Man From Matunga

There is an inter­est­ing arti­cle pub­lished ear­lier this week in The New York Times, an op-ed piece by colum­nist David Brooks titled “What the Words Tell Us”, where he analy­ses the shift in the usage of words over the last cen­tury and tries to under­stand what this implies with respect to social behav­ior. He writes, “Over the past half-century, soci­ety has become more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. As it has become more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, it has also become less morally aware, because social and moral fab­rics are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. The atom­iza­tion and demor­al­iza­tion of soci­ety have led to cer­tain forms of social breakdown…”

We can see moral val­ues across the world dete­ri­o­rat­ing with each pass­ing year. Increas­ing indi­vid­u­al­ism and a sin­gu­lar focus on the self, cause peo­ple to think only about them­selves and not of the soci­ety at large, this increas­ing nar­cis­sism fos­ter­ing greed…of all kinds!

Sex:

Beyond a cer­tain level in the cor­po­rate world, peo­ple truly believe they are God’s gift to mankind. Which is per­haps why Mr. Pha­neesh Murthy couldn’t keep it inside his pants. And while most people’s sex­ual dal­liances don’t become pub­lic fod­der, he has turned out to be twice unlucky. Which is what hap­pens when you become greedy.

Lies:

When some­one promises a 24–36% return on invest­ment, he is obvi­ously smok­ing weed. I am happy if I see a 12% yearly return and if this hap­pens to be post-tax, that’s cherry on top. And yet, year after year, whether it is the Saradha group or other sim­i­lar com­pa­nies that start pyra­mid schemes, peo­ple in their greed fall prey to promises of quick returns. The first few prob­a­bly get their money back while the rest are then left hold­ing lemons. The liars are clearly greedy want­ing to make a fast buck by exploit­ing others…but those who get conned are equally at fault…and equally greedy.

Bets:

Peo­ple gam­ble all the time. It may be the addic­tion, the adren­a­line, or the greed of want­ing to make quick money with the least effort.

Cur­rently, the IPL bet­ting and spot-fixing scan­dal has all of us riv­eted, espe­cially since it is so well played out. Even the police and those involved in find­ing the truth make sure that there is just one new story that comes out every­day, so that it makes the front page of the news­pa­pers and keeps the news-channels busy and holds our attention.

The show is bet­ter than any soap cur­rently on tele­vi­sion and feeds our greed as voyeurs want­ing to know all the gory details day after day about those who were greedy…and stu­pid enough to get caught.

Video­tapes:

Those fol­low­ing the Cobra­post expo­sures will have seen how easy it is to manip­u­late banks and finan­cial insti­tu­tions espe­cially if you want to bring unac­counted money into the sys­tem. It is as if the entire sys­tem is greedy, want­ing to make money for itself, by help­ing other greedy peo­ple find avenues to man­age their con­cealed income, what­ever its source may be.

And it goes on. It is greed that makes a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany churn out sub­stan­dard and adul­ter­ated generic drugs and fool the reg­u­la­tory author­i­ties con­sis­tently. The same greed makes build­ing own­ers cut cor­ners lead­ing to a col­lapse, killing over a 1000 sweat-shop work­ers. And the same greed makes builders build extra floors when the FSI does not exist.

All of this, bit by bit, tears away at the fab­ric that holds our soci­ety together. With each pass­ing year, this rent only keeps grow­ing bigger…one day it will become impos­si­ble to stitch it back and then we will have noth­ing but anarchy!