Be so strong that the other party withdraws and you don't have to fight at all. If it comes to it, then fight and win.
Same thought echoed by Sun Tzu, Jack Reacher (movie), Col. Shivender of 7 Para SF and of course, India's political and military though process
About 1.5 decades ago, when I used to read every magazine of Outlook money and do in depth research of the topics of personal finance, I came across 'Repudiation rate' for Life insurances.
The repudiation rate in insurance is the percentage of claims that an insurance company denies out of the total number of claims filed during a specific period. These denials can occur for various reasons, such as claims being filed after the policy has lapsed, improper paperwork, policy exclusions, or the suspicion of fraud.
For some 'only' online life insurance companies these rates to be about 40-50% and were untrustworthy from an insurance point of view. Why were these having such high repudiation rates compared to 3-5% for other insurances? Because they were the ones who used to run gimmick ads of dirt cheap insurance and then when the claim time came, they used to give some silly reason to reject the claim (that too, when the person insured is no longer alive).
I used to get these repudiation rates from the Insurance regulator - IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India) in its annual report.
This month, I was thinking of getting a term insurance and wanted to check the repudiation rate from the last year's annual report.
But, alas, they have stopped giving the individual companies repudiation rates and are only giving a category wise repudiation rate. Rate for Public companies and for private companies.
This is severely allowing the bad players to hide their bad work and not allowing the customers to know and choose wisely.
I have come across 3 cases in my life where the power of legal has changed the game in a business and my positive perspective of it:
Case 1.
Having worked in the financing of the airlines, I came across a very secret insight which very few people in the world know. The main cause of Indigo's success v/s its competition.
To understand this, you need to understand one of the main reasons why the various airlines became bankrupt for the last 10-15 years in India.
In airline lingo, An AOG, or "Aircraft on Ground," is an aviation maintenance term for when a plane cannot fly due to a mechanical or technical problem. It is a critical situation for any airline, as it can be extremely costly and disruptive.
Go Air went bankrupt due to a supply shortage of engines from Pratt & Whitney, which were used in its fleet of Airbus A320 aircraft. When the airline ceased operations in 2023, it had 26 aircraft operational, while the other 28 aircraft were grounded due to engine issues with Pratt & Whitney.
Kingfisher airlines - Reasons for Collapse: The collapse was due to a combination of factors, including a huge debt burden and losses, a high number of grounded aircraft due to maintenance issues, and a prolonged financial crisis.
IndiGo currently has a number of aircraft grounded, a number that peaked in mid-2024 at over 70 but has been gradually decreasing.
Spicejet also have a number of AOG almost all the time.
While all airlines have AOG, the reason for the AOG is necessary to know.
If tight finances is a reason for payment to engine supplier to resolve AOGs, then the airline will struggle because of its finances and not necessarily because of the supplier.
If the engine supplier is not having much replacements immediately despite the airline being ready to pay, the airlines suffers for no fault of its.
The secret of Indigo's success comes from the agreement Indigo got into with Airbus and the engine supplier when it first made a huge purchase with them. Possibly knowing the industry risk of AOGs due to engine problems and its impact on the business and its first CEO being a lawyer by profession (Aditya Ghosh), they got in a clause to the effect that the engine supplier is obligated to replace the faulted engine with 24-48 hrs or else the engine supplier would pay damages per day of AOG.
I believe this clause didn't exist with the other airlines' agreements and the engine supplier agreed to this demand of Indigo as part of the negotiation of the big order Indigo placed.
So, while Indigo had any engine trouble, the engine supplier had to prioritise to replace its engine with ready ones (mostly in Singapore being a hub for Asia) while the other airlines waited for their turn.
As the supply is usually very strained, Indigo flights went up in a day or 2 while the others only kept mailing and calling the engine supplier for replacement and lost their revenues till they went up bankrupt.
This is the power of the right legal clause.
Case 2:
In Banking, money and assets can be transferred by 2 ways:
A. Transferring money through banking channels
B. 'Assigning' the asset/ monies through legal agreement
The common people don’t know this way of transfer of assets. This is somewhat similar to a gift deed.
Case 3:
Movie: The Firm featuring Tom Cruise
A legal firm traps its own key lawyer and blackmails him to keep the illegal things they do a secret.
Now the hero as an individual has to fight back against a big firm and bring it down.
And how does he bring down the firm? After multiple attempts fail to bring the firm down, he finds a small misstep the firm keeps doing which he observes. The firm illegally overbills its clients and is documented in its records.
