Corporate misdemeanour.

Corporate misdemeanour.

Dear friends,
Lots of interesting mails have been flowing in regarding Satyam's Corporate misdemeanour. Over some time, I too wish to pen a few posts looking at the event from different angles...because it provides an unique case study for every one to ponder and draw one's own lessons. One report for instance says that Raju was obsessed with possession of land and diverted huge funds to acquire the same thus deviating from the firm's main theme 'IT'. Without going into the merits or otherwise of such obsession, my sahadharmini immediately recalled her school days..and Leo Tolstoy's story "How much land does a man need?"
The central character of the story is a farmer named Pahom.He always cribbed that he did not own enough land. A landlady in the village decides to sell her estate, and the peasants of the village buy as much of that land as they can. Pahom himself purchases some land, and by working off the extra land repays his debts and lives a comfortable life.
However, Pahom then becomes obsessively possessive of his land, and this gets him into discord with his neighbours. This is a first sign that greed is disrupting his moral values. Later, he moves to a larger area of land at another Commune. Here, he can grow even more crops and amass a small fortune, but he has to grow the crops on rented land, which irritates him.
Finally, he is introduced to the Bashkirs, and is told they are simple-minded people who own a huge amount of land. Thus, he approaches them to take as much of their land for as low a price as he can negotiate. Their offer is very unusual: for a sum of 1000 rubles, Pahom can walk around as large an area as he wants, starting at daybreak, marking his route with a spade along the way. If he reaches his starting point by sunset that day, the entire area of land his route encloses will be his. He is delighted as he believes that he can cover a great distance and has chanced upon the bargain of a lifetime.
His journey across the land illustrates his greediness. He tries to cover as much land as possible, not content with what he already has. As the sun nearly sets, he realizes his error...he had walked too far... and runs back as fast as he can to the waiting Bashkirs. He finally arrives at the starting point just as the sun sets. The Bashkirs cheer his good fortune, but exhausted from the run, he drops dead. They bury him in an ordinary grave only six feet long, thus ironically answering the question posed in the title of the story.
Tolstoy’s message in the story is clear enough - Pahom destroys himself because he allows the sin of greed to guide his life.The truths in Tolstoy’s story can be rationalized, of course. Pahom makes choices of his own free will - and those choices lead him to destruction.
And some may say that Tolstoy’s religiosity seems quaint and out of tune with our complicated times.It might also be useful in our complicated times to do some simple substitutions for the word
“land” and see if the warning Tolstoy’s simple parable offers has a different ring. How about if one substituted - oil? convenience food (do you call it fast food? ),cheap goods? clean water and air? war? power? money? (I’m sure others are occurring to you….).Tolstoy seems to get complicated enough for us pretty quickly then…
And hey!, This has no link with my "Pattar Plans a Purchase" story.

Warm rgds
V~v~R
11-01-09