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“Yes, I decide even for my family. My daughter's wedding is coming up soon, and we are supposed to have a party, but we are not allowed to have drinks, and as you know, youngsters, nowadays, when they have a dance party or so, and are not allowed to drink anything, they do not enjoy it very much. So, I said that under those conditions I do not want to have the party at all, and canceled it. Now, my children and their friends of their own age level will simply go out together, and have fun, but we will not be part of it. That is how I took my call. And realize that this was about my daughter's wedding, very emotional, and yet I did not want to bend, and they all agreed and wanted me to be like this. They did not want to break the principles, and so we did, when I see it is not the end of the world, I say: so be it”
At this point, a third interlocutor, more familiar with the details of the company, intervened:
"I do remember another example, from a few years ago, when I started working here. We had an employee, P, a woman whose daughter was caught by cancer, and had maximally one more year to live. I think that in virtually every company, somebody like that who wanted to visit her daughter in the hospital every day would lose her job within a month. But not here. It was a very difficult situation, because her husband was also without a job. So, you decided to say OK, I will continue to pay your salary, but you do not need to come to office”.
At that moment an employee, K, enters the office and exchanges some business information with R, after which R says:
"You see, K is a very ethical boy, extremely so. Now, suppose he does something, say drink, which he knows is wrong, and one day will leave it, that for me would already be a positive point. The problem comes when the guy does not know what he is doing wrong, and then I always quote Jesus Christ, whose last words on the cross were: forgive them, God, because they do not know what they are doing. This makes clear that the root of all problems is now having knowledge. If you know that your consciousness will one day bring you to the right line, but you do not know what that line is, how can you ever be on that line? This is what we strongly believe in our principles".
To stretch the argument even further, a fourth interlocutor, also present at the interview, intervened:
“You have been very successful, so far, in your business. So, you have some degree of freedom to make decisions without losing ground. Have you ever faced the problem of having to make decisions that touch the fundamental continuity of the business, and yet wanted to stay in line with Jain principles?”
"Yes, in 2008, the crisis. I was praised, and let me tell you that the nature of what you see now in me, and what you would have seen in 2007 and before, is very different. Normally, I'm extremely pro-business, very prone to risk, but after 2008 I changed completely, I really turned 180 degrees,
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