Special 42800

Who said innovation is dead in India? After listening to the Honourable Finance Minister lay out the Union budget, I marvelled at the out-of-the-box thinking. Who could have thought of an all women’s bank to solve the gender issues in our country?

The other thing that I realized after listening to the budget speech was that our development must truly be all encompassing and has ensured fair distribution of wealth. As per IT records, only 42,800 individuals have declared an income greater than 1 crore and that is the SuperRich subset on which he plans to levy a tax surcharge. Again – it’s only for the next one year, says the ever considerate FM. If I take the average income of these HNIs as 5 crores (it includes our rich cricketers and filmstars), that accounts only for 5% of our nation’s GDP of a trillion dollars. That means the rest of the wealth is with the balance population and so all is well in our country. UPA should win the next poll hands down! This statistic will be a strong contender for the 1^st prize in Ripley’s Believe it or Not series.

The most prudent FM we had was the very same PC in his 1997 avatar who introduced the VDIS scheme. The tagline was “30% tax, 100% peace of mind”.  It allowed all the individuals and corporates who were hiding their income to pay 30% tax and get immunity from the IT Act and Foreign Exchange Act. 3 lac+ made use of this and the government mopped up 7800 crores. 

Why should we subject our “poor” tax evaders to any kind of mental anguish? The government should become practical and announce a VDIS scheme every year. To show an improvement on VDIS 1997, they should announce a "Door to door service" like our pizza chains. The collection agents will have to come with large suitcases to collect the tax (most of it I presume will be paid in cash). VIP and Samsonite must be smiling at their future business prospects. Through this innovative scheme at least the government’s fiscal deficit will come down. We can then also make a legitimate claim to shift the world headquarters of Amnesty International to New Delhi!

Solving the Woes of the IT industry

I was at Landmark a few weeks ago looking for a good book to read during the year-end holidays and came across “Bal Thackeray” by Vaibhav Purandare in the Top 10 bestseller list. The only two people on whom he has written a book are Sachin Tendulkar and Bal Thackeray. He could not have chosen a more diverse pair of individuals. One stayed away from any kind of controversy while the other reveled in it, one showed his violent streak only on a cricket ball while the other glorified it as a political instrument. The book is a simple chronological account of the Sena from the time it was formed. The author offers no opinions or perspectives. What miffed me more on reading the book was the opportunistic behaviour of successive Congress governments in Maharashtra. As long as the Sena was fighting the Communists and the trade unions, they let it run amok. By the time they woke up, they had helped create a party that could get away with anything in the city of Mumbai. The only positive with BalT and the Sena is that they are, to use a software term, WYSIWYG. Which brings me to what I wanted to discuss....

In the Indian IT services industry the biggest issue is the "war for talent". There are at least 20 companies running after the same set of individuals, often creating a merry-go-round. The problem is more pronounced in newer areas like Cloud computing, Analytics and Mobility. It then occurred to me that here is a completely untapped talent pool that the industry has ignored – our political classes.

Imagine a leading consumer company faced with falling sales of its shampoo brand Silky. It has gathered reams of data but is struggling to draw any conclusions or find any patterns to explain the fall in sales. IT Company X brings in its crack Analytics team consisting of our political stalwarts and here are the solutions they provide in a matter of minutes

-          Mohan Bhagwatji: Sales are falling in India, not in Bharat so you need not take any action. Women in India are influenced by western culture and cutting their hair short thus using less shampoo

-          MNS: Sales must be falling in urban India due to all the immigration. Give us 6 months, we will fix it

-          Renuka Chowdhury: Ha ha ha ha (unable to stop)

-          Mulayam/ Mayawati: You have ignored the backward classes. Going forward, please reserve 22% of your output for them and see your sales grow

-          BS Yeddyurappa: We need to mine the data further. I have a couple of good contractors who are reddy and could do it for you

-          Abhijit Mukherjee: These dented and painted women are busy protesting on the streets instead of washing their hair

-          Shiv Sena: We will change the data for you and show high sales. No one can challenge us

Amazed by the quick insights provided, the company calls the whole team into the Times Now studio to arrive at a common conclusion and the rest is history. NASSCOM – are you listening?