Rupee Value and Software Concerns??

The Great appreciation of the rupee has started setting in and Exporters of all form in India are running from Pillar to post to reduce the impacts on their businesses. This though seems like a sudden appreciation of value, was long pending. Bad that its come at a time when I earn in dollars, but the false value maintained all along had to come down to its true levels.

The rupee value was kept at a far lower level by the RBI. The pressure of export businesses led to this deliberate move to keep the rupee value lower, as we wanted to build up our reserves in Dollar value and support our businesses doing the dollar charging. But this value rise also means the Dollar value is way too high for imports and hence our cost on imported items increase considerably.

This is one factor why Electronics, Petrol etc., that we import are substantially costlier. But since ours is an export based economy, this model suited us. And this also led to the high inflation, as prices of certain commodities which were imported was way too high.

Once the RBI took measures to curb inflation, the deliberate buying of dollars had to stop and hence the value of rupee started appreciating to its actual state. Now, the Software industry espescially and NRI's or anyone holding dollar reserves are staking up pressure on the government and RBI to deliberately buy dollars to keep the value under check.

This would lead to rise in inflation and the common man in India will be affected. The other way round, the export businesses will be affected and might lead to loss of jobs and loss of income. Either way the economy might be impacted. But in my mind it is better to allow the economic factors determine themselves in a free market, rather than having false values and control mechanisms to boost our exports.

If the export based business are impacted, then so be it. Now the next issue that comes out of this is who takes up this loss due to economic factors. For eg: Software concerns now are reducing expenditure, trying to make employees work on weekends, and reduce any sort of incentives to keep their profit % afloat.

Now, not just because Iam impacted by these, but also on a logical sense this doesnt make sense to me. If I have just 5 days of work, what is the fun in working for a 6th day and getting more money from the Customers. And, Even if economic factors do lead to loss of income, why do the software giants, who hold so much in reserves want to push the losses to the employees and keep their profit intact.

We have the concept of different components as part of salary. There are some factors which are consistent and some which are linked to profit. Leaving these Variable components to be impacted by the Company's performance is acceptable. But what I see mostly, is such losses immediately spiral down to the lowest levels of employees, while the profits never reflect on our pay checks.

While a part of my salary gets cut for factors of economy, as it is linked to the company's profit I am fine with it. But why should everything in the organization be put on hold and all methods tried to cut down on expenses for employees. If the company and its bosses want to absorb all profit then they should be ready to take the losses also completely. If they want us to share the blame, then they should let us share the wealth too.

It is not communism, Iam speaking for. I am not saying we are entitld to profits. I am just saying we are not entitled to any losses not created by us.

An Unbearable Image

Recently an US Senator spoke at length about India when the first Hindu prayer was sung in the US Congress. He asked to think of Mahatma while thinking about India. Obviously for most people in this world that means a very good image for India. But is that our real image.

There were 2 fallacies. One, they think of Non-Violence while thinking of Gandhi. Non-Violence for peace in a terror ridden society is what they seem to be thinking. But what they forget is Non-Violence was not the driver for Gandhi's Actions. Gandhi's Actions were driven by Truth. But the world is not ready to take over that principle. Standing up for a principle and being ready to call out anything wrong irrespective of which side you are in is the driving force behind Gandhi's struggle.

When the Non-Cooperation movement turned in with criminal actions, he stopped the fight. When people involved in terror acts he did not support them irrespective of the fact that the cause was the same. But today's world does not seem to need the truth and principles into their actions. They just think Non-Violence alone will carry a mass appeal.

Non-Violence cannot buy anything if you are not truthful to yourself and to the world while appealing for a struggle. With terrorism, Non-Violence cannot be a success story. Because the opponent is killing civilians and is not going to be bogged down by appeals for Peace. Most cases, the attacked countries are developed and with smaller populations(Except India), while the attackers are from poorer countries and are huge in number.

The need of the hour from Gandhi's principles is truth. People should look upon other people as normal instead of classifying them as Muslims, Christians etc., and doubting the nature of a person by their religion. People should show tolerance to others so that their is not a divide between the societies. But in western societies where blacks are already treated with doubt, they have added muslims or anyone with a beard to the list of doutful people.

Once you act with ulterior motives without disclosing things, the society sees a rift. if the society has a rift, and if tolerance is zero peace cannot prevail. The appeal for peace should start with a conscious action to improve the life style of people and to be accomodative of diversities. As long as the world is not ready to do this, and wants to exploit others, appeals of peace and Non-Violence cannot really be succesful.

Every fight need not be Non-Violent, if Violence is needed to restrict a certain Hitler then the world need to take violent actions. But, any such action should be a conscious and righteous one and done without any perjudice or discrimination.

The other misconception is about India being a peaceful country. India is not peaceful, the violence that is omni present today will show that clearly. And we were never peace loving, even our gods are characterised with weapons and we are by nature passionate about everything. But, somehow since our struggle was through non-violence and since we had a certain Gandhi and Buddha amidst us, the world thinks we are peaceful by nature.

This image has to be shed for us to really become a super power as we have always imagined. And we also need to be righteous about our interests to pursue arms instead of trying to show a peaceful face to the world. With the rising terrorism in India, we need to show our strength and control things rather than trying to retain our image of Non-Violence.