Loud Thinking

Archive for 2013

“I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love…it is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives.”

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004);
Psychiatrist

Mr. Ishaq Dar can you answer the questions raised below, or the nation should rue that moment, when PMLN was voted by the people to govern with its team of extremely incompetent and nincompoop finance managers.

Now there is hardly any doubt that PMLN has totally messed up the country’s economy. Needs any proof, just read the letter attached below, and decide for your self, the sheer incompetence of the government’s finance team.

A letter titled “Flight of capital” published by the daily Dawn on 4 October, 2013.

PAKISTAN’s rupee was at 100 to one US dollar on June 1 and today’s rate is hovering around Rs110 to one US dollar. This means we have a devaluation of 10 per cent in less than three months since this government came into power.

The unabated beating of our currency in the exchange market has very serious consequences. It is sharply resulting in hyper inflation, mainly because we are consuming imported goods worth around $4 billion a month, and the depreciating currency directly increases the cost of imports.

The daily increasing inflation is making lives of the people miserable. In a desperate effort to increase forex reserves and stop the currency falling over the cliff, the government finalised a deal on Sept 23 with a consortium of banks to arrange $625 million loan at an average rate of 5.3 per cent over London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR).

Instead of stabilising Pakistan’s rupee, this reported deal backfired and has spurred currency devaluation because clearly this deal has sent wrong message to forex market.

Even the stock market reacted very negatively, and the Karachi Stock Exchange lost more than 500 points on Sept 24. I think many economy watchers in and outside the country would be wondering why the government should show such an immense desperation to market by entering into such a forex loan at such a high interest rate as 5.3 per cent above LIBOR.

This government-bank consortium deal of $625 million loan appears to have been done in unnecessary desperation and haste without much economic homework.

I do not know if the following points were debated at length before making such a deal. What is the surety that such a deal will not lead to cannibalisation of dollar deposits?

How will such a deal increase reserves if banks of consortium transfer foreign holdings of residents to the SBP and earn higher profit of 5.3 per cent above LIBOR?

Will it not lead to more dollarisation of the economy when market senses so much desperation of the government that it enters into such a deal? Instead of making such deals, the government should take bold steps and make necessary structural reforms because the country’s economy is completely fractured.

EJAZ AHMAD MAGOON
Lahore

To Build Your Case, First Identify the Business Need

Before you can build a compelling case for a new product or initiative at your company, make sure the business need is crystal clear. If your stakeholders don’t understand and agree with your explanation of the problem, they’re not going to approve it. Start by talking to the people who are directly affected by the problem and will therefore benefit from the solution. Ask them: When did the issue start? How does it manifest itself? Gather any relevant data, reports, surveys—whatever evidence they can provide. But don’t just take people’s word for it. If possible, observe the issue firsthand. Through conversations with your beneficiaries and your own observations, develop a full picture of the problem so your solution is that much more enticing.

Adapted by HBR from the HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case eBook + Tools.

No owner for bad money..!

20 billion euros stuck at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
(A TOI report).

MOSCOW: Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, until recently the home of whistleblower Edward Snowden, has now been reported to hold another secret: 20 billion in cash unclaimed for the past six years.

That’s enough money to cover the EU’s predicted budget shortfall for 2013. Nonetheless, no one is sure who it belongs to, and many doubt its very existence. Some sources have said it was sent by Saddam Hussein, while others offer the government of Iran as the owner. Those trying to claim it allegedly include Ukrainian spies, Chechen gangsters, al-Qaida members and even the Knights of Malta.

On 7 August, 2007, security company Brink’s flew from Frankfurt to Moscow and delivered 200 wooden pallets with 20 billion in 100-notes owned by one “Farzin Koroorian Motlagh”, according to a Sheremetyevo delivery document printed by the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, which broke the story. The document does not list a recipient. Several Russian intelligence agencies took control of the shipment, which has not yet been claimed, the newspaper reported.

A source in a Russian intelligence agency reportedly told Moskovsky Komsomolets that the money could belong to Saddam Hussein, who allegedly had $12bn in cash brought to Moscow in 2002 and invested in real estate. But the source warned against digging too deep, saying: “This is more dangerous than you can imagine.”

