First the warning: this is an attempted humor column, please do not take this seriously……
Once upon a time there was a real estate regulator ….and well he did not have much to do. Before becoming the head regulator he was Executive Director of a very big builder – and he was handling compliance and sales. Odd you might think, but hey that is how it was.
He was faced with a peculiar problem. One new architect was doing a very good job and was being sought after….hell, I will tell you the full story.
One architect named Mr. Arthur Conan Doyal was an architect who was sought after by a few big rich people. He suggested that they buy land and give it to him for constructing a nice 5 bhk for 15 doctors who had done well in life.
This led to another project – and he was able to do all this for professionals and businessmen. The problem was a few big builders felt threatened because people started quoting him as an example for pricing and performance. They could hardly do anything to stop him (no no they could not kill him, it was too risky).
So they brought in a rule. They said to be an architect you needed to have a net worth of Rs. 5 crores. Mr. Arthur Doyal had a friend in the US for whom he was doing a lot of work – so his client Mr. Clinton sent him a cheque for a Million US $ and met that requirement.
The big builders – those who traveled by private jets to seek bailouts were at their wits end. Their high priced houses were not selling well and this young architect was doing well. The big builders had to do something.
So they pushed the regulator to say that to be an architect you needed a net worth of Rs. 50 crores – about US $ 10 million (during good times other wise US $ 7 million and maybe quickly US $ 5 million, but that is a different topic). Mr. Doyal was now wondering what to do. He had a nice team and his CLIENTS were happy with his work. He had a friend Mr. Patta who was also doing a similar profession and hitting the big builders hard.
THE WORST THING WAS BOTH MR. P AND MR. D WERE having a lot of satisfied customers but had no advertising budgets. In fact both of them stayed in the buildings that they made. The big builders were building for the masses but were too damn classy to live in the buildings that they built.
Prof. Anil Agashe, Mr. P V Subramanyam, Mr. Balakrishnan also said publicly ‘why should architects have networth, only builders need to have them?’ – but these people were termed insane – they had no experience in the construction industry after all.
So Mr. P and Mr. D were being tortured by the regulator. The regulator wanted to ask them “how dare you say you have happy clients because we are giving good service?”
He was clear that the regulators job was to grow the industry – and only the big builders had the deep pockets to do so. He told the small architects ‘You have not business to be in the business if you cannot increase your net worth to at least US $ 8 million’.
His question was ‘How will you open 456 offices – which is a pre requisite for being a successful architects? ‘
last seen Anil agashe was scratching his head, Subramoney his head and Prof. Balakrishnan his beard.
Thank God these guys had something to do.
Source:Subramoney.com