How Culture Influences Ethics?

Ethics represents a set of moral principles that guides behaviour, and culture is a collective manifestation of a group’s preferences and orientation. Hence, we can see that the two concepts remain closely related and often culture shapes ethical values. Hence, culture is a group phenomenon and ethics is an individual phenomenon. The ethical construct to a large extent depends on our interpretations of truth. Our interpretations of truth are influenced by our own culture.

What is ethical to one group will not be considered so by another group. This is the theory of cultural relativists. According to them, there is no singular truth on which to base ethical or moral behaviour for all time. This approach is in contrast to universalism, which holds the position that moral values are same for everyone. Cultural relativists believe that Universalists thoughts are influenced by their values and believe ethnocentric view makes them less tolerant as they are effectively passing judgements about the other culture.

The choices made by individuals are largely influenced by the circumstances in which he/she lives and is also influenced by community, circle of influence, and to some extent by the macro factors. The modern lifestyle is driven by consumerism. Consumerism believes that happiness is obtained by consuming more and more resources. Since GDP is measured in terms of consumption, there is an incentive for all institutional machineries to promote that as a construct to obtain satisfaction. However, consumerism is subject to inconsistencies because of persistence of older traditions and emergence of new reactions to consumerism.

East and West:

The basic difference between Asian countries and Anglo Saxon countries is Asian countries are family based societies whereas the west is an individualistic society. Individual centric societies tend to be driven by contracts and family based society are driven by social contracts (not necessarily legal). Since family is an economic unit, an individual has more responsibilities apart from accumulating wealth and therefore altruism is developed because of his/her interaction with family members and decision making revolves around maximising welfare and not wealth as individual thinks for the family as a whole and not just the individual. However, it is important for the individuals to increase the circle of influence so as to live life holistically.

Role of religion in Ethics:

Ethics is not only a function of how much wealth does a person possess but also a function of what is the position of wealth in his/her life. Since religions like Hinduism and Buddhism believe in rebirth, their ethical values are derived by individuals requirement of being duty bound and follow righteous path. A person can achieve salvation through right action, knowledge of true nature and spiritual devotion. These religions believe in non-attachment and therefore the ethical quotient among the people who follow these religious path can be expected to be high. The problem that cultures face in today’s times is the intermingling of different cultures creating confusion among the people on the path to take. There is a thin line of difference between following one path and respecting others. Not following other paths is not a sign of disrespect.

Ethics and money:

Ethical principles are put to test when a person is confronted with a situation involving money. Greed is one of the main reasons why a person compromises with his/her outlook towards ethics. Hence, ethical dilemmas are well understood when a person has an opportunity to make gains at the expense of righteousness. Here it becomes very critical to understand the role of spirituality in developing ethical values and hence the importance of culture because if culturally a civilisation has a history of spiritual pursuit/philosophical constructs underlying the people’s behaviour, we can expect the subjects to be more ethical in their daily pursuits of life. It is important to understand that pursuit of spirituality is not against wealth generation but against the methods of wealth generation. When people understand the difference between wealth and illicit wealth, ethical dilemmas will cease to exist.

Ethical situation in India:

Whenever we talk about the Hinduism and the 4 pillars of Sanatana Dharma, we always look at the rich past and how ethical the civilisation and at the same was economically prosperous with less income inequalities. According to me, income equality is a very important outcome of ethical business practices. However, in the current scenario, there appears to be an ethical problem in the country with high levels of corruption and poverty. The greed to become rich at the cost of ethical values has led to this situation. It is important to look at the country’s history to understand the current situation. The invasion of India- first by Moghuls and later by British is a very important event to understand the current situation. Especially during the British rule, we were made to believe that our culture is inferior to the west. This was systematically done by the substitution of indigenous education system with the British model of education. This meant after a generation, people felt superior about the western things, systems as they were only learning about the great things of those nations and when we add the dimension of Industrial revolution we will understand that people started to feel that it is the Hindu way of life which is the reason for this poverty. Hence, the wrong notion of inferiority for the nation’s own culture was created successfully and systematically over the period of British rule. With the degradation of culture, the value for ethics was downplayed and since ethics are learnt primarily through demonstration, the generations to come diluted the meaning of ethics and this resulted in pursuit of business with ethical pollution. Hence, there is a need for the revival of Hindu culture that once existed.

Conclusion: Culture plays a very important role in shaping the economy and ethical values of the nation. The world faces a leadership crisis today and India can provide a direction on how to lead an ethical life since it is one of the oldest living civilisations of the world. Cultural identity is as important as economic identity for the nation. It results in sustainable economic development. Economic prosperity at the degradation of culture can result in chaos and identity crisis which will increase unethical practices.

