Does Knowledge Brilliance Has Any Correlation with Achieving Power, Money and Fame?

(Read the inside stories of the corporate sector in the form of short management case studies at: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/ or http://corporate-case-studies.blogspot.com/)

Correlation between Knowledge Brilliance and Achieving Power, Money and Fame Hardly Exists

The comments here are based on just about general observations; it does not have any statistically correct research base. So, take them with a pinch of salt. But frankly what is written here is vastly true.

The observations pertain mainly to the developing countries who have yet to mature a lot in terms of professionalism, meritocracy and discipline.

In such countries success of people in terms of gaining power, money and fame is inversely proportional to the knowledge brilliance one achieves through school and college education and self study. Read on further to understand this phenomenon.

Many of the first few top rankers in the schools, colleges and universities are terrifically brilliant. They really are terrific brains though branded as nerds and also geeks. They try to achieve excellence in their knowledge and come out with flying colors in the screening examinations used for admissions in the reputed engineering and medical colleges. Those streams of engineering and medicine are invariably the first choice or preference of these fundamentally brilliant few (They are the real backbone of progress in developed or advanced countries, though not necessarily in the developing nations). We will call them Type 1.

The ones who cannot achieve such academic excellence and have not developed their cerebral powers to that extent settle for other courses; courses other than engineering and medicine. We will call them Type 2.

Many of the students drop out even before reaching this stage. They are pretty duffers as far as the learning in the class rooms goes but many of them are very good in sports and games like football, cricket, tennis etc. They start concentrating on playing these games. We will call them Type 3.

Then some start emerging as political leaders right during the school and college days. They get elected as general secretaries and presidents of the college unions etc. They are worldly wise, cunning, the popular types, political and slow on any kind of value structure and generally poor at academics. We will call them Type 4.

The last types are none of the above. You just do not notice them. They seem pretty insignificant- the quiet types, nothing spectacular about them in terms of getting any great grades in the examinations. Most people ignore them safely. They don't speak much but internally something definitely must be happening to them since many of them soon become escapists. Some of them, soon in their life, escape from homes under the garb of seeking solace, quiet and god. We will call them Type 5.

Now look at what happens after passage of a few years.

The Type 1 join a government sector, public sector or private sector organization as an engineer or a doctor at a comparatively junior level and need to work their way to climb a tall hierarchy before even thinking of becoming number 1 in the organization. Invariably they stop at number 2 of the organization at best if at all they climb up to that height. Number 1 position in government sector or a public sector company is invariably reserved for and occupied by a Type 2 and in private sector by the worthy or unworthy son or daughter of the promoters or owners of the company.

The Type 2 having failed to get admissions in good engineering or medical colleges try their hand at some other degrees etc and after graduation keep on attempting their luck in various civil services examinations conducted by the government. After succeeding in them in several attempts, they become the coveted bureaucrats in the government departments and ultimately become the bosses of Type 1. Type 2 thus have more power, more money than Type 1.

Type 3 keep on working out their energies on playing a game of cricket or football or tennis etc, particularly the money and fame making games. Some become very successful and become the national and international icons and bathe in unlimited money and fame. They also earn huge sums of money from the advertisers. They become the so called celebrities. The media pampers them lots and lots since they increase the money earning capacity of the media.

Type 4 join an important political party or start their own party. They contest the political and so called democratic elections, win and soon become a minister. The bureaucrats (the Type 2) report to them. Thus Type 4 become the bosses of Type 2 and Type 1. They wield tremendous power everywhere. They also become the so called celebrities. The media covers and dishes out all of their activities day in and day out. They have power and fame and they can make unimaginably high amount of money by several means.

Type 5 remain unknown and in oblivion for quite some time. And one fine day they emerge from somewhere and somehow as the god men. They start gaining popularity and soon they have millions of disciples. In fan following they beat them all; they beat all the other Types, from Type 1 to Type 4. They are showered tons of money by people and institutions of all sorts which is tax free. They exercise tremendous power and the media is also in their pocket. They become a very high order so called celebrity.

So, here ends the case of inversion.

Should the Child Labor Continue the Way It is Now?

(Read the inside stories of the corporate sector in the form of short management case studies at: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/ or http://corporate-case-studies.blogspot.com/)

Ban the Child Labor Totally

As per numerous studies carried out by numerous agencies and people, millions of children (at least one child in 6 children) all over the world are engaged as child labor.

