M&A

Without splitting hairs further,I now come to the point I wished to comment about.The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on 11th May 2011 announced its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) regulations, letting Corporate India to carry out deals that can have little impact on competition without any hassle. There was an article titled :” CCI notifies M&A Norms” in Financial Express (my favourite business newspaper) dated 12th May 2011.To read the article directly on line,please go to the following link :

The most obvious one is that people should say what they think and should have their own opinion. It’s very important to have your own opinion, because if you don’t, you depend on other people. The people in the fairytale all see that the Emperor has got nothing on. But because of their fear to be considered stupid, they don’t speak up. Because no one says anything, the two swindlers can earn a lot of money without doing anything. But nevertheless it’s important to think about the thoughts that one tells aloud because it’s easy to hurt other people. Not every criticism or opinion is worth to be uttered. The difficult thing is to find a balance, to be honest and friendly.  

In this fairytale, there is a “happy ending” and the Emperor is the only one who is deceived by the swindlers,but in fact, things can get much worse if one does just what the others do.

There is a second important aspect to look at. The Emperor pretends to be a very important man, but he does nothing but worry about his clothes. Nevertheless his people admire and adore him.

So the moral is that one shouldn’t believe in every authority or in everyone who thinks himself to be better than you. The emperor isn’t a better man because of his title or money or his fine clothes; he’s just a human being as anybody else.The important thing is to let other people think whatever they want and to not lose one ’s self-esteem.

In some way this moral is similar to the first one. Both of them want to tell us that it isn’t so important what other people think of one or themselves, but what we think of ourselves. If one is happy with oneself, it’s much easier to get on with other people.

Then there is the moral I like most:  “Preserve a bit of a child in your character!” Children are very direct, they tell straight out what they see. They don’t shut their mouths because they don’t want to hurt someone or because one could think “badly” of them. They just tell what they think. That’s a very important thing to do, to tell what one thinks, at least if it’s important.

But there is another aspect about children that is very interesting. They can pretend to be someone completely different from who they are but on the other hand they know when someone is pretending to be someone else or if he really is like that.

The little child in the story looks at the Emperor and screams out that he is naked. It doesn’t matter for the child if he’s the Emperor or not, he’s just a naked person. The adult people wouldn’t have dared to say anything not only because he’s the Emperor, but also because they are afraid of the consequences that these simple words could have.