Ethics can survive in societies where the cultural beliefs habitat a sense of solidarity for other human beings.

Women issues- A general mentality problem

Women in general have to face lot of problems and it is believed that in India the problem is even worse. As I hear about more cases of atrocities against women I start introspecting myself as a member of this society. Things are changing but unfortunately it will take at least a generation I believe for the situation to improve. We as a society think regressive to many problems and the solutions we recommend are many times disheartening.

During my childhood, if I was bullied and I complained to my parents, they had a simple solution- face it or don't go to play. Face it was not a difficult solution for my parents because the problem wasn't a severe one. Don't go to play was an easy solution but not an appropriate one. This is how we think of solving problems. Trying to solve problems by avoiding it rather than solving it. Not finding the appropriate solutions to the problem is actually a problem we are facing. Our big problem as a society is not the problem but the outlook towards the problem or the way we want to tackle the problem. As a teacher when I scold a student for not doing home assignments, I am advised to be mild and sometimes not say anything because kids are not strong enough to accept it. A similar attitude issue is when we look for alliances for marriage we don't normally look for love and compatibility between the partners which should head the list but rather we look for physical age (rather than mental age), caste, language, status, etc as criteria. Again our outlook towards a particular aspect is not very sound, although it works in most cases. Things are changing but will take time. Every society evolves and we have definitely changed for the better in most aspects and we will continue to improve our outlook.

The kind of problems women face is very difficult to imagine and they are really brave enough to face what they go through. The number of rapes, molestation issues at workplace or otherwise faced by women are so dreadful leaves a mental scar which is very difficult to heal. We need to change our outlook towards women and the way many males as well as females look at females need to change. We become judgmental, we start becoming suspicious of women. The problem cannot be solved by asking women to curb the way they behave, or protecting them or asking them not to go out alone. If we are going to continue with this, I am afraid we are looking at simple solutions which tries to side step the problem rather than solving the problem. What we really need is a strong policing, enforcement of laws for such crimes. These are the short term solutions. The long run solution has to come through proper education. We have a long way to go as a society in terms of education and till then we will be improving our literacy rate without increase the group of educated individuals.

GMAT journey

From V31 to V37. There are many inspirational stories on GMAT on various threads. I wanted to share my experience.
First attempt on 12th Aug 2014- One month of Verbal preparation, Quant is my favorite subject and I keep doing it regularly so didn't prepare specially. Managed to score 680. I prepared from MGMAT guides for Sentence correction, Critical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension. I couldn't manage time to revise sentence correction. It is very important to learn the concepts and apply SC rules properly. It is very much a matter of logic than grammar. I went through the free videos on Egmat site and realized I had not prepared that well conceptually.
Q50
V31  
IR8
AWA6

Since I intend to apply for a top university PHD in Finance/Accounting program decided to prepare for my retake. Being a working professional, I knew I wont be able to give the necessary time for my preparation. I decided to join Egmat Verbal Live prep course. I started going through the videos and learn the concepts properly. I understood strategies and how to approach the GMAT after attending Egmat's strategy session. I started giving quant mocks and verbal mocks on GMAT club website. I was doing consistently well on quant scoring 50 and 51 on the mocks. I must say the analytics offered by Gmat club is simply amazing. The problem area was verbal and my inconsistency made me nervous. I knew I have to improve my verbal to score high on GMAT. There was little room for improvement in Quants made me more anxious. I had to get Q51 alongwith increasing my verbal score. My verbal mock score was hovering around 31 and went upto 35 but wasnt able to score consistently decent score. I realised that I wasnt applying the process learnt from the SC course of Egmat. Verbal is not my strong area and posts saying that avg improvement of GMAT score is minuscule increased my tension. 

I prepared from Advanced Manhattan guide for Quants as I wanted to get that Q51. I gave my mocks regularly. Also I observed that my verbal accuracy reduced whenever I wasnt studying regularly. I decided to reduce my workload and study religiously for my GMAT. In the last week I took leave and put in lot of efforts in my preparation. I took notes, revised whatever I studied. As I read MGMAT SC guide I understood a lot of concepts which I hadn't understood previously. Couple of days before the actual test I appeared for my last verbal mock and I scored 25. I was devastated. I dont know if that was the right thing to do. Couple of hours later I reappeared and scored 34. I wasnt sure about my performance and was worried about my inconsistency. Also I had exhausted all my mocks and so I reset the question pool. May be I had seen the questions before and analysed my mistakes and that influenced the score of 34, all these things were on my mind.


