Ever wonder why the American Investment banks / Lalit Modi / or those
PIIGS get away lightly always......the Reason is Indian Mythology (It is
Vishun's Kar-na-ma that world over people follow........of late)
Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the
concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by
Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in
sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also
invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in
the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.
The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra
stories that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar
Chitra Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard.
Since you probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.
A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As
a weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression.
His friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying
chariot in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells
him to fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is
Vishnu and wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is
kept a secret from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The
princess agrees, and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the
marriage.
Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in
total bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks
her what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu
himself. The King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no
point in paying tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on
the kingdom's side. The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the
princess's room and asks him to fight the Chakravarti's army.
The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed
him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of
Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether.
On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually
Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the
past month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to
the battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up
enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going
to do all the fighting.
By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off
Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu
doesn't win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in
him. Vishnu doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he
enters the weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti's army. The
entire army. Every single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the
princess, everyone goes on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the
new Chakravarti.
The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if
you fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more
powerful failing too. This lets you get away with anything. The weaver got
away with having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape
under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god
(awesomely enough, this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and
annihilating an entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it
was the king who broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being
genocide under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).
American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this
lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed
they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver
lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever
after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.
But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain
the masters of this art. If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is
revealed, big politicians might be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get
away lightly -- as is A Raja, who might have given away spectrum at
bargain basement rates, but whose sacking would lead to the government
collapsing. All this goes to show that no matter what the anguished
elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor feel, Indians are still
in touch with our ancient and glorious culture.
"There will always be a bail out in the EU.
"The PIIGS owe 700 billion to Germany and 900 billion to France.
"France and Germany are actually bailing out themselves"
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