The children so engaged in work are exposed to health risks (including mental and emotional) or physical injury and cannot attend schools.

They are caught in various forms of labor in various workplaces of various industries and businesses like diamonds, chocolate, mining, fire crackers, hotels and restaurants, cinema and TV shows (as child artists or in reality shows), rag picking, and also in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities. The list is long.

They are being employed by the promoters of the companies, industrialists, businessmen, professional managers, anti social and criminal elements of the human society etc. In short, good, bad and ugly- all kinds of people employ them and exploit them. It's shame that even the so called good people
at all levels do it. It is real shame.

It is essential that the child labor should be banned totally. The culprits should be penalized so heavily that they should never be able to repeat that mistake.

If children are the future of the nations and this planet earth, then bring them up with lots of care- not by making them child labor.

What to Do With Corporations Who Pollute Environment?

(Read the inside stories of the corporate sector in the form of short management case studies at: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/ or http://corporate-case-studies.blogspot.com/)

Punish the Culprits So Severely that They Will Start Behaving or Stop Existing

The biggest culprits of all who pollute the environment in every thinkable and unthinkable way are today's industries and their bosses in the cooperate sector. They spoil the oceans and seas with oil spillages, rivers and sky with hazardous chemicals and with tons of such criminal activities. They undo everything that the nature took millions of years to build. And they do it all free of cost, they pay nothing to anyone for what they draw from the nature- it's day light robbery that no one takes cognizance of.

So we asked several groups of people to recommend the punishment to such criminal organizations and its people at the helm of their affairs and we got following responses which are being reproduced unedited:

• Close such industries/companies.
• If the law does not do it, the public should compel the culprit corporations to close down.
• Punish the bosses of these erring corporations severely like life time imprisonment etc.
• Ask them to make up for the loss of environment for which they are responsible.
• Ask them to clean up the mess they have created.
• Ask these companies to pay money to the public (as developmental funds with the government) for every thing these companies draw from the environment for their use.
• Enforce very strict scrutiny (from environmental point of view) before allowing the industries to start operating.
• Parade the top bosses in front of the people (the public) and ask them to apologise. Also ask them to repeat five times in front of the people that they would never ever commit such grave mischief.
• Take a procession of these erring corporate bosses by seating them on the donkeys through the lanes and bye-lanes of the areas polluted by them.
• Ask these companies to pay compensation to everyone who has been wrongly affected by their offenses of polluting the environment.

(If you have any more ideas, please put them in the comments).

Can Human Beings Manage the Nature?

(Read the inside stories of the corporate sector in the form of short management case studies at: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/ or http://corporate-case-studies.blogspot.com/)

Human Being are Insignificant when Compared with the Nature

From time immemorial- perhaps for millions of years, human beings have been facing the onslaughts of the nature in the form of earth quakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes/twisters/whirlwinds, floods etc.

Even today, when human beings have started boasting of their several achievements, they are totally impotent and insignificant when facing the nature. Call all the Nobel prize winner scientists/authors/peace makers etc, all the top notch engineers, doctors, lawyers, economists and financial experts, the top hundred richest persons of the earth, the top most industrialists and businessmen, the top 500 companies (as decided by the Fortunes or the Forbes etc), all the presidents and prime ministers of all the countries, the popes, the shankaracharyas, the gurus, the mullahs, the imams, the dalai lamas etc of the world and pool them all together and ask them to save the humanity from the onslaughts of the nature's punishing activities listed earlier. We know the results well before even attempting to do so. They are incapable of controlling or managing the nature.

All of them have proved to be inconsequential and trivial entities when the world suffered from these earth quakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions etc recently or in the past. The same will be true for the future.

Let us accept that human beings are just about minor most players in the nature's vast game.

Who are Worse of the Two?

Both Kill in Millions

In every country and across the world everyone is aware of one type of people easily. These people create terror among the ordinary and innocent citizens of the countries and the world. They kill them by many means that are well known by now and they keep inventing new tricks by the day. Why they do so, it is still bit confusing. I wonder and doubt if they have to settle scores with the ordinary and innocent people- perhaps it may not be their objective. Perhaps their grouse may be against the people in power who they perceive as wrong doers or whatsoever. It will be wiser to deal with them directly and perhaps a few problems might start getting solved which they bother about.

