a disease that was killing roughly 1 in 2 of the infected people in the current outbreak?
Some of the remedies suggested by Oxfam to alleviate such extreme inequality include:
Make governments work for citizens and tackle extreme inequality
Pay workers a living wage and close the gap with skyrocketing executive reward
Close international tax loopholes and fill holes in tax governance
I was interested in looking at examples of difference in tax rates between the wealthy and the rest when I ran into a videos in which none other than Warren Buffett, one of richest men in the world, had claimed in 2007 (if I’m not wrong) that he is taxed at a lower rate than people who work for him!!!
Looks like things have not changed since then, a proof for which I came in the blog post ‘The Taxman Cometh’ by ‘I Pledge a Fallegiance’. He quotes the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy study on taxation in the United States that finds that: ‘in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent and the top 1 percent will average 5.4 percent.’ The author concludes that: ‘It seems that States and localities have regressive tax systems because they tend to rely more on sales and excise taxes (fees tacked onto items like gas, liquor and cigarettes), which are the same rate for rich and poor alike. Even property taxes, which account for much of local tax revenue, hit working- and middle-class families harder than the wealthy because their homes often represent their largest asset.’ All this makes the author conclude: ‘poverty is a waste product of wealth.’
Years ago when I was chatting with some of MBA batch mates, one of them said that USA has made an important contribution to mankind by introducing the concept of wealth creation to the world. He said that because of this contribution by USA, accumulation of wealth is no more a zero-sum game and one person does not have to plunder another person to increase his wealth. He claimed that this concept of ‘wealth creation’ is the fairest system possible. Looking at the findings of Oxfam and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, it doesn’t look the current world’s approach to wealth creation is fair by any yardstick.
I have always found it interesting that the government would let corporations to deduct their expenses first and then levy income tax on what is left of their revenue but would not follow the same taxation approach when it comes to individual tax payers. Clearly just like in a corporation, some of the expenses for an individual are also mandatory/ inevitable. So shouldn’t they be deducted first before levying any income tax? I am starting to wonder if transaction taxes would be a fairer taxation system (on the common man) than income taxes.
The Daily Post – A Moment in Time: “What was the last picture you took? Tell us the story behind it. (No story behind the photo? Make one up, or choose the last picture you took that had one.)”
Peacock Kolam
The last photo, in fact the last couple of snaps that I took were those of Kolams (Floor drawings made in rice flour or chalk/ chalk powder) drawn by my wife for Pongal, the harvest festival celebrated by Tamils. Earlier this month, I asked my wife to take part in the Kolam contest at Mylapore Festival. However my wife refused saying that she might to be able to come up with a good kolam. I tried to motivate her to participate but in vain. However when we visited the festival and saw all the kolams, she felt bad that she did not participate.
Ganesha Kolam for Day 4 of Pongal
In order to get over that regret she decided to draw kolams at our flat entrance for Pongal. She drew one for the 2nd day of the festival and one for the fourth day. Each one took about couple of hours to draw. On both days she started around 11.30PM and went till 1.30 AM. For about two hours she patiently sat down on the floor (in December weather) to make these kolams. The end results were beautiful.
Our neighbors were praising about the kolams the following days. One of my neighbors in fact took snaps of the kolam and posted it on her WhatsApp and Facebook account. The other day she was telling my wife that the photos got a lot of likes and encouraged my wife to continue the good work. Another neighbor came to see my wife and asked for the design so that she can draw it at her place. I was hoping to write a blog post about my wife’s Pongal Kolams for the last couple of days and this prompt gives me a good reason to write about them
My wife used to do canvas painting and oil painting in her school days. Somehow she did not continue with them after going to college/ work. After seeing her come up with the rough sketch of the kolams with such ease, I am sure there is dormant artist living in her. Yesterday, when we were at the book store, I asked her if she wanted to buy colors and canvas. But she said that she hasn’t decided yet to start once again. I sincerely wish that my wife rekindles her interest in painting in 2015.
The Daily Prompt – Brain Power: ‘Let’s assume we do, in fact, use only 10% of our brain. If you could unlock the remaining 90%, what would you do with it?’
Do I use only 10% of my brain power or even less than that? Not sure and it doesn’t matter.
Are the results in my life the result of my brain power Alone? No.
If I am able to work with 100% of my brain power, will my life completely change for the better? An emphatic no.
As Woody Allen very famously once said, ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up,’ I would like to show up every time there is an opportunity. How much ever my ability is, I would still like to have the courage to face this world and put my ability to test when the situation demands. I would like to improve on my abilities every single time.