Sometimes, the key to success lies is in the details others oversee / cant think of.
Each of these stories / cases has left a lasting bright impression on me on how legal can be a solution to problems which others in the world don't consider.
Last week, I met a friend who told me that "No one returns alive from ____ hospital". That hospital being one of the three big branded hospitals of Hyderabad where another friend's wife was in critical condition.
That statement caught me off guard. He further mentioned that he knew 5 people who were admitted there but no one ever returned back alive.
I also knew one more fact that one of the other Big branded hospitals had refused to take the case of the friend's wife.
Knowing this, I argued that, maybe this hospital being one of the biggest ones in Hyderabad has a more risk taking ability for the type and condition of the patients. After all, if all the different entities are the same, then there is no real democracy and no decision making and no differentiation.
Just giving an example. Maybe, they wanted to give one last chance to even a 5-10% chance which other people refuse compared to others who give a chance maybe only to 50% and above.
This high risk input could cause the statistic that my friend was quoting.
I wanted to relate this incident and my thought process to a story I have come across previously from World war.
During World War II, a statistician named Abraham Wald used survivorship bias to determine where to reinforce returning aircraft with armor. While military leaders initially wanted to add armor to the areas with the most bullet holes (like the wings and fuselage), Wald realized that these were precisely the areas where a plane could sustain damage and still return. He argued that armor should be added to the areas with few or no bullet holes, such as the engines and cockpit, because planes hit there were unlikely to survive and return to base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
The concept of Survivorship bias is there in both.
Now, imagine this friend with this bias taking a decision on someone's life. They would never get the 5-10% chance the big hospital was willing to give.
Going through the international events, it is very difficult to understand the why's and the long term / short term goals and strategies of the parties involved. Obviously, the game plan is secretive.
It is indeed like reading the tea leaves to make sense of it.
Few international events of current month:
1. Russian jets entering the air space of Estonia
2. Russian drones entering Poland
3. Israel attacking a place in Qatar
4. Israel apologising to Qater for the attack
5. Thoughts behind the Pakistan - Saudi mutual protection agreement
The world today is going through multiple unchartered risks, all at the same time.
Finance:
1. US debt gone to unsustainable levels that multiple people have commented on the sudden fall of the US economy and the US Dollar. Ray Dalio calls it the economic heart attack. We haven't seen anything like this after world war 2 where an empire is coming down. USSR was a breakage. This is different.
2. Japan has continued the zero interest policy causing massive borrowings in Japanese Yen and conversions to USD and investments in treasuries. The increase in the Japanese interest rate would easily cause the mass selling of the USD and the treasuries to pay back the Japanese borrowings. For the first time, the Japanese central bank is at risk and a Central bank at risk has never happened before.
3. France and UK have worsening finances and are expected to go to IMF next year for debt restructuring. This is the first time, giant western economies are under so much financial stress and IMF is small to carry the load of these economies. A first again.
4. Global finance decentralisation and derisking - From Asian countries planning alternate payment mechanisms to SWIFT, multiple countries decreasing their assets of US treasuries, most countries buying physical gold, BRICS discussing a new currency, bilateral trade in some countries being done in each other's currencies. A first again.
Trade:
1. Decades of established specialisations is being turned useless with unexpected turmoil by illogical tariffs by the US Administration.
Wars:
1. No one expected a physical war in Europe when Russia attacked Ukraine. A first of its kind since world war 2. And continuing so long? That is something no one can even fathom.
2. The Israeli massacre of the starving people asking for food aid is cruelty of another era, of the bygones, or so we thought.
3. USA threatening Venezuela with war (as if we need another US based forced leadership change after so many of them)
4. 19 Russian drones in Poland shot down as on 10 Sep 2025. (Start of NATO-Russia war leading to world war 3?)
Technology:
1. AI is disrupting human work. The future of many works remains uncertain.
2. AI - singularity, where it gets smarter than millions of humans together can break human superiority and become the apex controller and the humans the slaves/ pets/ prey. Humanties' first instance of more intelligent life.
Unemployment:
1. Tariffs and geopolitical disputes (US tariffs, Bangladesh-India, Russia-Ukraine war) causing industries to rupture and unemployment to increase.
2. AI bringing more unemployment its own way
3. US cutting down departments and uncertainty of outsiders in USA by creating visa issues and even threatening green card holders.
