The Diwali Column

Here I start with a very short story from the times of global financial crisis. 

October 2011, a beautiful greek city close to the mediterranean, looks totally deserted on a sunny day. The country is facing tough times, everyone is in debt, living on credit, be it a person or an organization. Suddenly, a rich tourist from China comes to the city. He enters a hotel, accidentally puts a 100 euro bill (currency bill) on the reception counter, and asks the proprietor if he could inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one, the proprietor agrees. The hotel proprietor takes the 100 euro and runs to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the 100 euro, and runs to pay his debt to the pig-grower. The pig-grower takes the 100 euro, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel. The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 euro and runs to pay his debt to the town’s prostitute that in these hard times, gave her “services” on credit. The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 euro to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there. The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 euro back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 euro, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town. No one earned anything. However, a big part of the town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

So moral of the story is, all it takes to get free from debt is the flow of cash not the cash itself.

Diwali the festival of light, coincides with worship of Lakshmi, goddess of wealth in Indian culture and you observe a huge cash flow.  It is the season for gambling, personal gifts, corporate gifts, dry-fruit and liquor sales, expenditure on fireworks and concentrated quarter for sales of consumer goods.  Estimates of consumption expenditure are no more than guesses even ignoring sales of retail consumer goods gives a clue to an incremental consumption expenditure approaching USD 20 Billion. Truly, this festival should be the festival of wealth and Diwali. Money is flowing everywhere, from corrupt politicians buying elephant statues or selling telecom spectrums. Even those who are fighting corruption are making it flow by 'traveling' and 'talking'. And this flow of money appreciates or depreciates the hope and development of people and society, depending on its direction of flow. Hope this Diwali, the wealth flow direction changes its course to bring development or at least a hope for development for the people and the society . 

Extending my Diwali wishes globally, hopefully this festival also brings prosperity to Libyan  people who recently managed to get rid of their dictator, supposedly the richest person they had. The more important thing I wish for them is no rise of another dictator. I also wish some cash flows for the earthquake victims of eastern turkey who are still waiting for the cash flow from their western country mates. Also uncle Sam understands that they cannot control the flow of cash around the world alone, and not at least if they keep on waging wars and being aggressive to other economies or even copying other countries in terms of policies.

Last but not the least I think Englishmen should also thank the Indian "Men in Blue" for paying back the debt that they incurred this summer in cricket. This debt was cleared in a very short span of time with enough interest, wasn't it incredible? Well the debt in T20 and test is still there, Dhoni and co must keep this in mind.

With this I close my blog, I also have to make the cash flow towards me and go to work, not a holiday for me :( . 

"Best wishes for Diwali"

"दीपावली की हार्दिक शुभकामनाओं के साथ"