‘Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.’ – Calvin Coolidge (US president, 1872-1933)
One’s habits ares a much better determinant of success than intelligence. Therefore I would like to put my habits in order more than anything else. In his TED talk, Conor Neill said, ‘Success in life is not one massive good decision and failure is not one poor decision. Failure is repeated bad decisions; Success is repeated, consistent, good habits.’ More than hoping for increase in my brain power, I wish for exponential increase in will power.
I am writing this post for the ‘Be Inspired by the Neighbors’ exercise. On January 15, I read a post by Bijosh on his blog Odd Thoughts. Bijosh writes with the pen name Thilopian. The title of the blog post was: Can we define love? The main idea in the blog post is: ‘pure love is love itself. We should become love. We don’t love anybody. What we must do is to be love.’ My comment for this blog post was: ‘Nice Article. Very Well Written. Reading your post, I am reminded of the definition for Love that was given by one of my professors in college, “Love is an Act of accepting another person in Totality”.’
For the purpose of this post, I am going to assume love not just in its romantic form but as any act of kindness/ affection involving at least one living being. There is another definition of love that I read in an autograph notebook during my school days: ‘Love is the union of mind and soul.’ But I like the definition of love by our professor: ‘an Act of accepting another person in Totality.’ I always wonder how people accept those characteristics in their loved ones which they would disapprove/ despise in a stranger. The reason is love – the act of accepting a person in totality. It is also said that you don’t love a person because he or she is special, rather someone becomes special to you because you love him or her.
But a look around the very societies we live in, we come across innumerable violence that is unleashed in the love for one’s own ideology, race, religion, language, love for material well-being, and love for power, etc. So much crimes happen due to humans’ irrational, unjustifiable and psychotic love that one can easily assume that love is not a feeling/ word but an abbreviation (LOVE) that stands for Lots of Violent Emotions. If Buddha who preached that ‘Desire is the root cause of all suffering’ were to given one more advise for today’s world, he might even say, ‘Love is the root cause of all suffering.’
Buddha, the great soul, teacher and God to millions of Buddhists is not plagued by my short-sightedness and would not arrive at such hasty conclusions. Love for one’s ideology/religion/race/language at the expense of human virtues is the root cause of all suffering. Love for material well-being and hold over power at the expense of one’s character is main reason for many maladies of today’s human societies.
Human Beings are paradoxes beyond comprehension. The same people who might show indifference to a lot of suffering and injustice around them would one fine day take up one particular cause. The same people who would lead self-centered lives every day would rush to help others in the face of natural or man-made disasters. A couple of examples come to my mind. One is the example of a group of people from Punjab running community kitchens and relief camps for victims of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu. If difference were to lead to divisions and apathy, then these people from Punjab should not volunteered to help. To list the differences: the two states are in different corners of India, the people of the two states speak different languages, there is a popular perception/ school of thought that the people of these two states belong to different human races, a lot of victims and a lot of volunteers belonged to different religions as well, to name a few. Add to these most of the volunteers might not even face the natural tragedies caused by the sea in their life time (Punjab is a landlocked state bordering Pakistan). Yet these men and women from Punjab had travelled more than thousand kilometers to live in difficult conditions serving people whom they might not even see again in their lives. If this is not an example of love for humanity and human virtues, then I don’t know what would constitute one.
The other example is a much more recent one: The battle that aid workers and medical professionals are waging in Africa against Ebola. The disease has probably one of highest mortality rates (the last time I saw news coverage on Ebola on BBC/ CNN, they reported roughly one in two people who contacted the disease had died, in the current outbreak). Add to this, there were cases in the past as well as in the present outbreak of aid workers and medical professionals who were helping the patients contacting the disease and losing their lives. All these factors should prevent people from treating the patients who have Ebola. Yet there were/are so many people, not only people of African countries but people from other countries as well, volunteering to treat these patients and in that process willingly putting their lives in the hands of grave danger. Again what drives these people? Definitely not money. It is the love for humanity and human virtues.
All these train of thoughts bring me back to the question: the definition of love? At the same time there is another flash of thought in my mind. Human existence on this planet will not be dependent on our individual as well as collective ability to define love. It will be driven by our ability to show love and affection to other living beings as well as our ability to experience and receive love and affection.
The goal of this blog is to create a list of super facts. Important facts that are true with very high certainty and yet surprising, misunderstood, or disputed by many. This blog aims to be challenging, educational, and fun, without it being clickbait. I determine veracity using evidence, data from reputable sources and longstanding scientific consensus. Prepare to be challenged (I am). Intentionally seek the truth not confirmation of your belief.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
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