On Talking by Kahlil Gibran

And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking.

And he answered, saying:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.

The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand. 

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear or his ear;

For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered

When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.  

From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). This poem is in the public domain.

Source: Poem

Common Thread between movies

Three movies:

• Incendies - Canadian Movie (2010)
• Iratta - Malayalam Movie (2023)
• Maharaj - Tamil Movie (2024)

Common thread flows between the three movies, even though, situations dramatized are completely different.

Performance of Joju George in Iratta, Vijay Sethupathy in Maharaj are praiseworthy.

In case of Incendies one will remember only story, the performers are unknown to even western audience.

How business effects demography

UltraTech Cement acquired stake in India Cements (South based) owned by N Srinivasan.

N Srinivasan issued a statement:

No need to feel threatened, insecure: N Srinivsasan reassures India Cements employees.

Above statement will be applicable for five / ten years. Post that the changes will be visible.

Now we will look at the Board of India Cements (Source: as on March 31st, 2023) composition:

S N	Name	Indian
1	Sri N. Srinivasan Vice Chairman & Managing Director	South
2	Smt. Chitra Srinivasan	South
3	Smt. Rupa Gurunath Wholetime Director	South
4	Sri S. Balasubramanian Adityan	South
5	Sri Basavaraju (till 10.08.2023)	South
6	Sri S. Christopher Jebakumar (Nominee of IDBI Bank)*	South
7	Sri Krishna Prasad Nair (till 23.06.2023)	South
8	Smt. Lakshmi Aparna Sreekumar	South
9	Sri V. Manickam (w.e.f. 24.06.2023)	South
10	Smt. Nalini M Ratnam (Nominee of LIC)	South
11	Sri T.S. Raghupathy (till 10.08.2023)	South
12	Sri V. Ranganathan	South
13	Smt. Sandhya Rajan	South
14	Sri Sanjay Shantilal Patel	North
15	Sri Siddhartha Mohanty (Nominee of LIC)	East
16	Sri K. Skandan	South
17	Sri Y.Viswanatha Gowd*	South
	* - Assumption
	South Ratio (15/17)	88.24%

Many will argue, this introduction of South / North is unnecessary.

But a look at the Board of UltraTech Cement (Source: website 30 July 2024)will give you an answer.

S N	Name	Indian
1	Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla	North
2	Mrs. Rajashree Birla	North
3	Ms. Anita Ramachandran	South
4	Mrs. Alka Bharucha	North
5	Mr Sunil Duggal	North
6	Mr. K. C. Jhanwar	North
7	Mr. Anjani Kumar Agrawal	North
8	Mrs. Sukanya Kripalu	North
9	Mr. Vivek Agrawal	North
10	Mr. K. K. Maheshwari	North
	North Ratio (9/10)	90%

The change of ratio in the Board will be immediately seen.

Note: 

• India Cements uses Shri. / Smt. and UltraTech Cement uses Mr. / Mrs.
• India Cements have in Board from other regions of South. UltraTech Cement has majority from Marwari community.

In case of employees, the change will be felt in five / ten years.

Someone can do this working after five / ten years, if data is available. The change will be visible.

It takes time to percolate changes form Head to Toe.

Yes agreed all are Indians / Funds are important, but regional demographic distinctness must be retained. 

The divide of they versus us in case of north versus south will remain and continue.

Howard Marks - Investors/Luck/Intelligence

But I don’t remember ever writing about his second factor, which Galbraith says is “the specious association of money and intelligence.” When people get rich, others take that to mean they’re smart. And when investors succeed, it’s often assumed their intelligence can lead to similarly good results in other fields. Further, successful investors often come to believe in the strength of their own intellect and opine about fields with no connection to investing. 

But investors’ success can be the result of a string of lucky breaks or a propitious environment, rather than any special talents. They may or may not be intelligent, but often they don’t know any more than most others about subjects outside of investing. Nevertheless, many are unsparing with their opinions, and those opinions often are highly valued by the general populace. That’s the specious part. And today we find some of them speaking with conviction on all sides of the issues related to the election.

Howard Marks

Alphaideas

Finding New Ideas - Stock Picker

Well connected statement shared in an article helps you to understand that there is a connectivity across.

For me – I find ideas like a spider builds a web. The spider can’t catch a fly by singling out one fly. It makes a web and waits. It’s the same for finding ideas. You must build out your web through brute force, screening, researching, networking, and relationships. You must be diligent in maintaining your web and keeping it free of debris so you can feel the tremor. It might be once every two years or ten times per year but eventually something will hit your web and you will feel it. Then you go see what you caught.

Source:

1.MicroCapClub

2.Alphaideas

Hit and Run Vahan / Rath Case - Bharat

Recently, in the past few months there have been cases of Hit and Run Cases:

Mumbai hit-and-run case: Mihir Shah admits he was driving BMW car at time of crash, say police.

Pune teen, who killed 2 with Porsche, submits 300-word essay on road safety.

In Sanatan India more than 750 years back horse and Rath were used as travelling mode by Royalties.

Nowhere in the stories / books / Podcasts anywhere an incident appeared where a commoner was struck with the Rath / Vahan of the Royalty and died. Similar to the present day Hit and Run case.

