Gautam Gambhir and IPL auction!
If you are cricket fan (even if you are not!) you would have seen Gautam Gambhir being paid Rs. 11 crores + and some other numbers like:
Yusuf Pathan: 2.1 Million Dollars, Saurabh Tiwary 1.6 M $, Robin Uthappa, Kevin Peterson, Dumminy, Dravid, Brett Lee…all being paid millions of rupees, if not millions of dollars.
Does this take you to one question:
How is it that Gautam Gambhir is being paid more for 40 days of cricket than all the teachers of my school put together get paid for the whole LIVES?
Have you ever wondered? After all who adds more value to the kids? Teachers or Cricketers? In fact the amount of Rs. 11 crores is greater than the networth of all the teachers of Gautam, is it not?
Welcome to the world of compensation!
The amount of money that Gautam makes is because of the impact that he creates through the media. THE POWER OF LEVERAGE.
One teacher impacts 30 kids in a classroom. A doctor (a GP) can see 20 patients a month. At best he/ she can see 1000 patients a YEAR (forget the double counting) whereas a cricketer’s actions are taken across 100 million people. It goes on the net, on television, then there is print media, mobile, …so the IMPACT that Gautam creates is on millions. So GG gets paid more than a teacher who does not leverage. Or a doctor who does not leverage.
For a doctor to earn money he / she has to LEVERAGE (like Dr. Reddy), and for a teacher to leverage she has to set up an academy, employ more teachers, start teaching on the net, do voice supported coaching, create web enabled content, create more teachers who will use his or her content.
Once the doctor and teacher do all this, then they can compare their earnings with GG.
Remember Gautam can only bat. He cannot create the ground, sell tickets, give commentary, do PR, be his own coach…etc. etc. It is an era of specialisation.
So if teachers team up, create their own BUSINESS…that would be LEVERAGE!!
Maaran
Wow, specialisation ! A certain Adam smith & Ayn Rand would be proud you said that.
I have heard of a British teacher who made billions writing some silly fantasy fiction for kids. She goes by the name JK Rowling 🙂
subra
not specialisation Maaran, LEVERAGE – pilots are specialised like school teachers. Pilots get rich, teachers remain in the middle class, but even peripheral cricketers like Vinod Kambli and Ajit Agarkar get a shot at being wealthy, not just rich.
Leverage, Gearing, all mean the same thing…
Maaran
Right. To get wealthy, one has to “specialize” in a discipline that has the power of leverage (ie.,market demand for that specialization).
Montessori teachers i heard could make sums running up to millions of rupees per annum. Similarly certain surgeons in high demand.
Maaran
Gambhir like other cricketers is a professional not an entrepreneur.
Dr.Reddy of apollo is an entrepreneur not strictly a doctor. Teachers to earn large incomes should either become entrepreneurs (start a business like you said) or specialization like Montessori,higher ed etc.
Patachitram
Well, enlightening!!
But i have a different take.
I observe that in the current society or if you can call it passage of history we have given a very high social pedestal to the ‘entertainers’.
Be it GG, Shweta Tiwari, Rakhi Sawant or AB, or SRT. They are all at the end of it all ‘entertainers’. We as a society have moved on to a stage where we have less meaningful things to do on our own and like to be glued to the media which supposedly shows some one else doing something more ‘meaningful’ be it bitching, family matter solutions or cricket or pure entertainment like song dance etc…
To compare Mr. Reddy to GG is little far fetched in my opinion.
Because i think Mr. Reddy has earned his millions by addressing a real need of the society whereas Mr. GG is earning his millions because the current passage of time supports him.
Come 2 successive cricket world cups where India exits in first round or say India does very well in some other sports like say wins FIFA world cup 🙂 Mr. GG will soon be back to earning in lacs and not million dollars.
My humble opinion.
Regards
subra
Mr. Patachitram,
this is classic market economics at work. Not long ago ‘entertainers’ were asked to eat at the end of the wedding – along with the other ‘cooks’ etc. Not to say that WAS wrong or right…but today they would be in the guests of honor will they not be?
So it is a matter of what the society does. We fall at the feet of our teachers and priests but pay them peanuts.3 priests i know have ensured that their kids have done their engineering + mba …not become a priest.
After all what we do is important, not what we say.
