Forbes India Interview: Gurcharan Das, author and former P&G India chairman

How did our society treat merchants and traders?
Merchants have not been highly regarded in India’s history. There were periods and geographies like Gujarat and coastal areas where they were. But by and large they were not so well respected in the society. They are often depicted as people who get rich by robbing the poor and this isn’t just true about India. Perhaps people did not understand how if merchants prospered, the society prospered too. What they see is the glitter — the big luxurious house that the Ambani is building. But in the process they don’t realise that people like the Ambanis contribute significantly to the social well being. This is what Adam Smith called the “invisible hands”.

What about the nexus between business and rulers?
That relationship has always been there. Buddhist monks would go to merchants to collect money and merchants would extract their pound of flesh even then. Rulers of Rajput states depended on Marwaris to fight the battles. If kings lost the battle, [the] merchant lost the money. If they won they would get different kinds of favours. Smart merchants did not give too much. Business was always scared of those with political powers. They are still scared.

Have things changed now?
After 1991, for the first time business is acquiring respect in the society. Industrial revolution began in Europe and the US, 200 years back. Their businesses are in second, third generation. And you see the philanthropic side to it with people like Bill Gates now.

Typically, when money has been there for several generations, when children are sent to the best of schools, they become genteel and are no longer hungry for money. It’s a common saying — first generation makes money, second generation wants prestige and power and it is the third generation that wants art, culture, status and aspires for respect. History reveals that money for long makes you comfortable and complacent.

Newyorker article.

Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive interventions—and bad at knowing when to focus, instead, on improving the days that terminal patients have left.

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For all but our most recent history, dying was typically a brief process. Whether the cause was childhood infection, difficult childbirth, heart attack, or pneumonia, the interval between recognizing that you had a life-threatening ailment and death was often just a matter of days or weeks.

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There is no single way to take people with terminal illness through the process, but, there are some rules. You sit down. You make time. You’re not determining whether they want treatment X versus Y. You’re trying to learn what’s most important to them under the circumstances—so that you can provide information and advice on the approach that gives them the best chance of achieving it. This requires as much listening as talking. If you are talking more than half of the time, you’re talking too much.

The words you use matter. According to experts, you shouldn’t say, “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” for example. It can sound like pity. You should say, “I wish things were different.” You don’t ask, “What do you want when you are dying?” You ask, “If time becomes short, what is most important to you?”

Block has a list of items that she aims to cover with terminal patients in the time before decisions have to be made: what they understand their prognosis to be; what their concerns are about what lies ahead; whom they want to make decisions when they can’t; how they want to spend their time as options become limited; what kinds of trade-offs they are willing to make.
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All-out treatment, we tell the terminally ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families this is asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. But our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw upon. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and to escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande

Original Post here.

When we do things we’ve never done before, there’s an instant and automatic internal shift. Expectations, emotions, attitudes and beliefs (about what’s possible for us) change. The internal shift is simply a byproduct of a new experience. Of doing something we’ve never done before.

Change comes from doing. For the most part, we don’t ‘think’ ourselves different; we ‘do’ ourselves different. So to speak. We need to ‘action’ our way to internal transformation. Which is why the theory of personal development is worthless until it becomes a practical reality. Until the concepts and ideas are turned into behaviours. Some people are theoretical geniuses but practical idiots. They talk a lot but do very little.

Change comes from doing. Which is why an article like this can be transformational or worthless – it all depends on you.

The Runner

For the forty-five year-old woman who runs a half-marathon for the first time in her life, the transformation will be more emotional and psychological (internal), than it will be physical (external). She finishes her event and without focusing on anything other than the physical process, she has gained more confidence, her standards and expectations have changed, she’s less fearful and she’s more excited about her future possibilities. Her new experience has created internal shift.

The Traveller

There’s the woe-is-me guy who visits a third world country. He instantly realises that his horrible life in the USA is actually fantastic. And that his lifestyle is actually one of privilege, not disadvantage. He identifies that his self-pitying, negative attitude has always been his problem. Without even looking for it, his experience in another part of the world teaches him to acknowledge, value and appreciate what he has (which is plenty). Nothing changes but everything changes.