Funnily if you go from thinking about your own wealth to world well being you may have guilt pangs. Take my portfolio. The companies which have made money for me in the long run have not REALLY done anything useful for the world.

Let me list:

Coromandel International (Chemical fertilisers, now making neem fertilizer too), Monsanto chemicals (horror stories on Google, and now not in my portfolio), Hindustan Unilever (Fair and Lovely is the biggest insult to Indians – esp the kids around 18 years of age!), ITC (need I say anything?), Pfizer (margins shock me), GSK, Nestle, Colgate, EID Parry (sugar), Hdfc bank (selling ULIP), ….the list, is endless. Really.

I do not have any company in the alcohol, ammunition, sin industries BECAUSE they are not listed in India, not because of principles that I hold.

Sadly in the wealth creation business (or profession) the only thing that one has to see is whether it makes money for you in the long run. I held Hero Honda for a long time – 1985 to 2012/3 – and did not for once worry about kids killing themselves riding the bikes. Sure bikes are not to be blamed, it is the riders fault…etc. etc…..but WE KNOW HOW KIDS ARE, why do we kill our own kids?

Why do we ban heroin but ENCOURAGE tobacco? Our legislators are mathematically challenged. We subsidize fertilizers used in the tobacco farm and in the sugar farm! Then we spend crores on treating cancer and diabetes. I am not saying this only against the Indian legislators – look at the Americans, they are worse. Or the Europeans, they are perhaps on a weaker wicket!

Take the Indian tax deduction – we give people a deduction for medical insurance payment (lobbied by the insurance industry) but not for spending money in playing a game / sport to keep fit. WHY?

SIMPLY because the prevention business is not so attractive! Who has respect for a doctor who prevents? NONE. Most of us respect doctors who got us out of trouble! We choose lifestyles thrust upon us by the media, our stupid peers, classmates, cousins,……OUR CHOICE is what we think. Actually it is a brilliant media manipulation.

Media manipulation is so awesome that Gillette (in various forms) convinced men first, and then women that having body hair is bad. See pictures of Einstein, W G Grace, Rabindranath Tagore – they were not victims of Gillette. The generation born post 1880 has become a slave!

Ps: I have shares of Gillette too 🙂