Cyrus The-Not-So-Great?

Cyrus The-Not-So-Great?

It’s quite tough to comment on something which is making so much commotion in the media that it becomes difficult to differentiate between meaningful information and pure background noise.  Take the mysterious case of aapro Cyrus and the Bombay House.  A case where everyone has strong opinion one way or the other  eg our cook who uses only Tata Salt, our gardener who swears by Tata Chemicals fertilizers and the corner tea-stall owner who is worried about the future of Tata Tea, all feel that Tatas can never be wrong.  On the other hand, my neighbor who was planning to buy a Nano for Diwali has decided that Tata or no, he would rather opt for a Maruti.  Luckily my friends are a pragmatic lot and can switch over to ITC or East India Hotels if they find there is some issue with Indian Hotels.

Normally the fights in Parsi community are restricted to Bombay Parsi Punchayet and Jam-e-Jamshed and involve heavy debates and editorials about weighty issues such as “how to define a poor Parsi?” or “whether the re-development plan of Cusrow Baug  should offer 3 BHK flats or 5BHK penthouses?” BTW, a couple of years ago, if I recollect correctly, a poor Parsi household was defined (by Parsi Punchayet) as one having a monthly income of less than Rs 90,000! So next time you invite a poor Parsi friend over for a dinner, please make sure that you have enough parking space for his 1920’s Silver Ghost. Poor chap hasn't had a chance to upgrade to a Nano!  Here I must state that an overwhelmingly high fraction of Parsis I have known are jolly good fellows and some of the gentlest of gentlemen and that’s why this ongoing tussle is all the more puzzling. Parsis as a rule are not parsimonious but I guess there is lots and lots of Parsi money involved in this case and that’s what makes the difference.

Normally while analyzing any topic a 360^o  examination is sufficient to show up all the relevant factors and facilitate formation of a reasonable opinion; but even after a 4Л steRADIAians inspection by the knowledgeable industry insiders, this topic is still just as clear as a Delhi morning on a typical December day and is getting murkier by the day. So having exhausted the 2D and 3D perspectives, LazyBee decided to take a look in the 4^th dimension to see if history can throw some pointers for the present.

Cyrus the Great was a legendary king of Persia in the sixth century BC. (Yes, some other countries do have well-maintained records deeper in antiquity even surpassing ours). It will be interesting to try and find some parallels between him and the Cyrus in limelight - and some divergences as well.  

Cyrus II of Persia was the son of Cambyses I who was a vassal to the King of Media. The King of Media was also Cyrus’s grand-father.  Cyrus was made the king by his father a good eight years before his own death. Cyrus first took over the Median empire (through a battle spread over 3 years) and then proceeded to build the largest empire known to mankind till that date by conquering the Lydian and the Neo-Babylonian Empires. His kingdom, the Achaemenid Empire, extended from Balkans in east to Indus Valley in the west.  He was also an able administrator and made special efforts to integrate the new territories he had won over into his empire. He was since then called Cyrus The Great.

There are some parallels and some divergences in these two cases.

Look at the parallels : Our  Cyrus is also a prince in his own right. Shapoorji Pallonji’s holdings in Tata group companies alone have been put at Rs 81,000 crores (that is around US $ 12 billion, give and take a few millions).  Pallonjis are also the single largest private individual share-holders of Tata Sons, the majority of the rest being largely held by trusts.

In case of Cyrus the Great, his father Cambyses I was very much alive for the first 8 years of his reign just like Ratan Tata being very much there to oversee our Cyrus take over the reins of his empire.

Now the divergences : While Cyrus the Great had to take over the Median Empire by military power, our Cyrus was selected and invited to become the Chairman of the Tata Empire. His battles seem to have started after he was anointed the Emperor.  Our Cyrus has had to contend with an active past emperor who was not content with advising the new emperor from the side-lines but actively plotted to dethrone the emperor at his whim and fancy.   

The biggest difference in the two situations is that Cyrus the Great expanded his empire by adding on territories but our Cyrus wanted to consolidate his empire by knocking off a few “territories” which he found to be too much of a drain on royal treasury. The emperors of old could finance their wars by a number of ways; levying additional taxes on their populace or striking new coins or debasing their currencies. One doesn’t know how Cyrus the Great managed it but he seems to have managed it quite well. Our Cyrus didn’t have these options and hence had decided to downsize (or rightsize) his empire. The old emperor, who during his reign had kept on adding new territories whatever be the cost of acquisition, found this difficult to digest. Nay, he found it downright ungrateful of our Cyrus that he (Cyrus) could even contemplate going against his diktats and start selling the family heirlooms.

The drama which is unfolding has a surreal familiarity about it. Once the palace coup gets executed, no efforts are spared to malign the deposed emperor, all the deposed emperor’s men are (ex)terminated. All sorts of charges are levelled to paint the deposed emperor as incompetent. (It also helps that in most cases the deposed emperors were conveniently disposed off to avoid any future comebacks).  In the days to come as old emperor tries to consolidate his hold on the empire more “inside stories” will find their way to the media, of which there will be no authentication or confirmation but each will add to the weight of “evidence” against the deposed emperor.  In the meanwhile all old blunders will get swept under the royal carpet waiting for the next economic upturn which will then be used to confirm the “rightness” of decisions taken earlier. It is another thing that the world has changed inexorably over the past decade and acche din may never dawn again, certainly not for everyone.