The day arrived 24th Oct 2014. I was anxious and I quickly revised the concepts on my way to the exam center. I wrote my AWA pretty decent. Integrated reasoning I was doing pretty well at the half way mark. 6 questions I solved in 15mins. Unfortunately I couldn't answer the last question due to paucity of time. During the break I told myself this is my time and gave Quant and could complete all the questions with 5mins pending. Except for 3 questions which I guessed rest was well answered. In this break after the quant I was again nervous because this was what going to make or break my score. I decided to go little slow in the first half of the Verbal questions. In couple of questions I lost focus and my application to my mind, not having enough time to reappear for GMAT and in that time I strengthened the argument where the question was to weaken the argument. This is a complete No No and would suggest everyone appearing to GMAT to keep calm and stay focused. Knowing that you have marked a wrong answer makes matter worse. As I was going slow on initial question I had to rush in the 2nd half. In hindsight I should have balanced the timing a little better.

Finally I answered the last question at the last second and hit the submit button and started praying. First thing I saw was the 730 score and I was relieved more than happy. 
Q51  
V37
IR7 
AWA 4.5:(

Highlights of my preparation

The difference between my verbal in 1st attempt and in 2nd attempt was the confidence level was different as I knew atleast 3 answer choices why I was rejecting. This meant the score of V31 in the 1st attempt was not proper indicative of my skills. It is extremely important to eliminate the wrong choices for the right reasons to score heavily on the verbal section. To ensure that I improve on this skill I made notes of areas within a particular concept that I find difficult to understand or questions where I went wrong. This helped to me to have a kind of synopsis of the concepts that I can use it for last day revision. Any course will teach every concept elaborately. However, we may understand a particular concept better than another concept. So we should allocate more time on concepts that we find difficult to tackle. This goal can be achieved by studying consistently while you prepare for GMAT. Dedicated efforts are required to get a high GMAT score. Consistency is the key. Professionals who are working have to manage their job and find out how can they regularly study for the GMAT. I would recommend the Advanced quantitative guide of MGMAT if you are very good at Mathematics concepts. The difference between Q50 and Q51 is extremely large qualitatively and quantitatively. This guide is designed to help you achieve Q51 score. 

Hope this journey helps you with DOs and DONTs in your GMAT preparation and exam appearance. 

Thanks 

GMAT retakers

https://e-gmat.wistia.com/medias/rqs76v459f?preview=true

Posting the link of the interview with egmat CEO, Rajat Sadana on GMAT strategies. How to prepare for GMAT and how to approach competitive exams in general. Hope this hleps to GMAT and CAT aspirants. 

Clean Independent candidates is the road ahead for our nation

Are we really the largest democracy in the world?

I am wondering after the sting operation by a news channel "Aaj Tak" do the political parties and the politicians really care & understand what democracy means. The nexus of politicians and the builders is an open secret and can be a plausible reason for the enormous increase in the prices of realty sector. The amount of black money that is circulated in the realty sector must be the highest among all the other sectors. The sting operation by the news channel revealed how politicians combine with the election officers to create fake IDs so that the polls can be rigged. Literally every vote is being sold at Rs 2000. The disappointing thing about the sting operation was an executive of a company producing chemicals mentioned the names of national parties purchasing chemicals from them so that the ink applied on the finger can be erased and the voter can vote again. How can such candidates frame laws for the general public? It is a mockery of the entire political system and a shame to democracy. This is one of the incidents which got known to the common people. The sting operation only reiterates that such practices must be prevailing in all elections in past and even prevails in the entire country. All these incidents are demotivating for the voters. It is simple if you play an unfair the chances of losing the game is highly probable & hence discouraging.

Why does poll rigging take place?

The polls are rigged to gain an unfair advantage and ultimately to win the elections. The political parties are quite a strong structure and are capable of rigging the polls. It is extremely difficult for independent candidates to manipulate the results due to lack of contacts, money power, muscle power. Even if an individual tries to manipulate the polls people are more likely to stand against the individual than a political party & its candidate. I have a belief that it is the political party framework which gives the courage to the politicians to do such shameful acts.

What can be the solution?

