Love Money But Learn How to Earn

(Published in Banking Services Chronicle September 2000)

“Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other men,” said Charles Caleb Colton. I don’t despise riches. I love them, whether they belong to me or to others, so long they are not ill-begotten. And I wish each of our countrymen (and women too) got interested in money-making.

Money-making is benevolence when it is done in the right spirit. When the entrepreneurs are not myopic but have sustainable profit in mind. When labour is not seen as the ‘other’ but as ‘us’. I have the Narayanamurthy model in my mind where the employees are made to feel “it is our business”.

This leads to a bonhomie which results in energetic labour. Which in turn leads to more money. Because you will hardly come across instances where money comes without labour. Fortune comes to the brave. See how Lady Luck refuses to smile on most of those who go to Kaun Banega Crorepati. Not a single person has reached the seven-digit mark even after more than three weeks of the contest. But Amitabh Bachchan and the producers have definitely made money. So, even here, it is labour that emerges victorious.

Besides, money that comes by luck or through exploitation doesn’t give the same satisfaction as that earned by dint of merit and labour. We have been programmed in such a manner since our childhood that money from ill-begotten means — dishonesty or fraud — ruins our peace.

Take the instance of our cricketers. Until a few years (or even a few months) back, cricketers were the icons of the people of our country. We loved, admired, adored, even worshipped them. If someone dared to raise a finger at them, we were ready to take cudgels on their behalf.

But all that is history since skeletons of match-fixing have begun tumbling out of their cupboards. They have lost their esteem in our eyes. A number of them are being seen as traitors to the nation who took the innocent spectators for a ride. They can’t be any happier either if the allegations are true and if they have something of a conscience left within them.

“Money is a good servant but a bad master.” What Bacon wrote centuries back continues to be true. Since there is a very thin line that divides the status of money as a servant from that of a master, most of us don’t know where to stop. In the process we lose our independence and enslave ourselves.

Look at the craze for going to the US to exploit the software boom. Most of the intelligent persons are queuing up for H-1B visas. Why? To earn dollars and live a “good” life full of material comforts. Materialism is the be-all and end-all for most of us. Except for the few who have a goal in their minds — by goal I don’t mean the sole aim of being a Bill Gates, but a goal with an originality of purpose and a touch with humanity —, most of us have been reduced to couch-potatoes.

As I said in the beginning, I love riches. And I would propose that let us all love riches. But let us love them just as we love our children. We love children but we don’t pamper them to push them into the “spoilt” category. The bond of love is only weakened when you are indisciplined with your children.

A strict discipline has to be exercised in our relationship with money. We must learn to earn it. We must learn how to earn it. We must learn how much to earn. And we must learn how to spend it. Money is a good thing. Let us maintain its goodness both on and off the pitch.