Epics and the Market

Experiences in life make human a decision maker with the realization of importance of cognition in decision making and only experience induce you how to use the cognition in the best possible manner. Every decision and related doings have relative impact and influences which sounds good for someone and at the same time bad for other one.

In the Great Epic of Mahabharata, Lord Krishna states about the doings and respective concequences of the doings. According to him, defeat; conquer; win; loose are the various names of the results which in reality have no meaning. Every individual is here to do something being unaware of the future impact. He spoke these words to Ganga Putra Bhishm at the time when Bhishm was considering himself responsible for the Yudh in Kurukshetra. Definitely Bhishm wont be taking the oath (regarding his state Hastinapur, regarding his father and regarding himself to which later his oath become famous as Bhishm Pratigya) if he would be aware about the future outcome of his Bhishm Pratigya as yudh of Mahabharata.

Yes it is true that Bhishm's Bhishm Pratigya set the ground of war in Kurukshetra but that doesn't mean that he was responsible for the war. His oath was all wet in blood in the battle field of Kurukshetra because he was not aware of the result of his oath.

You could found various other teachings from this epic which can provide us new dimensions of business.

Few days back, some foreign deligates arrived in our college to promote their country's MBA. They talk about the global financial crisis which took place in 2007-10. According to them, the MBAs are responsible for all this crisis because their strategies let the market to face this crisis. But for me definitely not. If i consider the words of Lord Krishna, then those MBAs are not exactly responsible for the crash. This is because of the same reason that they were not aware about the impact of their doings which took place recently. I am not favoring anybody and that doesn't mean that i am trying to protect them, no not at all. They are accountable and they have to answer. They tried their best to give benifits to all and upto some extent they even succeded but the end of the story was that, market crashes.

Those deligates talk about the Modern MBA with the relevance of business ethics, values and opportunities. For them, till now every good institute is teaching a traditional form of MBA. Now its time to have a revolutionary change in the education system. I am not criticing or questioning on there innovative style but these things are coming into consideration after the crisis. I want to ask all these people that where were you at the time when these MBAs were responsible for the global prosperity and no one noticed about their style. No one considered that their working style was not in accordance to business ethics and values even at that time too.

This was just an single example to explain you the importance of epics in our today's life. These epics realise their importance in each and every field of today's human life, now whether it is science, commerce or arts. It covers all the parameters of society and provides better alternatives.

Being a MBA student and the future marketer i have figure out lot many dimensions from the epics which will going to help me out in highlighting new dimensions of marketing. And even its not only about figuring out things from the epics, it is about spreading prosperity throughout all the sections of the society by means of marketing.

In the book 'Development as Freedom' by Amartya Sen, he talks about the real meaning of development. Its about freedom and opportunity, how much a citizen of a country have the opportunity to exploit equivalently with respect to others. We can say it as 'the level of right' for exploiting the opportunities under complete freedom. Development is not only about having good GNP, because i found the parameters are really consise just talking only about the per capita income or GNP. Even for me it is about that minimum standard of living which every human should avail for his living (shelter-which can save an individual from all bad weather, clothes, hygenic food acquiring all minimum nutritions daily, education and health).

It doesnt matter whether your percapita income or GNP is low or high where and when your country's population is able to avail the basics. Definitely all the other parameters of development will make a high if country is able to provide the basics to the whole population equivalently.

One thing should be noticed that in the definition of development i doesnt mean that the equal distribution of income and availing the same amount of opportunity in accordance to wealth is complete development (in respect of whole population as well). Opportunity and wealth are two different things and have their own importance in their context itself. It can be understand by a simple example. Suppose you have huge disposable income but due to improper infrastructural development you are not able to provide good and required education to your children. Here it should be noted that education is that mandatory part of economy without which a country cant imagine any type of growth or development. Why i am emphasising on education becasue an illiterate citizen wont be having any knowledge and idea about the scare resources and about its optimum utilization (securement of resource substantially for the future generation). For that illiterate man river water and ocean water is same. For him their is vast resource of water and ocean water could be used in place of river.

Thats why, maximum time we misunderstand in understanding the meaning of development. Being a human you cant ignore edcation and at last but not the least humanity as well where every individual has the equal right to avail all the resource. Secondly, in the books of business, the first definition of business is performing an activity for profit motives in concern of social welfare too. Here, being a marketer it is my duty to do thing both in context of the organization as well as social welfare. In the world of marketing everyone is here to talk about the potential consumers. Everyone is in the race to find out potential once. Ok its good, marketer's duty is to find out customer for the company but here doing business in an ethical manner for the company and even for the customer is not the end. Today welfare is straight away connects with humanity. "Every marketer talks about to figure out the potential consumers but what about those who are non potentials". Again the definition of welfare becomes narrow. Just satisfying a potential consumer need with ethical means is not the end.