Rath / Vahan of the Royalties, 750 years back leading to thousands of years were the high end vehicles of those times.

Surprising never heard of such incidents / accidents.

Were those period accident free, difficult to accept or those times were ruled by King and no one dared to go against the Royalties.

Food for thought for all the current researchers.

India - Compensate Voters / Candidates

In India, politicians contest from two / more different constituencies. Post win, they drop out from one / two.

Example: Congress politician Rahul Gandhi won from Rae Bareli and Wayanad during 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

On 18th June 2024, congress clarified:

During a pivotal Congress core meeting, it was decided that Rahul Gandhi would keep the family bastion of Rae Bareli, while his sister, Priyanka, would run for the seat in Wayanad...

One suggestion to Election Commission of India:

There is no harm in running for two seats. However, if you win both or more and drop one or two seats, compensation should be collected from the member.

The member should compensate for the following:

• Cost of the running the booth for election i.e. election staff, EVM Machine rent, security staff etc.
• Place a cost for every voter who voted for the winning candidate in case of Rahul Gandhi 647455 total votes. 
• In case of Wayanad seat, arrive at price based on common working or else place for example INR 1 / INR 5 per vote and recover it from the individual / party.
• Use the fund collected for the expenses to be incurred for re-conducting the elections and balance remaining for development of the constituencies.

The objective is not to penalize the Individual / Politician:

• Time shared by voters for voting 
• Voters believing in the candidate for what he will do for the constituency
• Compensate the voters who voted for the candidate
• The expenses (Deposits / Fee / Advertisements etc.) incurred by the other candidates for contesting, that particular seat.

At the same time, not allowing the winning candidate to walk free smiling with no cost attached.

Let there be a price to drop out from a constituency.

Ancient Indian Legal System

 Interesting speech on Ancient Indian Legal System.

Worth listening.

Article on Debt Worth Reading

 Article on Debt by Howard Marks is worth reading.

The link is provided to read the full article below.

The Impact of Debt

Two portions worth noting down below for quick understanding:

The magnification of gains and losses stemming from leverage is typically symmetrical: a given amount of leverage amplifies gains and losses similarly. But levered portfolios face a downside risk to which there isn’t a corresponding upside: the risk of ruin. The most important adage regarding leverage reminds us to “never forget the six-foot-tall person who drowned crossing the stream that was five feet deep on average.” To survive, you have to get through the low points, and the more leverage you carry (everything else being equal), the less likely you are to do so. 

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness:

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security . . .  Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. . . . One is thus capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette – and calling it by some alternative “low risk” name. 

Thanks:

Howard Marks

Morgan Housel

Alpha Ideas

Elitist Mentality - Intellectual reality

When you retweet it you are endorsing it.

Elitist mentality. Unfortunate.

Digital Insurance Policy - Risky move

Major change will initiate from April 1 , 2024 in the field of Insurance.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) previously announced that digitisation of insurance policies will become mandatory from April 1, 2024. This mandate will apply to all insurance categories, encompassing life, health, and general insurance, requiring policies to be issued electronically.

If you decide to buy insurance after April 1, your insurer will issue the policy only in digital form. This is in line with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India’s Protection of Policyholders’ Interests regulations that make it mandatory for insurers to issue policies in dematerialised form. The regulator, insurers and other stakeholders say e-insurance will help policyholders and the entire insurance ecosystem.

Impact:

1. How the population who have less computer literacy will understand this move?
2. How to authenticate is the policy issued is from the Insurance company or a fake one? Even educated professionally qualified people do not check whether the digital copy is original.
3. Majority of the population do not understand dematerialize form?
4. If a person who is at lower section of service provider does he have the means to ensure the implication of this move? Was a survey carried out to understand what they need instead of imposing on them?
5. If some one earning INR 20000 and less per month has to compulsory open a email account and buy a smart phone?
6. What about people who do not have laptop / personal computer where will they save this digital copy?

This may result in a fraud in future as to how a fake digital insurance policy was issued to the people.

It appears following assumptions were made which appears to be incorrect:

1. This will be embraced like UPI.
2. This will be accepted like issue of shares in dematerialized format

Government has not stopped printing / circulation of physical currency in the economy unlike Insurance policy where future will be only digital in nature.

Insurance policy in digital copy needs lot of homework.

This should have done separately like policies issued to institutions should be in a digital copy compulsory and for retail the move should be more gradually over a period of time.

Tolerant Bharat (Sanatana Dharma)

Review of list of holidays vis-à-vis religion in Bharat.

Holiday list sourced from BSE Website for the year 2024.  

If one removes common holidays 4 mentioned above:

Screen Shot BSE website 29 March 2024

Screen Shot : Demography source (2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: India

OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM)

Link: For report download

Celebrity Witness

Recently, Gus Schumacher a skier spoke in front of US Senator Kennedy on climate change and other matters endorsed by him.

A must watch video to understand how we should be careful in reacting to the statements issued by celebrity on subjects other than their domain knowledge.

Source: A I Mitra

Two fight in court and lawyer wins

 The only person who wins in legal tangle is lawyers.