In a subsequent article, an intelligence agency source calling himself “Ivan” reportedly told the newspaper that the US government had long ago sent two Federal Reserve officers to Iran with a money-printing press to pay for oil it had bought.

When US-Iranian relations went sour, the Iranians were left with $6 trillion in cash they couldn’t use. The $6 trillion was transported to Frankfurt, Ivan continued, where it was converted at a disadvantageous rate into 3 trillion. Brink’s then delivered this money to 27 countries, including Russia.

Motlagh was one of three people the Iranian government entrusted with picking up the money, but he tried to steal one of the shipments in Abu Dhabi and then suffered a suspicious heart attack in the custody of Iranian intelligence, Ivan said.

A Facebook page for “Farzin Kororian Motlagh” created in 2012 shows a man resembling the one shown on an Iranian passport published by Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Fraudsters including Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Japanese, members of al-Qaida and the Knights of Malta tried to claim the money, as did a foundation called “World of Kind People” run by Ukrainian intelligence agents, according to Ivan.

Given below is the link of the scan of the letter and the envelope of Sir. Dr. Allama Iqbal Sahab, written to my maternal grand father 87 years ago. I have the original copy of the letter as well as the envelope.

Link:- https://www.snayyar.com/an-84-years-old-letter-of-dr-allama-muhammad-iqbal-poet-of-the-east.html#sthash.rrR31rlX.dpbs

“A friend who understands your tears is much more valuable than a lot of friends who only know your smile.”

Trust is to believe in and rely on another.

An excerpt from
The How of Wow!
by John Murphy

The truth is world class service organizations know and apply certain practices that most companies do not. This is what differentiates them from the pack. This is what keeps them moving forward on the leading edge of innovation and change, forcing others to catch up. They do things that exceed customer expectations. They solve problems before customers even know there is a problem. They fill latent needs before customers know they have a need. They offer value propositions that seem impossible, yet they deliver on their word. They understand that the customer is not always right, that the customer often does not know what they want until they see it. As Lee Iacocca put it many years ago, no one ever came to Chrysler and asked for a mini-van to be designed.

Super positive experiences with most businesses may be rare indeed, but they are a way of life for the companies that have it right. Customer service is not a department. It is an attitude. It is a culture. It is a collective way of seeing the world. “Wowing” customers is not the exception. It is the rule. Exceeding expectations is not a surprise. It is planned and executed with diligence, ease and grace.

Take Disney, for example. Imagine you are standing in line waiting for a ride in one of the parks. You notice a sign that indicates you will be in line for 35 minutes. Is this a guess? Is this like listening to an airline attendant telling you the plane you are waiting for is scheduled to leave on time in ten minutes when there is no plane at the gate? Disney not only knows how long you will wait, but they pad it by a few minutes so you “think you made good time” when you get on the ride in 33 minutes. Instead of being disappointed or simply satisfied, you feel good.

If you are serious about “wowing” your customers and growing your business through genuine best practices, The How of Wow! is for you. Some of the secrets revealed in this book may surprise you. After all, if everyone knew these secrets and everyone applied them, they wouldn’t be secrets.

Isn’t it a court terrorism?

A must read to expose the genocide committed by the Indian Supreme Court in broad day light. These judges deserved to be tried for man slaughter.

An excellent must read article by NANDINI SUNDAR which appeared in The Hindustan Times of Lucknow dated 12 February 2013…………………………………………………..When Kashmiris say they don’t feel part of India, they are only reiterating a truth that Indian politicians and governments voice all the time. What else does it mean when politicians and large sections of the media talk of how happy ‘Indians’ are at the hanging of Afzal Guru, when his execution is touted as a cathartic closure for ‘India’.