In every country and across the world, there are second types of people as well who are not easily considered as killers of the people. But they do exactly that, day in and day out, pretty easily without creating any uproar. So no one easily notices them. Who are these people? These are the people who work in every organization including the government and also independently: they pollute environment, they produce spurious medicines, they provide dirty drinking water, they adulterate food, they facilitate creation of unemployment and force people to go hungry and shelter less and they do much more such harmful things- the list is endless. The people who adversely get affected and subsequently die either immediately or over a period of time by these acts are countless, perhaps more than the people who get killed by the acts of terror.

Both types of people kill people- both kill in abundance.

Who is worse of the two types?

Can You Define Yor Own Religion?

Just Like Being Self-employed, You Can Have Your Own Religion as Defined by You

Refer to previous post of April 2, 2010.

A few more comments on the subject of "how sacrosanct are organized religions". It was discussed that they are as good as any other organization or corporation. As you change the organization where you worked earlier and join a new organization, everything changes for you as soon as you join a new organization. Same with organized religion. The god(s), god's representative, the commandments, rituals, rules, regulations, guide lines and current bosses (god men) are all religion specific. They are not absolutes and so not sacrosanct.

And so if you decide to be self employed and wish to be your own boss and so, you have freedom to choose another set of commandments or values and processes, similar freedom is available to you if you choose not to affiliate yourself with any particular organized religion. You can define your own sets of good values as per your studied decisions to lead your life (which is what a religion really is). The chosen values should not be harmful to anyone in the human society including yourself; rather they should be of benefit to everyone including yourself.

For example for a person who does not wish to attach himself or herself to any organized religion, he or she can be guided in his or her life by a very simple value like "Think, feel and do good to self and others". That one liner can be one's religion- religion can be that simple and yet, that much loaded.

(You may like to read "I Am Liberated" authored by the eminent Life Management and Corporate Management Guru Shyam Bhatawdekar at http://knol.google.com/k/i-am-liberated#)

Are Organized Religions Really Sacrosanct?

Everything Changes as One Converts into a New Organized Religion

In the previous post, the subject of religion and god men etc was just touched upon. Why not discuss a few more aspects of it?

In one life of a human being, he is likely to shift from one employer to other employer, migrate from one country to another country or relocate himself from one state to the other state of the same country etc. It is fairly normal.

When he changes his employer, his professional association gets cut off from his previous company and a fresh association with the new company starts. He is asked to forget the values, culture, rules and regulations and bosses of the previous employer and follow the new sets of values, culture, rules and regulations and bosses etc as prescribed by the new employer. If he has to join the new company, he better start following them.

Same thing happens when a person migrates from one state to the other state or from one country to the other country. He is asked to demonstrate his allegiance to the country or state of immigration and cut off his allegiance to the previous country or state if he wishes to become an integral part of the new country or state. He better start following all the constitutional provisions only of the new country or state.

Something similar happens for those people who convert from their existing organized religion to another organized religion. Each organized religion has its own god or gods or god's representative(s), its own sets of commandments, its own rituals, it own places of worship and its own current bosses (god men) etc. Just like when one changes his job from one organization to the other organization and he is supposed to follow everything of the new organization and forget everything of the old organization, in case of conversion from one organized religion to other organized religion, one is supposed to inherit all the new sets of things described earlier and forget the old ones.

So, is there anything sacrosanct whether it is god or gods or god's representative(s), commandments or values, rituals, guidelines, rules or regulations, places and locations of religious routines etc? Nothing seems sacrosanct.

That's why many people who get self employed and become their own bosses, they define yet new sets of values, culture, guidelines, rule and regulations for themselves.

Same way a person who does not wish to affiliate with any organized religion may define his own religion and its commandments and other things etc.

Doesn't that sound pretty logical?

Does Any Man Need to be Put on Pedestal?

God Men Are Just One More Set of People Satisfying Your Some Needs

Lately a significant number of so called god men have been suspected to have committed various crimes- many of these crimes have been categorized as abuse of children or women etc. They might be committing other crimes too which have not been discussed with the same intensity as yet. These god men affiliate themselves with various organized religions and their outfits all over the world. Many run their own privately held outfits in comparatively small ways and small sizes.

These god men deserve to be tried as seriously as any other criminals are tried in the legal courts of law and due justice be meted out to them.