Countries standing up:
1. India and Japan standing up to the bullying of the US
2. France being the first western country to recognise Palestine as a state
Each of the above are volatile enough to cause a cocktail of furious unexpected events to happen in multiple domains of finance and/or economic turmoil each affecting the other one and our lives in unexpected ways.
But with all these risks running simultaneously, I think the world is in the most dangerous phase I have ever witnessed in my lifetime.
Any month could be our last (in case world war 3 happens).
Topic A
For fighter jets landing on an aircraft carrier, it is a standard procedure to advance the throttle to full power as soon as the aircraft's wheels touch the deck. This is a safety measure to ensure the aircraft can quickly go around again if the tail hook misses the arresting cables.
Similarly, are we ready for spontaneous things in life?
What if an interesting concert / show pops up next weekend in your city?
What if you get an opportunity to meet you always wanted to in the next couple of hrs by waiting at the hotel? Do you have the questions ready to ask him/her?
What if someone wants to connect you to someone worthwhile which was not in your near term radar?
Are you ready for these spontaneous 'chances'? Are you adequately prepared?
Topic B
Another aspect of living a full life involves 2 things: Discipline and Spontaneity.
How both of these seemingly contradictory words can work well, is very well written by Naval Ravikant.
"Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously"
In brief, Discipline creates the conditions for spontaneity to thrive.
If you want to live spontaneously, to seize unexpected opportunities, follow your energy, or create freely, you need discipline to handle that freedom. Otherwise, spontaneity becomes chaos.
Without discipline, spontaneity is just distraction.
Topic C
Today, I learnt the simple equation of Luck.
Luck = Randomness * Readiness
Are you ready and doing enough random things for luck to strike?
Have you systemised the process of doing random things?
Have you become observant to things to spot new interesting random things?
The above three topics are tied together as such:
Discipline leads to Spontaneous time.
We need to be ready for things.
When the 2 combine, we get lucky a.k.a happy and successful.
Sometime in Dec 2024, I noticed that I am spending much of my time on the work on a weekoff and that was causing some anger in me at times as it was mostly not planned. Despite being at home, I sometimes used to have over 120+ calls (a bad day) with no breaks. I used to get restless of being on my table and working full day with no outing and the day ending. Not even an hr to spend with my family over anything without multiple phone calls interrupting in that duration.
I also knew that there is a massive amount of working on the business that was needed to automate the business as much as possible.
So, I decided to work all days without a leave and take breaks as and when required (a half day rest after working for 20-36 hrs shift) or an early logout for a planned family outing once in a few months.
Thanks to this one decision, I am now happy while working on all days with no cribs. This daily working has removed the high backlogs of the days not working and caused a more continuous flow of work without much disruption.
I have started enjoying work more and get more output than before. I have started pursuing more books, posts, ideas and have started implementing them in the business.
9 Aug 2025 is the first full day break in this calendar year thanks to Rakshabandhan and the chance to meet my 2 sisters.
The day was planned full of new experiences for the people involved.
The new experiences are what I actually look forward to. This day made me realise that all the hard work we put in throughout the time is worth it for having these memories / days of new experiences.
These days are the ones worth living and working for.
I am a huge believer of stacking of experiences. The experiences can fall under the following categories: Adventures, Nature, Relaxation, Events & Sports, Cultural & historical, Food & drinks.
What does stacking of experiences mean?
It means just doing one experience of (2-3 hrs) a day is not enough for the day. It means doing back to back different experiences all in the day while enjoying each of them to the full extent without being tired in the same alert and excited mode all day long. It means not getting satisfied with just one experience when you can have multiple in the single day and create multiple memories on multiple days at a stretch.
Stacking of experiences comes as a result of multiple things:
1. Being an experience junky a.k.a. addiction to stacking of experiences.
2. The belief that life is short and there is so much to experience and learn.
3. The knowledge that experiencing more allows you to learn more and quench the thirst of curiosity.
4. Maximise the sunk cost (the amount of time and money spent to go a place)
For this, you should insatiable appetite for new experiences and understand the natural limitations of ones thinking of the number of experiences one can have.
One needs a curious mind to unearth experiences from people, be observant and alert of things around you, be research oriented to find out everything about anything new you hear about, be imaginative to concoct and create new experiences, persuade people to make people give you unique experiences.
You open your mind to possibilities, the chances, the pollination of different ideas.
"Die with memories and not dreams!" is the motto for a true experience junkie to live by.