The last time I checked, there was curfew in Kashmir and thousands of other justice-loving people were deeply unhappy at the secretive execution, and at the use of the death penalty to fulfil some atavistic blood lust. How else to read the judges’ pronouncement — even as they noted discrepancies in the police version of his guilt — that the hanging was required to satisfy the ‘collective conscience’? In fact, Durkheim’s phrase ‘collective consciousness’ conceals the manufacture of consent through the media, the courts and other institutions. And contrary to his prediction that in an interdependent and complex society we would see a growth in reparative justice, in India, what we see is the growth of a vulgar retributive justice, where primal passions are deliberately inflamed to create a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

‘Us’ in the context of contemporary India means the Bajrang Dal who distributed sweets to celebrate the hanging and blackened the faces of people with opposite views; it means the rightwing goons who groped and sexually abused female protesters outside a Delhi college last week with full police connivance.

But ‘us’ also includes the cynical coterie of Congress politicians who periodically decide to join the BJP bandwagon for electoral purposes. If opening the locks of the Babri Masjid and legislating against the Shah Bano judgement were permanent blots on Rajiv Gandhi’s claim to be secular, his son’s installation in the formal pecking order of the Congress has been accompanied by the opportunistic hanging of Afzal Guru.

Sonia Gandhi may have pleaded against the death penalty for Rajiv’s killers, but unless her party takes a principled position against the death penalty for all, this will seem like the rest of her liberal outreach programme, designed to ensure her own good name.

‘Them’ includes all the ordinary people of India — who have had their lands forcibly acquired, their homes burnt, their relatives killed — in riots and pogroms. ‘Them’ are the seditious fisher folks of Kudankulam, the grave security threats who inhabit the mineral rich villages of Dantewada, the Naga elder and the Kashmiri woman.

And then there are some whose status as ‘us’ or ‘them’ depends on the political calculations of the day. Balwant Singh Rajoana, on death row for the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, may not be hanged because the Akali lobby is important to ‘us’. But clearly it is not important enough for the victims of 1984 to get justice, in which case they fall into the ‘them’ category.

We are told that the ‘Law’ has taken its course, the ‘Law has come full circle’. Where is this law when the widows of Delhi 1984 are still waiting for justice — and people like HKL Bhagat have died before they could be hung (not that this was ever a worry for him); when the murderers of Gujarat 2002 are still roaming free, and having the EU and others cosy up to their government? Did the law come full circle when the murderers of Bathani Tola were acquitted? Where was the law when thousands of mass graves were uncovered in Kashmir and thousands ‘disappeared’; where is this law when women are raped and their rapist officers or jawans get full protection under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA)?

Deponents at the Verma Commission provided a number of cases in Kashmir where the courts had prima facie indicted army personnel, but the central government refused to give permission to prosecute. The Upendra Commission clearly found that Thangjam Manorama was raped and murdered by personnel of the Assam Rifles in Manipur, but not one person has been punished. In Chhattisgarh, young bravehearts who filed rape cases against special police forces with great difficulty — resulting in arrest warrants against the accused — are being coerced to take their statements back. But then, I forgot, Kashmiris, Manipuris, the adivasis of central India — are not ‘us’, they are not ‘Indian’.

When asked why the AFSPA is needed to protect armed personnel — since rape can never be done in the line of duty — high-ranking officers come on television to say that 99% of the charges against the army are false, and the women are put up to it by Maoists and militants. So shall we assume then, that the women of the North-east, of Kashmir and adivasi India are congenital liars? Or that the law is designed to ensure they are fair game, a welcome pastime in the ‘course of duty’? Or perhaps, more simply, these women are not ‘Indians’.

If to be Indian is to accept the death penalty, if to be Indian is to accept the unjust hanging of a tortured man born of a tortured and alienated people, if to be Indian is to accept the rapes of my sisters and the impunity of its officers, let me say in the words of the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet, “Yes, I am a traitor, if you are a patriot, if you are a defender of our homeland, I am a traitor to my homeland; I am a traitor to my country… if patriotism is the claws of your village lords, … if patriotism is the police club, if your allocations and your salaries are patriotism,… if patriotism is not escaping from our stinking black-minded ignorance, then I am a traitor.”

Nandini Sundar teaches sociology at Delhi University. The views expressed by the author are personal.

Maturity comes when you stop making excuses and start making changes.