Greed... Is there an end?

When I was in college, all of us from the so-called ‘middle-class’ were inspired by one name – Rajat Gupta, who lost his journalist father at the tender age of sixteen and then his mother two years later and went on to become the Managing Director of McKinsey, one of the world’s largest and prominent consultancy firm.

Ramalinga Raju was born in the family of farmers and was just an ordinary commerce graduate from Vijayawada. He founded Satyam Computers and became an ideal for all the IT entrepreneurs as he brushed shoulders with the likes of Azim Premji & Narayan Murthy as his company scaled heights.

Then something snapped…

In 2009, Ramalinga Raju was imprisoned on charges of cheating, embezzlement and insider trading. And just a few days back, Rajat Gupta was apprehended by FBI for alleged securities fraud and insider trading. At the time of their incarceration, Ramalinga Raju and Rajat Gupta had a personal wealth of more than USD 1 billion and USD 100 million respectively, that is Rs 5000 crores and Rs 500 crores in Indian Rupees.

WOW!!! That’s some money…

But are we missing something here?? As ‘middle-class’ individuals, just like most of us, they would have also, at some point of their career, decided that once they make so-many lakhs/crores, they would have arrived in life and I am pretty sure that amount would have been substantially less than the 5000/500 crores.

So what happened here?

Greed happened… Truth is there is no limit to greed. While apparently Rajat Gupta was trying to match up to his Silicon valley ‘friends’ valued in billions, Ramalinga Raju siphoned USD 1.2 billion just for a rainy day. Else wonder what can an individual do with that kind of money? Beyond a point, once even the most luxurious of one’s needs are fulfilled, money just becomes a number in the bank account. And that is true for not just the likes of Rajat Gupta & Ramalinga Raju but even for the likes of you and me as well. The beauty about capitalism is that you can do what you want and surely enough, can earn as much as you want, if you are willing to persevere.

Money was not always there. It was created to establish a universal means to transact goods and services. And it was till not very long back when money was considered exactly that. Recently read somewhere - "The money in our bank the day we die is the extra work we did during our lifetime". Most of us will react to this saying that its an extreme but then should we also not define the other end of this extreme?

How much is 'enough'? One of my cousin is not getting married since he believes he still don't earn 'enough'. Married men will tell him jokingly that he will never be able to earn 'enough' to manage a wife.

On the serious note, can one ever earn 'enough'? Rajat Gupta & Ramalinga Raju didn't think so. Do you?