It has been quite a while since I updated my blog. Though I promised to write more about Nigeria in my previous post, I could not find time to write about the experience. I thought my memories of Nigeria would fade over a period of time, making it difficult for me to recollect the experience. However it still seems to be lingering in my mind. The kind of brutal treatment meted out to the foreign tourists in the airport, lack of organized approach, failure to adhere to the rules etc made it a much more bitter experience in Lagos. In contrast, both my colleagues and the client were very friendly. How do I explain this? Can I say that it resembles India? Probably, yes.
Let’s move to the topic of this blog. Sometimes I wonder how boring it would be for the editors of the daily newspapers. If you categorize the front page news items in the last one year and sort it, do a count (*) and group by ( toad skills!!), you would probably get the following count.
26/11 and Pakistan’s involvement – 200
Warnings by Manmohan singh and ministers – 300 (sometimes they take off on Sundays and other holidays)
Pakistan’s rejection tactics – 250 (Sometimes AA Zardari would agree that terror elements in Pakistan is responsible for 26/11, then the next day he would release the arrested persons; even god cannot predict his behavior)
Kasab and his tactics – 120
Iraq bomb blast – 200
Afghan deaths – 150
Mukesh vs. Anil – 301.
I just gave 301 to the final item not just because it’s the topic of this post. In reality if you do the analysis you would certainly get this figure. Now imagine how difficult it would be for the editors.
Dhirubhai Ambani was passionate about his business and built reliance from scratch. It was very difficult for businessmen to do business in the license raj era. In spite of facing so many obstacles, he could grow it by leaps and bounds. The growth was possible because reliance was built with passion. Though there was negative publicity in the newspapers about reliance cheating the government, the public did not bother much because most of us cheat the government in some way or the other. I used to get inspired by the boldness of reliance group. Once there was some problem between reliance and BSE, I still remember the day on which I saw a full page advertisement by reliance about its intention to delist from BSE. Public debated that Ambani was stupid to do it. But, the next day BSE resolved the issue with Ambani. He was so powerful, yet he was not driven by ego, at least not in the eyes of public.
After his demise, the fight between Mukesh and Anil is the only story that keeps appearing in the front pages of the newspapers. They just want to prove each other, how powerful and mighty they are. Both have political clout, but yet they are not able to achieve success easily. I believe nowadays reliance group (Both RIL and ADAG group) is not able to achieve much because they are driven by egos, not charged by passion. If they have to as powerful as Dhirubhai Ambani, they should shed their egos and work passionately to achieve their objectives; else they would be riding for a fall.
