You’ve got to hand it to our Wizard with Words. He deflects the most direct of questions with ease. But you need to read between the lines to understand what he really means. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the April 7 edition of Das ka Dum series. Read on…

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Q. We now hear of another wave of retrenchment – from Boribunder to Ballimaran. With valid reason of bad business, but perhaps due to bad business practices earlier when expansion happened without reason?

A. If true (when you are saying it has to be true), it’s unfortunate. Retrenchment is not just a case of job loss for an individual. It causes an emotional trauma for a family. I am sure every organisation has a robust business process continuity reason for the alleged rightsizing of the workforce. I don’t have visibility to those imperatives. So, I can’t offer any value judgment. But as a soliloquy, I would wonder could there be no other way to mitigate this misery by optimising the collective intelligence of the enterprise? Some sacrifice might be required, stockmarkets might punish, competitors might grin, but the pile of human blessings of human beings can ensure a humanitarian process continuity. Am I sounding socialistic? Not a subject of topical interest, I know.