I just finished watching “The Scam – 1992 Harshad Mehta” and it left me crying… not just tears… but some gasps and a subtle wail escaped as well in spite of my best efforts…
I know it is a dramatized version that somehow does glorify the image of a person who gamed the system wrongly… and it was designed to incite emotions as to what I felt…
But there is just something about the whole series – the beginning in the chawl, the struggle and the yearn to get out of it and do something in life, that Gujarati mindset of business, the depiction of the whole culture at home – from that aversion to drinking to the smallest things like the breakfast they talk about… the interspersed Gujarati sayings and dialogues… the city of Mumbai… It was just too close to home to not feel what I felt…
I felt a similar – though not as strong a feeling when I saw the Nirav Modi episode on Bad Boy Billionaire’s : India on Netflix…
Apart from the obvious Gujarati’s who have done scam’s in India using the Banking system connection, the common emotion I felt was that both this guys had an ambition, had understood their market and were trying to play that game with high stakes… and that both were constantly having to take higher risks because they had to jostle to capture that space for themselves… at the cost sometimes of other existing participants – at such fervent pace that using other people’s money with unethical means was the only option left… and that it was not just them who were using the unethical means, it was just that they were the ones caught… or rather they were basically riding the tiger – unable to manage or control or exit what they had embarked upon…
And these feelings people including me feel for people like them, has reinforced in me – that as humans, we really are not looking for the upholding of ethics… we want the upholding of ethics, morals and justice to our benefit.. We are quite lenient of the crooked means of people as long as it does not hit us home and are all the more accepting if we are benefiting from others not so moral ways… Each and every person who was positively affected by the rise of Harshad Mehta or Nirav Modi (or others like them) never questioned or willfully turned a blind eye or even justified their ways when the going was good… and even now, when the televised series are made on them, when their side of the story is shown, the representation of these people resonates with many…
What also got me thinking… and at some deeper level I have realized (like how very late in my Chartered Accountancy days I realized that the entire game was of the Balance Sheet and the turnover of Net Current Assets using the Fixed Assets and Investments to increase the net worth of anything; that the profit and loss was just a freaking working summary to easily depict what was happening… but the real game is the Balance Sheet)…
That this concept of money is really shallow if people just understand money or wealth as currency notes, diamonds, properties or anything that is in front of them… As Alvin Toffler says in his book “Revolutionary Wealth”, Wealth is nothing but a store of utility… Utility that can service our desires… and hence wealth really is anything that we can use to barter in exchange to get what we aspire… today those things in the world are gold, diamonds, properties, currency notes (in another time, it was sea shells)… people are willing to exchange things in return for these things and give us what we want… Currency notes issued by most governments are a medium to facilitate that exchange and also a source of value in themselves…
And why? Why do people exchange and give us a plane ticket to see something, let us stay in a comfortable place, give us the food we like… for something like a currency note which is issued by a government – which by itself has no actual utility (it is a piece of paper – and just a promise)… or even for that matter for gold or diamonds or anything…
Because the thing we are giving – be it anything – & people are accepting is something that they trust they can use in future to get them something they may want – that it will be a good store of value for future use… they can trust it to be…
And so trust is really the biggest currency… trust and hope… and not one person’s… but that of a mass of people… to create value for anything… one needs to create either a desire for it at mass level or create a common belief that the thing or person can deliver in future and those very same set of people will consider it valuable enough to exchange it for something…
Basically – the Zimbabwe Dollar was at one time a valid currency… but when the trust in that government started deteriorating people stopped accepting it as a medium of exchange and did not hold it… that when the prime minister of India said that the notes of 500/1000 are no longer valid, those pieces of paper lost all their value overnight… that sea shells which were once accepted as currency in ancient times are no longer considered of value…
Trust and Hope… they are therefore the true premise of any currency… and anyone who is creating value (or breaking it) – is basically a peddler of this underlying emotions… nothing else…
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