We live in a world of discontinuities. Oil is at $100 one day, $90 the next, and $115 on the third, with some forecasters looking ahead at $150, if not $200 - and people still recall the time not long ago when Opec thought the upper end of the desirable price band was $28.
Cement prices have soared, but may come crashing down in a few months as 40 million tonnes of new capacity come on stream. Steel price swings have seen peaks that are at thrice the level during the trough period.
The stock market crashes from an index level of 21,000 to 13,500 in the space of three months. The software companies go from 35 to 50 per cent growth to negative numbers in two short years. And the best asset buy last year would have been, not stocks or real estate or gold or oil, but rice. Think about it - rice.
The operative word is volatility. And the question is, how do you deal with it? What is the meaning of business strategy for a stock broking firm if trading volumes (and therefore income) can double or halve in the next three months?
What sanctity is there to an annual business plan if your main raw material can swing up or down by 30 per cent in price during one quarter? Or if your housing EMI can go up enough in the space of six months to make mincemeat of your household budget - as millions of home-loanees have discovered?
Or if the one-way bet that you thought you were taking on a currency hedge landed you with potential losses bigger than your company's net worth?
Ratan Tata decided to buy Land Rover and Jaguar in one global context, but faces an entirely different financial market by the time the deal fructifies. He may still pull it off because he is what he is, but think of all the companies who are mid-way through projects and have had to junk their plans to float shares on the market.
Think, to take last week's news, of the real estate company that bid and won the contract for the largest land deal in the country's history - only to ask for more time for the first payment instalment, a short 30 days later. They talk of de-risking strategies, but how has it made any difference to TCS or Wipro today?
As for countries, forget the scenarios that laid out a straight line from here to the point when the BRICs countries would have grown in a smooth, continuous curve towards global dominance; it just isn't going to happen that way.
Markets will be turned topsy-turvy by the rise of new demand centres and the lack of additional supply (think steel, oil, paperÂ…), and by the stresses of power shift. Who thought that the US could lose 8 per cent of its GDP in a financial crisis?
As for India, you could say it was born in the Indo-Gangetic plain; but with the Himalayan glaciers melting, what if the rivers that flow down from the mountains into that plain were to dry up?
That would be the mother of all discontinuities, almost too frightening to dwell on. But we not only have to dwell on it, we have to deal with preventive measures or face the consequences.
This is a time when fundamental strengths and weaknesses will be tested. The ability to roll with the punches, the speed of reflexes as rules and circumstances change faster than the seasons, the reserves of strength and stamina in companies and individuals and countries, the quality of thought that is applied to problems and how to deal with them.
We know that the boom years are over; do we know what is coming next?
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