The world has told Sachin Tendulkar when to retire, but nobody wants to tell Sunil Gavaskar when to retire. I am sure he will be in the commentary box when Arjun Tendulkar retires and continue to say ‘you should go …in glory and when the world asks ‘why’ and not ‘why not’?. LOL.

I guess it was easier to give up for SMG – the money was not so much (he anyway had a lot lot more money than his contemporaries like Ramnath Parkar and Eknath Solkar, but that is another story).

Clearly people do not like to give up controls. I deal with 2-3 generations of a couple of business communities and can see the conflict.

A 55 year old who has a 23 year old son/daughter coming into the business suddenly becomes insecure. The older person has done things ‘his’ way. He may or may not have had education, but the kids are reasonably well educated. So there is a conflict right from the way the clients are met, the decor in the office, whether booze should be served, how the employees are treated, etc. etc.

The parent is already worried saying ‘the total income will / may not go up even if both of us are in the same business’. Many of the older guys slog and do not have any hobbies. They do everything and can rarely delegate. When the kids want to have fun…you hear them say ‘Oh we did not enjoy ourselves…we worked hard’. The elders have a huge, huge consumption guilt, the kids do not.

Let us take a more familiar case. If the father is a practicing CA, the kid wants to work in an international firm and do things differently. The kids have no interest in the father’s practice of Sales tax, income tax, VAT, …they would rather earn money learning M&A, xbrl, …etc.

Most fathers pay a lip service saying ‘I am doing all this for my kids….’ but most of the kids get treated like clerks if they join their dad’s business. This if the kids are smart. If the kids are dumb, they have had it!

Here read what Govindraj Ethiraj says about retiring…

http://forbesindia.com/blog/the-technocapitalist/dad-i-want-to-run-our-company-too/