Do not put any god man on the pedestal- irrespective of his or her current degree of importance or hierarchical position in his or her outfit.

All the religious outfits whether organized or privately held are just like any other professional businesses, organizations or governments. The businesses, various kinds of other organizations and governments satisfy the numerous needs of human beings. For example, we have whole lot of companies or industries producing various products and services as needed by the people, we have hospitals and doctors etc fulfilling the health care needs of people, schools, universities and teachers satisfy people's need of acquiring knowledge, cinema and its actors meet people's entertainment needs etc.

Same way, the various religious outfits whether organized or privately run, whether big or small have been created and made to flourish like any other professional organization to satisfy those specific needs that can only be satisfied by these religious setups. They too have to recruit employees and managers at different levels with different skills to run their show and to meet people's needs. However, the people who do not have the types of needs that are catered to by these religious setups and their so called god men, do not normally visit these religious outfits or confer with their employees or managers (i.e. the god men).

So treat these setups and their employees and managers just the way you treat any other organization and their people. And just the way you will find some people committing crimes in every organization or in their private positions and will subject them on the legal trials, do the same with these so called god men too. Nothing more, nothing less.

Never put anyone on the pedestal- whosoever he or she may be.

Just treat everyone as a normal person- whosoever he or she may be, whatever position he or she may hold, howsoever rich or poor he or she may be, howsoever popular he or she may be. After all everyone is made of the same flesh and blood; no one is inferior and no one is superior. Period.

When it comes to justice, everyone is on par with each other; they are all on the same level ground.

Making Mountain out of Molehill Again?

Art of Turning Insignificance into Significance

In the commentary dated March 29, 2010 on these pages, an example of "why is significance made significant" was quoted.

In continuation, the same theme was repeated in action just about a few days ago too. It has become habit of particularly those human beings who have totally lost their sensitivities. Mainly many of these are the people in politics, media, business and cinema.

In this case, another popular actor of Indian Hindi movies attended a function of total insignificance (mainly the actors are invited as crowd pullers). The function was: inauguration of part of a bridge that was already inaugurated some time ago- what was the need of inaugurating it again? (Frankly, a totally avoidable wasteful affair).

Now a huge controversy with sophisticated gimmick was designed and constructed around it as to why the said actor was invited and by whom because some other faction of the organizers of this inauguration circus were opposed to inviting him because of some cockeyed reasons. The television and news media added fuel to fire by filling up their entire 24 hours of some 3 to 4 days to entice the gullible viewers or readers (the TV and newspapers just refuse to allow any other alternatives on their offerings on such occasions or opportunities), increasing their TRP ratings and amassing huge revenues from the advertisers; advertisers in turn finding a great chance to brainwash larger audience in favor of their products to increase their earnings.

After 3 to 4 days of creating this huge business of turning insignificance into significance and looting large sums of money, the interested parties phased out the hoopla and withdrew themselves cunningly. General public was left with the illusion of being fed with some very important national philosophy of great order. And to confirm that illusion, the media was still busy organizing serious debates and discussions on this subject but only as a hangover or only as a side dish and squeezing out the remaining juice.

Tons of national and natural or environmental resources of the planet earth were wasted on this insignificance. Who is bothered in any way?

How to Measure Popularity of So Called Leaders and Celebrities the Easy Way?

Use Shoe and Flower (Instead of Elaborate Questionnaires)

Sometime ago a news item with its audio visual became pretty popular all over the world. Someone, during a well guarded press conference, had thrown a shoe at a political leader of a big country perhaps to express his disliking of the so called leader and celebrity.

These methods of showing dislike of a person in powerful position has been employed by the general public in different parts of the world a number of times in the past too. Perhaps, instead of throwing a shoe, they might have used other substitutes like a rotten egg etc.

So the agencies conducting the opinion surveys or popularity polls can take a clue from these instances and work out an easier way to carry out such surveys.

Take a life size cutout of the person whose popularity one wishes to ascertain. Place it in front of the demographically and statistically selected respondents, give each of them a shoe and a flower and ask them to throw either the shoe or the flower at the cutout of the subject.

Count the shoes thrown at the cutout as well as the flowers thrown at the cutout. Calculate the percentages. You can then infer the popularity of the so called leader or celebrity, write a long thesis and publicize it all over the place (whatever worth the popularity polls are, any way).