Economic Recession… Do we really have anything called recession?
Or is it more sentimental and psychological or is it just a way of looking at
how things or business, industries are behaving or acting upon, during a
particular time? 
Life is never a straight
line, and when it does, it means life does not exist. A healthy life is when we
have up’s and down’s, that’s what our cardiac line tells us that you are still
alive. Similar are the situations in every relationships and business. No
business will have constant growth, there will be cardiac line growth and
that’s healthy, because when we are in the downhill phase, we try to put in
extra efforts to better ourselves and rise. That’s what we all have grown up with
or our instincts have been. But education has misguided us. These so called
educated and certified professional have made us believe in unbelievable
things. When these unbelievable or unnatural things don’t happen as per their
suggested ways, these educated people panic, and they make others panic too.
Using their educational qualifications, they come up with phenomenon’s which
makes the good look bad, and then they try to implement even more bad business
practices by projecting that this is the right way to do business, resulting in
worse or losses. And then these people who are considered as experts and derive
their market watch and economic papers to share with larger audiences to
further spread this fear, it’s like ripple effect, hence leading to making
people believe that “we are living in bad economic times”.
I am not against
education, nor am I promoting any sort of negative feelings towards these
educated and certified economists. Neither am I a qualified professional to
pass any judgements. But what I feel is that education should not be a
standalone variable to decide. Use human intellect too, else there is no
difference between us and robots who are getting “Intelligent” using what we
have termed as “Artificial Intelligence”.
Let me try and explain
this with a simple story.
There is this middle-aged
man called Mr. Venkat who hails from Kerala, and he is Dosa vendor from a very
long time. He inherited this business from his father and over the years they
had gained a lot of goodwill in their small city. His business was flourishing,
family was happy, customers were happy because they believed in Venkat for his
quality, ingredients, taste and customer service. On an average he used to sell
about 1000 dosas in a day. On any day, for whatever reason, if he did not
finish the dosa batter or the chutney, he would make the dosas and distribute
to the poor, but never carried forward to next day. This too was known to his
customers. Hence, he nor his father had ever seen a downslide in their
business.
Venkat, like many of
us wanted his son to study and attain professional degrees so that he could
become a “Big Man” and does not remain a small time Dosa vendor. So Venkat made
his only child Swami go to best of the school in his city and later Swami went
on to study professional course; MBA in Finance from a very reputed college in
India.
Swami finished his MBA
with good percentage, got placed in a good financial consultancy company and
started to grow professionally. Venkat was very happy looking at his son’s
professional growth, while he continued selling dosas. Now Swami was unhappy to
see his father and mother living in that small city selling Dosas, so requested
his parents to move in with him in a metro city, but his parents refused saying
that they are very happy where they are and more so do not wish to be a burden
on Swami.
Few years later, due
to retrenchment in Swami’s company, he lost his job and as luck would have it,
Swami could not find a new job for 6-months. Getting frustrated staying in a
metro city alone and without a job, Swami went back to his hometown to take a
short break before he decided about his next professional move. His parents
were very happy to see Swami and for few day’s life was good. His mother fed
him with all his favorite food dishes etc. One day Swami, who till now had
never visited his father’s Dosa shop even once, went with Venkat to spend a day
at their shop. He observed his father and how he interacted and served his
customers and how all the customers relished the Dosas. Venkat very proudly
introduced Swami to his customers and they chatted with him for some time. One customer
while talking on general things with Swami and asked about his job, why did he
lose his job and why was it so difficult for an educated person like Swami,
finding it so difficult to get a new job. Swami replied saying that our country
is not doing good and that we have entered recession phase. The customer and
Venkat did not understand this term ‘Recession’. Later in the evening, Swami
started thinking about this recession and that soon it will engulf every city
of India and people in this city are not even aware of recession or what is
going to hit them. Swami thought that he should advise his father of the risks
in the business of selling Dosas because of this recession.
That day, after dinner, Swami sat with his father and explained what recession is and told him that recession may cause fall in sale of his Dosas, so he should prepare for cost cutting to maintain his profits. Both his parents were staring at Swami with pride as well as fear. Venkat was so happy that his son understood so much about finance and business and his advising him in his business. Venkat agreed to follow Swami’s advice.
Following day, Swami suggested adding more water in the dosa batter and reducing the size of dosa saying that his customers would not realize the change in the taste, and Venkat sold his usual1000 dosas. Venkat was surprised with extra profits and thanked Swami for helping him. Next day Swami suggested to add little more water and to further reduce the size of dosa, also to add water in the chutney and to serve less. Surprisingly that day Venkat was able to sell only 800 dosas. Also end of the day, on seeing Venkat preparing the dosas of the leftover batter and feeding the poor, Swami was aghast. He told his father that as he had mentioned, recession is setting in because today he sold 200 less dosas, hence we need to further curtail our costs, hence he should not discard the batter, instead use it the next day.
Venkat listened to
Swami, whom he considered as having more business and financial knowledge than
him. Next day Venkat added fresh batter to stale batter and fresh chutney to
yesterday’s leftover chutney. This day number of dosas sold were about 700, but
his customers were not happy and started discarding the dosas saying the taste
is different. Venkat was not happy, but Swami told him that tougher times call
for tougher decisions. This is recession period and we have to control our
costs, because people/customers too would be stingy in spending their money.
Venkat listened to his son and next day he used the same leftover batter and
chutney, because Swami asked him not to discard. Following day, the sales
reduced to less than 300 and everyone complained of the taste being bad. Swami
countered that by saying recession is here and during these times, people
become very demanding and expect much higher value for the money they spent,
hence he should not think too much about these customer complaints. Further
Swami said that tomorrow we shall prepare batter for lesser number of dosas and
start charging for chutney too. Venkat still believing in his son, did as he
was told, but following day the sales was barely of 100 dosas and customers not
just complained for the stale taste and small size of the dosa but were upset
that Venkat for the first time is also charging them for chutney. Swami told
his father that now recession has affected all the people in this city too and
they are not aware of it because they don’t know what recession is, but only
thing they know is that they have lost lot of their money. Hence, his customers
are not going to return soon and so, this dosa business will be in loss and
they should stop selling dosas now and think of doing something else.
Venkat was now skeptical about what Swami was saying. First thing Venkat did was taste his dosa and chutney and he immediately spit it out. Venkat was furious and told his son Swami that he is shocked to know that these professional schools and colleges teach their students on how to cheat their customers of their trust and belief. These schools did not teach them of winning customer goodwill and customer service. Venkat further added it was his mistake to think and believe that higher education will make his son a better man and lead a better life than theirs. In last two generations, they never faced such a situation in their business which he (Swami) through his business and financial acumen has within 10-days of advising. Swami’s concept of business profits by cheating people and calling it as recession has led him (Venkat) to near closure of his 2-generation old flourishing business. He politely asked his son not to ever intervene into his business and that he shall try to revive it the old traditional way. He (Swami) was welcome to stay put at home as long as he wants or finds another job, but to never advise him (Venkat) or any of the shopkeepers in this city about their business and definitely
Hence, according to me we can fight this Recession, because Recession is nothing but greed of big corporate houses to be more profitable by reducing quality and using unfair business practices and of uncaring and unprofessional employees giving wrong advises and bad service as long as their business is making profits.
So, recession is an
unnecessary fear being created by these economic gurus and consultants to
retain their jobs and make more money while rest of the businesses and people
suffer.
#Recession, #EconomicRecession, EconomicSlowdown
Nice
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