Ankur Lakhia
Subra,
Cricketers & film stars are in profession where phenomenon of “winner takes all” prevails. These professions can not be compared to conventional steady professions. for every Gautam Gambhir who makes it, there are thousands struggling. Same goes for film industry.
For example, I read somewhere that there are over 700,000 prfessionals registered as entertainers in US. This includes Madona & Briteny. Average annual income of these professionals is USD 6,000/-, Yes USD six thousand per annum which is nothing by US standards.
pravin
Well, it just means that ‘teachers’ and priests are today the bottom rung of workers.we know this is true,inspite of the platitudes about how much valuable a service they are doing.well,everyone does a ‘valuable’ service.today,anyone who wants more ‘value’ out of their degree will not opt for a school teaching job.in the socialist past when other jobs were scarce,teaching attracted good talent.today it doesnt do so.most teachers are there as a stop gap measure or because they like the fewer hours/pressure etc.
the less said about priests,the better.unless you are on Astha TV,you are not going to be able to make it a profession (anyway,arent priests supposed to be motivated by something more than money? -unfair on them,perhaps)
my take on gambhir’s jackpot.it was just like a ‘gap up’ trading sesion on the capital market.it just went up and up ,trying to find some number.it established an anchor for the subsequent bids.
it is just like the 6% inflation we assume in our financial calculations.it is a magical number pulled out of nowhere(well more or less)
pravin
unless ofcourse,we havent put a monetary value on the “respect” these 2 professions command. a madonna and britney are good entertainers,but they dont command respect. the school principal may.it is upto the “respect market” to sort out a price for it.
Diwakar
The latest ‘kid’ Daniel Christian is shocked at his ‘value’. Some professions are no more sought after and people like GG and SRK will make merry as long as public memory allows enhancement of their ‘leverage’. Not sure how many people still remember one Mr.Daler Mahendi who sold his album for the highest price at that time. Respect is a rare commodity and is directly proportional to the ‘net worth’ of a person, rather than his real worth, whatever that may mean today.
We (as a society or a nation) have clearly moved away from doing anything to explore and learn LIFE to everything to make a LIVING.
Patachitram
Mr. subra,
At the same time we also had a certain Mr. Tansen who was part of navaratna in Akbars court. We also had greats like Kabir,Tulsidas.. whom we quote even today in day to day life. I unfortunately don’t know how their compensation structure was. But the point is Mr. Tansen was still categorized as entertainers and not overshadowing all other aspects of the society. Like say a Mr. Tansen never probably overtook Birbal on matters of wisdom.
But now we are in such a passage of history where we look forward to Rakhi Sawant for solutions to family matters. Will pay any amount for just peeking into the staged private life of some small time entertainers etc… Will pay crores to watch 40 days of cricket BUT will not even know a certain Ayurveda doctor in the remote Karnataka who cures hundreds of patients daily for almost free and that’s a sorry state in my opinion.
Yes, we as a society have done the mistake of paying peanuts to teachers and surely will face the consequences over a period of time (No comments on the priest thing because am exactly what you refered to ‘a priest child’ from the Puri Jagannath Temple who is now eng+mba and hence biased) but at the same time we also have the history where student offered his index finger as guru dakhina just because he learnt from guru’s statue. Overall i feel a mistake can’t be corrected by another mistake.
i appreciate that you responded to my previous comment.
Salil
Well well well. Another blog to bat for teachers!! I don’t know what is your real point? Either you discourage a noble profession to useless market profession just because you guys earned lot of money? The sense I get is money is bigger than everything else. Everything is done for money. Live for money and die for money. Instead why not cultivate some good thoughts. This attitude will lead us to disaster and nothing else. We are leaving more than 60-70% population behind and just few people can have access to education/jobs etc. Do not be surprise if Naxlites start hitting cities in india
Venkatesh
It reminds me of “The bottom of the pyramid” thought by CK Prahlad.
pravin
eh salil,you think naxalites live on coffee and revolutionary spirit? they too want money,sir.the only problem is that their constituents(the landless adivasis) have been stripped off their property by indian govt which treats the right to property as a pain in the back rather than a fundamental right.instead we have RTE and other useless meaningless rights.the naxalites are not after some romantic life in the ruraltopia.they too want food and clothes and the right to lead their lives on their own terms.