According to some scholars the word Cyrus means “annihilator of enemies in verbal contest”. If our Cyrus runs true to his name, Tata Sons have a long fight ahead of them and the media can look forward to periodic spikes in TRP as both sides take potshots at each other.

The ultimate question, a US $ 108 billion one at that, which seems to be on everyone’s mind : “Is our Cyrus,  Cyrus The Not-So-Great or is he Cyrus The Ingrate?”  Only one person knows the correct answer to that question and he is not telling. Perhaps it is time for Ms Radia to call him!!!

LazyBee

25^th Nov 2016

LeaveMeansLeave

LeaveMeansLeave

Somehow decisions taken around the time of Summer Solstices often have a disastrous ending. Hitler launched Operation Barbarosa on 22^nd June 1941 to invade Russia expecting to run through and register an easy victory like the Nazi war machine had achieved in Western Europe. The result of that decision is recorded in all the history books. Seventy five years later almost to the date, on 23^rd June 2016 Britain decided upon Brexit to move out of EU and chart a course on its own. The results of this decision will take a few years to materialize but let there be no doubts which way the ball is set to roll.   

Britain’s relations with EU had always been more than a bit strange. Britain has been  more like a flirtatious young person who wanted to get as much out of the relationship without really committing fully to it and always keeping the other party guessing whether the relationship was ever going to be consummated.

It is interesting to see the history of relationship between Britain and EU (or European Economic Community - EEC which was the pre-cursor to EU). The Common Market was formed in 1957 but Britain and a few European nations like Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal and Switzerland declined to join and established European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960. But as luck would have it, by early 1960’s the Common Market countries showed signs of significantly better growth than the EFTA and the British, true to their philosophy decided to join EEC since they couldn’t beat it.  By the way, EFTA still exists with Norway and Switzerland as the main partners.

The entry of Britain into EC was not without its drama and Charles De Gaulle twice vetoed its entry delaying its admission till 1973. The British sojourn in EU since 1973 has been far from smooth fraught as it was with controversies; chocolate war and beef war to get these products accepted into EU and of course the ever present   tension between UK and rest of EU about contribution of UK towards the common overheads. 

Popular wisdom prior to the Brexit poll was that the easy access to the largest market in the world would ensure that Britain stays in the EU but the “Leave” faction won over the referendum  with thinnest of margins in spite of heavy-weights like the US President Barack Obama throwing in their weight behind the “Stay”s.   Proponents of Stay have pointed out that Britain stands to lose 10 billion pounds annually and approx. 70,000 jobs in the financial sector alone which will migrate to Europe. The total jobs at stake which cater to exports to EU are estimated to be 3 million. No wonder the “Stay”s  have been assessing and exploring every possibility of going back on the verdict of the referendum and save the country.

Alarmed that there could be a chance of a rethink, the “Leave” faction has stepped up their efforts and formed a campaign “LeaveMeansLeave”  (no jokes). The foremost aim of LML is to stall any rethink and ensure that Brexit is achieved as per their desire. LML has shown that as far as projections are concerned, two can play the game. They have come up with their own claims that Brexit will save Britain 14 billion pounds per annum and that actually Britain can benefit much more by becoming a conduit to EU for non-European countries blah blah blah. The new look British government under Theresa May feels that they will be able to extract much better trade deals with EU and other bilateral deals once they are out of EU. But they have perhaps not contended with the Franco-German alliance and the Brussels bureaucracy which is not likely to make the British dreams any easier to materialize.  To be sure the loss of jobs in EU too will be substantially more than a million and this is not something which the EU can easily adjust to especially in the global downturn such as the present one.  If ever there was a lose-lose situation this is it.

British have long been past masters of the game of “divide-and-rule” and if we have to believe Sir Humphrey Appleby,  the modern day avatar of Machiavelli, it has been the official policy of the British Foreign Office for over 500 years.  In one insightful passage in Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey  explains the reason why Britain has decided to join the EU and how by joining it Britain would ensure that EU will never be successful leading to break-up of EU sooner than later.   

Looks that for once this British strategy of divide-and-rule has not worked all that well.  In spite of heavy odds and all too obvious differences in cultures and mindsets (as Sir Humphrey puts it “EU has the organizing ability of the Italians, flexibility of the Germans and modesty of the French”), the EU has still managed to hobble along. So UK is now going to exit EU and try to break it from outside.  Suicidal it may appear to you and me and to Barack Obama but LML is firmly convinced that it is on the right track and is fervently committed to life after Brexit.

Enthused by this bold new approach of LML to self-destruct, the Taliban, Al Qaida, ISIS and other jihadist groups have come together to form an elite group of volunteers called SuicideMeansSuicide (SMS). SMS is confident that if half the Britain can find it attractive to follow LML on the basis of some flimsy promises, they should have no problems recruiting a sizeable number of volunteers into their suicide squads since they offer not just a short term, temporary benefit but one which will last till the day of quayamat.   

LazyBee

5^th  November 2016

Readers who want to enjoy Sir Humphrey Appleby’s devious take on EU may please click on;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpS-yBj7gY ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvYuoWyk8iU , 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE