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FROM IIM-AHMEDABAD TO HAPPINESS
has become more rigorous and, at times, monotonous. But the rewards are also there for everyone to see. He owns a house as well as a penthouse, a compact car as well as a luxury car - Audi A4/S4 or BMW 3-Series - and a fat bank balance as well as substantial investment in stocks and bonds. He has travelled around the world, many times over. He is soon going to become a millionaire, in dollar terms, if not one already.
But, in the core of his heart, a feeling of unease has been sprouting, over the past few years. No more willing to gloss-over the matter, he started to put his mind on the reasons for his anxiety and restlessness.
All along, for the sake of his organization, he had been readily adopting growth-based and, often, greed-based business practices, with money and profit as the bottomline. All his professional skills were being used toward furthering the goals and objectives of his organization. Ruthless, predatory, uncompromising and uncaring competition had become the means to that end. And the competition had not only been with other firms but also with other people. The sole aim had been to try to profit at the expense of others; even if it meant climbing over his peers on the way to the top. In his competitiveness and ruthlessness, he had become impervious to the feelings of those who he was trampling. He started taking shady and dubious decisions as part of his job. At some point, somewhere, he had become untruthful, for the sake of his organization. Giving tacit or explicit approval to deceitful advertising, using statistics as a tool to distort facts to suit one's own viewpoint, and using vague, confusing and imprecise language, out of deliberation or compulsion, in order to further the interests of his organization, were a few things he had to do as part of his job. All this was not to his inner taste.
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