Apple to pay $490 million to settle allegations that it misled investors about iPhone sales in China.

Apple vehemently denied Cook deceived investors about the iPhone’s sales in China between early November and early January. The Cupertino, California, company maintained that stance in the settlement documents, but said it decided to make the payment after more than four years of legal wrangling to avoid an “overly burdensome, expensive, and distracting” hassle.

Thousands of shareholders who bought Apple stock in late 2018 could be eligible for a piece of the settlement, which will be distributed from of a pool that will be less than $490 million after lawyers involved in the case are paid. The attorneys plan to seek up to one-fourth, or about $122 million, of the settlement.

Shawn Williams, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd representing the shareholders, called the settlement an "outstanding result" for the class.

Why Outstanding result:

Lawyers for the shareholders may seek fees of up to 25% of the settlement amount.

The legal fraternity will advise :

Focus on what you got and not on what we got?

And

Ensure for every small / negligent issues please go to Court?

You Fight We Win.

Insight on Vedic Science

Below speech by Dr Sucheta Paranjpe on Vedic Science (Marathi) is worth listening. 

Please spare time and listen.

Thanks Nithin Kamath

 An important twitter post by Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath:

There is saying in Malayalam Adhikam Ayya Amrutham Visham.

Politician vs Bureaucrat dialogue

In the below scene from movie Aajcha Divas Majha (2013 Marathi Cinema) the dialogue is worth listening to:

Jai Sri Ram

 Start of a new journey in the Land of Bharat.

Photo Source: Jai Sri Ram

Incorrect Reporting - Financial Times

An article by Mr. Reed and Ms Singh appeared in Financial Times. Headline of the article "The Hindu temple central to Narendra Modi’s vision for India".

Portions of the article appeared to convey incorrect truth about what happened in India. One by one and side by side a clarification is issued in this blog.

The attempt is to provide a correct understanding to the western readers.

I wish to state that select portion from the article is reproduced here to explain the position. 

Authors wrote in FT	Ground Reality
Three decades after Hindu zealots tore down a mosque at Ayodhya…	It was Hindu activist. The mosque was brought down. A  wrong narrative. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj0dMceYYhM Must watch video for Foreign and Indian writers.
Modi, who has ruled India since 2014…	Modi has governed India. Will Reed use the same term for Mr. Biden or other western Heads of state. Modi was elected by crores of Indian in a election.
“What Modi is trying to do by developing Ayodhya is [make this] . . . Hinduism’s Vatican,”	This is biased selection from the authors to explain their writing to western readers. He could have used “Cultural centre of India or as Uttar Pradesh CM stated Ram Mandir will be symbol of cultural, spiritual and social unity of India as ‘Rashtra Mandir’ https://organiser.org/2024/01/02/213955/bharat/ram-mandir-will-be-symbol-of-cultural-spiritual-and-social-unity-of-india-as-rashtra-mandir-up-cm-yogi-adityanath/
“Temples are not the government’s business; unemployment, inflation, public welfare and national security are,” Shashi Tharoor, an MP…..	Authors are ignorant or not writing about Indian Government collecting taxes and governing only Hindu Temples and not Christian, Muslim places of worship. Please read this article Indefinite state control of temples is unjust – Hindustan Times. This is select reporting of truth.
Politicians representing India’s roughly 200mn Muslims say the temple project is part of a drive by Modi’s BJP government to push their own mosques and history aside--	Does the authors   capture the truth for western Christian and Muslim readers that Muslim invaders destroyed around 30,000 temples. Advise to authors,   Muslim invaders ruled India and not PM Modi. Pleas read : 'We will never know the number of temples desecrated through India's history': Richard Eaton www.scroll.in
“This is a symbolic celebration of showing Muslims their place in today’s India,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, an MP and head of the All India majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party. “This has opened the floodgates for many more masjid (mosque) issues…	Owaisi brother Akbaruddin stated in 2013, the junior Owaisi had said that if police is removed for 15 minutes, “we (Muslims) will finish 100 crore Hindus” India Today. The western Christian and Muslim readers will never know this truth about Owaisi as they will not know the ground reality about the symbolic celebration. I urge western readers to go to YouTube and type Ayodhya Ram Temple celebration to know the ground reality about how ordinary people across India celebrate consecration of Ram Temple.
Hindu nationalists have been fighting to demolish or demote mosques built during India’s centuries of Muslim domination…	Here the authors   does not write Muslim Invaders but use the word domination. This is incorrect. The invaders came from outside and they ruled, converted, killed and destroyed India / Bharat.
Some of the disputes predate India’s independence; others are more recent and rode on India’s wave of Hindu nationalism….	Not some, all disputes are not prior to India’s Independence but they date to Mughal Invaders who ruled India before August 24, 1608.
…..years of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2019 approved the construction of Ram Mandir, despite a lack of conclusive evidence that there had ever been a Hindu temple on the site….	Here I request the legal fraternity to look into the matter as written by the authors that Supreme Court of India approved construction of Ram Temple despite lack of conclusive evidence. This appears to be a disrespect of Indian Supreme Court and whether this needs to be taken up.