Now taking 'social welfare' in concentration. In the basics of economics, their has been clearly mentioned about the optimum utilization of resources because of their limited amount of magnitude and which will going to diminsh in the future periods (specially fossil fuels and natural minerals). Our globe is facing a serious problem of population burden which compel the economists to publish these theories. Now this is a serious situation where every individual should give his participation in using the resources optimally specially for the future generation. From here the definition of 'social welfare' gets modified in context of business. Now it is the responsibility of the entrepreneurs to move on the concept of 'human touch'. Definitely human is somewhere selfish and alway think who cares. But this approach wont work for too many days. Resources are limited and by the time they will diminish.

A business entrepreneur must think from his business point of view itself. Our future is not predictable and it is very true that if we move ahead in the same passion without bothering about anything, we might be facing heavy inflation every where through out the globe. I am not saying that these things are not known to anybody and or i am talking here for the first time. My intentions is to find out the means and solutions of these problems from the business activities.

So, here we can state the transformed definition of social welfare as per the time and requirement as "manufacture the products with quality assurance, charge justiciable price to them, create potential customers, teach all the customers about the optimal utilization of the use of product". Now it is mandatory to learn that how long we can use a product. It is also understood that if companies start teaching to maximize the use of product, they will going to suffer. But as we know that business is about extracting opportunities from the worst ever.

One more reason should be considered here that if entrepreneurs wont opt this strategy they will going to suffer in the long term. Scare resources will increase the prices, employees will be shortlisted out from their jobs, percentage of disposable income will decrease, income level will go down. All this will lead to secretion of money in few hands (disparity in income distribution), market will become no consumer market. Small scale industries will start diminishing,  giants will suvive due to their big size but that too will cost them lot. Even India is working to achieve the inclusive growth which doesn't sounds so approachable in these circumstances.

So here we got to know about so many consequences. New thoughts are mandatory to be implemented, but in a manner which should cost good to all (company and customer).

Now the question arises that what will be the mean through which everyone get optimal profits concerning the scare resources. This is for sure that if company starts teaching the consumer about the optimal utility of a product (which could be used for longer time period), this will cause a countable decrese in the demand of that product.

One thing i would like to discuss that now the things have become more serious than anything else ever. Before this, the business activities took place to earn profits and to satisfy the customers. But now after all these discussions i dont feel that you can consise yourself up to this limit. Lets take a small example of mobile phones.

It is only a matter of time before we run out of space on Earth to dump our garbage. In addition to the limited natural resources we use to make those goods out of. We must do something and truly raise awareness of this escalating problematic issue.

Is it a Need? Or is it a Want?

If you are dumping your current mobile phone just because you want to fulfil your desires for a new one, has now become a ridiculous, and in some people's views, an evil reason to dump your phone. Do you need it? or do you want it? Is it absolutely necessary for you to throw away your old mobile phone? Why not just make use of your current mobile phone if it does the job? or even better, sell it to someone who will use it and not dump it. There has been a surge of mobile phone recycling companies appearing on the market in the past few months, all of whom offer very competitive prices for your mobile phone.

Where will your old phone end up if you threw it away? You should know the answer to that now. It will disappear from your memories faster than you can say 'What phone?'. But the effects of dumping that mobile phone will outlive you, leaking those horrible chemicals into the environment damaging the local community's health. It will then contaminate the drinking water and make it very harmful. You yourself, the culprit, may end up drinking the same water you contaminated. What about the children who live nearby? They will drink that water as well.

'Then What Do I Do?' You may still ask even though you already know.

Use correct methods to discard of your old mobile phone. If you are living in the states, then you may not be able to find recycling companies who offer money for your phone. In that case you should do a little bit of research and find out for yourself what your local policies are. If you live in the UK, then you are in luck. Competitive prices are offered by more than a handful of firms. Mobile phone recycling firms are all over the UK and advertise themselves day in day out. This really is as good as it sounds. Be green and get paid for being green. Go to www.MobilePhoneRecyclingShop.co.uk, and simply use their search engine comparison service to help find you the best deal for your mobile phone. Simply click to recycle, check out, and post your mobile phone as instructed by your chosen recycling firm. Sit back and wait for the cash to appear in your hands. What a way to recycle. You get paid to do it.

Mobile phone recycling federal mandates do not currently exist in the US. Whether they will in the future or not is not in our knowledge. However many states and provinces have set up methods and steps of their very own. There is always someone somewhere doing something about it.

For businesess to continue to sell their products and services legally, they must abide by new legislations, which requires businesses to have their own recycling system.

So this was just a small example through which we can understand how important is this for the business running enterprises to understand the things and also to find out the solutions for this very serious problem.