Very often in our life, we seldom respect views of our family members. It is very much true in the case of the better-half. It needs some outsider to tell us and we tend to take it seriously even when it tends to be wrong. There have been occasions in life when we would have faced financial trouble. And out of either ego or sheer contempt for the better half, we would have ignored or snubbed a good way out. (Now, don’t ask me if it is a personal experience and put me into trouble.)

But when someone outside of the family offers the same solution, we tend to treat it as manna from heaven. And if someone gives a solution to land in more trouble, we tend to take that more seriously that what our near and dear ones give. This is one aspect.

The other aspect is we either seem to ignore or not take into account the value of the people around us until someone tells us. During my teenage, I was crazy of cricket. And two teams that I played for had captains, who I thought were a bit crazy when it came to dealing with me. The first team was one that I played for near my home. The team’s captain over-rated his own dolly pops that he threw in the garb of leg spin than my medium fast bowling. So, he tended to change every bowler after he gave them two overs so that he could come on to bowl. There have been many occasions when such a strategy misfired but what stays fresh in my mind is a match we played at Redhills.

Probably, the opponents knew about our captain and got ready a greenish pitch that had the ball rearing if you bowled fast. When I got the opportunity to bowl, I still remember having the batsmen in all sorts of trouble with the pace, lift and swing. But the captain thought it fit to follow his strategy than to go by the reality and let the opposition escape with a draw.

When I played in the cricket team for my first employer, I had a captain who was willing to let some unknown bowler brought from somewhere to open the bowling, while ignoring me. Finally, when I won his trust and opened the bowling, he dropped a catch off the very first ball of the match bowled by me!

Now, let us relate these to the concerns raised last week over Standard and Poor’s (S&P) retaining its negative ratings for India. That is S&P’s view, fine. But why should the Government really panic over such a rating? Should we really bother about it? Does it need the S&P to tell the Manmohan Singh Government that its performance is one of the worst the country has ever seen?

Any high school kid can tell you that the UPA Government, particularly its second tenure, is good for nothing. Again we tend to ignore our strengths when we go on our knees pleading to agencies such as S&P to review their rating. S&P has, in particular, pointed out at increasing outflow of money from the country for its rating. Now, like my cricket captains we are ignoring some strengths we have.

You know, India holds 11 per cent of the gold stocks above the ground. That is worth over Rs 35 lakh crore and going by current value, each Indian should be holding gold valued at over Rs 30,000! Which country in the world can boast of such holding? So, how does S&P come to such a conclusion in rating us? On the other hand, we sometimes tend to believe that the one who borrows for tomorrow is a wise guy, as one of my colleagues told me. Our corporate firms are borrowing from abroad at a lower interest rate. Now, if only we can lower our interest rates… Do you think there is still value in what agencies abroad feel about India?