There should be an encouragement to promote candidates who are nationalist with proven record at the local level with a clean image. The political parties are forced to give tickets to individuals not necessary on their ability to improve the constituency but based on their ability to garner votes & raise funds for the party. The choice of candidate is not driven by performance but based on caste, religion & other factors which should not be the case for selection. Even Anna Hazare encourages clean independent candidates to contest elections and wants more independents to get selected in the Lok Sabha & Vidhan Sabha. Mahatma Gandhi had advised the dissolution of Indian National Congress after independence & advocated decentralization of power. Gandhiji's foresightedness might have expected that stronger political parties might threaten the structure of democracy.

http://news.oneindia.in/india/revealed-how-bogus-votes-can-change-the-lok-sabha-2014-poll-results-1423494.html
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/2014-lok-sabha-polls-fake-voter-ids-booth-level-officers-delhi/1/352386.html

EC efforts to curb the use of black money in elections

This piece of article was shared with me by my friend Hiral Nandu who is a Chartered Accountant and works for a CA firm in Taxation consultancy.

Political parties to go corporate as Election Commission plan new rules to curb use of black money

In an effort to curb the use of black money in the electoral process, the Election Commission now plans to ask political parties to conduct their finances in a corporate fashion by getting their accounts audited and publishing their audited finance sheets annually. The EC has received a host of such recommendations from the country’s auditing regulator — the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) – and will notify the official guidelines to political parties and financial enforcement agencies like the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) soon.

“The EC will deliberate upon and take up the final recommendations submitted by the ICAI on May 27 and notify all the stakeholders in this regard. The final recommendations by the ICAI will help in making the electoral process free from use of illegal money power,” an official involved in the drafting of the report said.

The recommendations by the top accounting body in the country come in the backdrop of the EC creating an Election Expenditure Monitoring cell within its establishment last year, which has been vital in the conduct of polls in Bihar last year and five other states recently.

The new cell, with the help of the I-T department, seized and intercepted huge sums of cash in poll-bound states and subsequent action by tax authorities led to the realisation of huge hidden tax.

The ICAI, in its final report, has recommended that “all political parties registered with the Election Commission of India may be mandated to apply accrual basis of accounting (reporting transactions on a real-time basis).”

“Every political party to follow March 31 as uniform financial year and consolidated financial statements be prepared incorporating the accounts of taluka, district and state-level party branch accounts,” the ICAI recommendations suggested, adding that all political parties should follow “a common format for presentation of its general purpose financial statements.”

“It is recommended that political parties must be mandated to get their accounts audited by a firm of Chartered Accountants, as appointed by the Election Commission of India.

The auditors should be appointed by rotation every three years,” the 38-page recommendation report of the ICAI said.

It also recommended that political parties must be mandated to “publish their audited accounts annually, which shall be available for the information and review by the concerned stakeholders and the general public at large within six months of the end of the financial year, on the parties’ website.

“Annual financial statements be also published in English in leading national newspaper and in local language in the leading newspaper of the state,” it said.

All registered political parties must be mandated to file the audited financial statements with the EC, the recommendations said, adding that the PAN number of the contributors of funds to the political party may be sought.

Laws relating to donations to political parties

I wonder if there are laws in our country to identify the donations received by the political parties.

This piece of informative input is received from one of my friend Nishit Zaveri who is a Chartered Accountant and a Senior Asscociate at a Big4 firm.

Under the Income-tax Act, donations (to anyone) is not allowable under Section 37(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) as it is not for the wholly and exclusively for the purpose of the business. However, there are some case laws where the taxpayer could prove the nexus between the donation and the business purpose. Thus, if the taxpayer can prove the nexus, such donation exp. can be allowed. Apparently, no taxpayer will claim donation to political party as an allowable exp. (as nexus and benefit from such donation cannot be proved before Assessing Officer…J J)

Further, the Act specifically disallows any expenditure incurred by assessee on advertisement in any souvenir, brochure, tract, pamphlet or the like published by a political party by virtue of Section 37(2B) of the Act. Thus, even if such advt. exp. is for the purpose of business still it will not be allowed.

However, the donations are eligible for deduction (50% or 100%) u/s 80G/80GGB/80GGC of the Act (if the trust or political party is approved and registered etc….). Thus, even if it is not allowed while computing profits still the taxpayers gets the benefit under the Act. So if the taxpayer wants to claim deduction on donations made to political party it will have to disclose the information in its return of income. Since the return of income is not a public document the same will not have any problem with respect to association with any party.

Further, the political parties can receive any amount in cash as donation. However, if it does not maintain a record of such contribution and the name and address of the person who has made such contribution, the income received in excess of INR 20,000 in cash will be taxable.

PS Also the companies Act has a limit for donations to political parties but that is only applicable to companiesProvisions of Section 293A of the companies Act restricts a limit of donation to political party to 5% of the profits with some other conditions.