FDI

"Beep", sounded the door when Kumar swiped his ID card at the employee entrance of Sal-Mart at Saravanampatty. Saravanampatty,riddled with IT companies is a small and thriving suburb of Coimbatore. Sal-Mart came to town five years back with a lot of fanfare and our honorable prime Minster Shri. Dharmendra Kodi inaugurated the store personally. He even paid Rs.65 and bought 1 litre cola infused with fruits at the opening ceremony. Kumar opened the door and entered the office area corridor of the 45,000 square feet retail super store of Sal-Mart. His manager Achuthan Nair had sent a whatsapp message 30 minutes back stating - "Urgent. Please see me in my office". Kumar entered Achuthans office thinking "God, please don't make me do an other shift". "Nair sir, tell me" he said. Achuthan looked at Kumar and gestured him to sit. "There is no easy way for me to say this, I got orders from Mumbai that ours will be one of 40 stores that will be closed in India". Kumar a floor manager responsible for managing 14 people didn't understand. "Sir?" and thinking for another second he asked "for how many days?". Achuthan calmly explained, 40 stores all across India will be closed as part of a country wide Right Sizing effort to have Sal-Mart better prepared for the changes in the market and to protect share holder interests. Regional director for South India Sal-Marts will be announcing this in a press meet tomorrow and we need a plan to liquidate the current stock and close the store in 30 days. I also need you to convey this to your staff tomorrow morning when they walk in. Remember, there may not be any severance package for level 3 and level 4 employees. Kumar fell back in his chair with a feeling of the wind getting knocked out of him. Few minutes later, didn't wanting to have an animus conversation Kumar gently nodded his head and walked out of the room without uttering a word.Unable to control his emotions he walked straight in to the store trying to get his usual smiling composure that everyone around him loves. 

Aisle after aisle he looked and finally found Sathyamoorthy checking the inventory on Organic MSG free noodles." Kumar what are you doing here? It is 8:00PM,shouldn't you be home by now?". As Kumar walked towards Sathyamoorthy tears started rolling from his eyes and he quickly zoomed past Sathyamoorthy and exited the building through the fire exit in the back. Sathyamoorthy ran after him and found Kumar leaning on the loading dock. Sathyamoorthy didn't ask anything, he waited for Kumar to pull himself back together. After few minutes Kumar looked up asked- " You remember the day when I told you that I'm leaving your store at Ganapathy and I'm going to start a new store at Kalapatti?"

It was seven years ago. Back then Sathyamoorthy was owner of Lakshmi Stores in Ganapathy next to the Krishna Sweets and Kumar use to work for him.Lakshmi stores was 850 square feet convenience store that even sold vegetables. It was a classical "Maligai Kadai". Sathyamoorthy had three guys working for him including Kumar. Store was open 6 days a week from 7:30AM to 9:00PM.  Sathyamoorthy was a proud owner of Lakshmi Store and everyone in Ganapthy knew him and his store. Lakshmi store's phone (0422-55580805) was always buzzing since customers would call and order stuff that would be delivered by one of store guys. They even had an gmail id ganapathylakshmi@gmail.com to which customers use to send the list of items to be delivered. Kumar helped Sathyamoorthy to setup the id mainly to cater to his IT customers that lived in the large apartment complex near by. All in all, Sathyamoorthy, a true small business entrepreneur was doing well. A happy man wanting the best for his family and his workers. He took good care of Sathyamoorthy, Kumar and others, they were family like any other small business or at least most of them.

Kumar was always a motivated guy. Few years later Kumar told Sathyamoorthy he wants to start his own store in Kalapatti, few kilometers away from Ganapathy. He said he has even found a place that was well suited. Sathyamoorthy was a fair man, he was proud and he helped Kumar to get on his feet.He gave some advice to Kumar along with 2 Lakh rupees loan. Not that many small business owners are magnanimous like Sathyamoorthy but Kumar was lucky. Few months later Sathyamoorthy had the privilege of inaugurating "Modern Mart" at Kalapatti owned by Kumar. The story of the rich entrepreneurial small business eco-system was even in the city news sections that weekend, thanks to K.Srinivasan, a reporter from  TheHindu who happened to live in Ganapathy and was a regular at Lakshmi Store. Kumar hired Abdul and Anburaj to help him at his store. It was not all hunky dory for Kumar but there was sense of accomplishment and more importantly Abdul and Anburaj had a sense of optimism that someday they can have their own store.

On the same issue of TheHindu that published the heart warming story about the Modern Mart there was a more colorful story of the newly elected prime ministers first day in office. He too came from a poor background, he was selling tea and coconuts for devotees visiting Ram temple in Gujarat. The news focused on his first signature, allowing FDI in India to propel India to new heights. Little did Sathyamoorthy and Kumar understand what FDI meant that day. Two years down the road Mr.Dharmendra Kodi was opening the Sal-Mart at Saravanampatty. It was the 4th store in India and 852nd store world wide for the retail conglomerate based out of Greedyville, New York. People in general were thrilled and they made daily trips to enjoy the sprawling 45,000 Square feet, 24 X 7 store full of choices. It was a consumer heaven on steroids. Kumar visited the store too and he was astonished at the scale. But he also noticed something that planted a sense of fear in to him that day. Rin soap was 3 rupees less than the sticker price but his socially fair mind thought may be its to get customers into the store the first week.

It was all down hill from that point. Sal-Mart cut the prices across the board to lure customers. With deep pockets, investment interests and Ivy league educated analysts they were able to cut costs optimally for an extended period of time that Modern Store and Lakshmi could not compete without taking losses. They all tried, Kumar even took a bank loan at 9.5% interest to retain his customers. But the customer base fell so sharply because of the deep discounts that Sal-Mart offered. Kumar went to his guru Sathyamoorthy to get some advice to sustain. Sathyamoorthy who ran Lakshmi stores for 25 years was giving up. He was in so much debt he was selling his store (mainly the land) to AFC a fast food chicken store to repay his debt.

Seven months after Mr.Kodi opened Sal-Mart at Saravanampatty, Sathyamoorthy closed Lakshmi store and three months from that Kumar closed Modern Mart. Abdul, Anburaj, Kumar and Sathyamoorthy were all out of jobs and livelihood. But then Kuldeep Pandey from "Gateway to career" a headhunting firm that organized interviews for Sal-Mart reached out to Adbul. Abdul referred Kumar and Kumar referred Sathyamoorthy. With in weeks they were are all on a bus to Chennai to get trained in effective retail at Sal-Marts regional head quarters. Kumar and Sathyamoorthy got a level-3 role and they were floor managers at Sal-Mart, Saravanampatty. On his first day at Sal-Mart, Kumar noticed that Rin soap was now priced 3 rupees more than what he use to sell. Sathyamoorthy and Kumar swiped in and out everyday and worked for hourly wages at the fabulous 45,000 square feet facility until today. 

Level playing fields from Kalapatti to Ganapathy were leveled by Sal. There are now lots of Kumars and Sathyamoorthys - the entrepreneurial zombies. After a long conversation and without any hope in the horizon, Sathyamoorthy and Kumar walked back in to the fluorescent light and the door beeped. They looked up when they heard an even stronger beep coming from the TV. The election commissioner was demonstrating the new voting machine! #FDI #Smallbusiness #Elections

The Business of Democracy

Every time an election is announced the anxiety is insurmountable. Quest for a person or party that’s going to change it all begins. But then some of us are old enough to see how this plays out, hind sight is 20/20. We are inured to the sense of dysfunctional democracy except when we come up for air once every four or five years during an election to look for alternatives. Its possible we are looking for alternatives presumably in an incorrect dimension.May be the design of democracy is outdated or maybe it was designed the way it is by the mythical conspirators who wanted to be monarchs in sheep skin as legislators for generations. So what do we do? Go back to complete monarchy or bring in anarchy? Of course not. If we need to have some peace and civility then more objective democracy needs to be defined and practiced.

I will leave the naming of such a democracy to the marketing team with a focus group but for our discussion let's call it "Accountable Democracy". Let's start with something basic like an Service Level Agreement (SLA) . It's basically two individuals or organizations signing on a dotted line to say the service provider will comply to the terms set forth by the service receiver. In case of democracy in some ways the elected government is the service provider and we the people are the service receivers. In our world of democracy we pay before we receive the goods or even seen them. We only hear about them(may be). I think that concept has to fundamentally change given service providers (elected officials) are not driven by passion but driven more by factors that are tangential to service mindedness. So let's agree that people representatives are business men/women and let's start treating them like who they are (of course with respect)! Let’s get in to the business of democracy and slowly getaway from emotional of democracy that we are so entangled in.

Let’s contemplate a model ( I know this is naïve but hear me out) - In this model there are two basic concepts 1. Contract 2. What happens when the contract is violated.

Every party in a democratic system publishes a paper weight a.k.a election manifest. Instead of each party telling people what they can do we create a Manifest for each election whether it's local , state or central. The manifest can be created in the same way as how the 5 Year plans are created by the planning commission. This manifest doesn't have to boil the oecan but instead foucs of few items that are ciritcal to the smaller geographic. The list has to be very objective,for example "power cut reduction by 95% by certain date" etc., Instead of completely relying on a nonbinding contract published by the party we should move towards adopting the manifest created by the people as binding contract   for the election. One can contest in an election only if the mandatory manifest is signed by him or her.

Now, let's talk about enforcing the contract. The contract has to be continuously and periodically managed from the beginning of one’s term. Every outcome should be measured and the outcomes determine the rest. If outcomes are not as stated in the contract then it’s a violation. Violation's have serious repercussions including not being able compete in an election ever again. Enforcing accountability for a legislator is not possible if he/she doesn't have power or means to implement the contract - empowerment and accountability have to tango. If we take our current world of democratic governance defining or enforcing the contract will be challenging or even impossible since things are vague and way too centralized. There has to be radical change in the way legislative bodies and executives are empowered and structured. There will be a need for us move towards decentralized autonomous power structures that can be empowered appropriately to achieve the intended accountability based on outcomes. In short we need to reorg the system.

Don't get me wrong, democracy has filled the void for more than a century and has tried hard to achieve equality and justice. But if you take in account current trends in our democratic society it's clear that the degeneration of this democratic model has started aggressively decades ago and the cancer is spreading faster than what the diagnosis (our media) reveals. If we intend to take a nonviolent path towards betterment of human society then we cannot be married to the current concept of democracy as its sold today. If democracy is construed as philosophy then there are too many open interpretations leading to tangential thought processes that are only driven by greedy agendas. Instead, if democracy is structured as business like organization where you have measurable out comes then you start deconstructing the public service myth that you are being sold today ( This is almost like legalizing pot).

Deep inside we all want that one person or party that will be the savior but at the same depths we also know that real unicorn from utopia cannot be bought in amazon. Let’s stop trying to mend this and it’s critical to end this union with non-functional democracy. Social engineers and scientists should take the mammoth task of building better governance models leaning extremely towards practical governance (like the model discussed above) so we move towards a better social setup. I know this is not something that can be considered for a decade or two or even more but the bottom line is we need to detach ourselves from the fairy tale vision of a savior evolving within the bounds of the current system. Let’s move on people!! Let’s engineer an Accountable Democracy!!