Life Path Of Mohandas Gandhi - Free Essay Example

Not all will agree as to whether Gandhi was primarily a saint or a politician. Gandhi himself said that `people describe me as a saint trying to be a politician, but the truth is the other way around, Homer A. Jack. People may not be able to agree if he was a saint or politician, but almost everyone can agree that Mohandas Gandhi was one of the most influential people in history. He led the Indian Independence Movement during a time when India was struggling. The British Empire was rising and took control of India and many Indians were being discriminated all over Asia. Gandhi really saw brutal demonstrations of segregation when he went to South Africa, and it changed his life forever. Mohandas Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, and was named Mohandas, but he was eventually referred to as Mahatma or great soul. As a child, Gandhi was very close to his mother, Putlibai, and she was very religious and influenced some of his future choices.   His father, Karamchand, was Prime Minister of a small state in India. When Gandhi was a child many families in India arranged marriages for their children. His parents arranged a marriage when he was just 13 years old, to a girl named Kasturba, who was 12 at the time. They eventually ended up having three children. His father died when he was just 17 and getting ready to chose a college. He went to college in India for a year but did not like it so, in 1888 he decided to go to the University College of London to study law, like his father. Before he left he promised his mother that he would still follow Hinduism and stay away from meat, alcohol, and women. Gandhi left for college when he was 19, during a time where the British Empire had control of his home country, India, and was at its peak, ruled by Queen Victoria. However, people in London were not used to Indians living there. When Gandhi went to London his landlady did not know what to feed him because she had never met a vegetarian. Gandhi eventually found a vegetarian restaurant in London and it helped him feel at home. While in London Gandhi met many theosophists interested in Hinduism an Buddhism, and eventually read a Hindu text, The Bhagavad Gita. After reading The Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi became very interested in religion. He became interested in religions other than just Hinduism and found himself also studying Buddhism and Christianity. Even though he was studying religion, Gandhi was still in college to study law, he went back to India in 1891 upon graduation. He tried setting up his own law practice in India but was not successful. Eventually, he got an offer to work for a law firm in Natal, South Africa and he took that offer. When Gandhi took the offer to go to South Africa his whole life changed. Before he went to South Africa he had no idea how bad things were for Indians there. During the 1890s there were more Indian Muslims living in Natal than Europeans. This caused the Europeans to have a Hatred towards the Indians, and Indians started to get discriminated against. Gandhi was unaware of all the discrimination what was going on when he decided to buy himself a first-class train ticket. When he got onto the train a European complained and he got kicked off the train. He spent the cold night at the train station trying to process what had just happened. He had never experienced something like that before, and he did not know what to think of it. As he stayed in South Africa, he experienced more examples of discrimination, like when he tried to ride a stagecoach and was forced to sit on the footboard because a European wanted the bench. Gandhi was not the only Indian having these troubles, Indians all o ver South Africa had to be off the streets by a certain time, had to pay extra taxes, and had a very hard time buying land. Once Gandhi realized what was going on in South Africa, he described it as Humiliating he decided to start organizing campaigns and protests in South Africa, and very quickly became someone that the Indians in South Africa looked up to. The government in Natal was trying to pass a bill that would forbid Indians to vote and the Indian community asked Gandhi to lead protests against the bill. His protests were not successful, but it drew attention to their cause. In 1896 he went back to India to bring his wife and Children with him to South Africa, but his ship to go back was delayed three weeks. When he finally arrived back in South Africa, a European mob was waiting with eggs and rocks to throw at him. Even after he was pelted with eggs and rocks, Gandhi refused to press charges. His whole protest was based on satyagraha, which is a nonviolent insistence on truth in the political realmthe term is derived from two Sanskrit words highlighting his central beliefs: satya, truth, and agra ha, firmness. The message he was spreading throughout South Africa was being noticed back in his home country of India. Once he started to gain support and popularity in the Indian community, he quickly became one of the most well-known leaders in India. After his time in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India and continued his protest there. He went on to lead one of the biggest movements Asia had ever seen. During all of his protests, he tried to teach non-violence and passive resistance. He played a significant role in freeing India from The British Empire and his non-violence tactics proved to be very successful. His life was taken when he was assassinated by a Hindu in New Delhi on January 30, 1948, but his legacy lived on and he inspired other leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela

The definitions of Financial Management in Business - Free Essay Example

Financial management can be defined by: The management of the finances of a business/organization in order to achieve financial objectives. Taking a commercial business as the most common organizational structure the key objectives of financial management would be as follows:- Create wealth for the business. Generate cash and Provide an adequate return on investment bearing in mind the risks that the business is taking and the resources invested. There are three keys elements to the process of financial management:- Financial planning Financial control and Financial decision making FINANCIAL PLANNING: Management need to ensure that enough funding is available at the right time to meet the needs of the business. In the short term funding may be needed to invest in equipment and stocks pay employees and fund sales made on credit. FINANCIAL CONTROL: Financial control is a critically important activity to help the business ensure that the business is meeting its objectives financial control addresses question such as:- Are assets being used efficiently? Are the businesses assets secure? Does management act in the best interest of shareholders and in accordance with business rules? FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING: The keys aspects of financial decision-making relate to investment, financing and dividends:- Investments must be financed in some way. However there are always financing alternatives that can be considered. For example it is possible to raise finance from selling new shares, borrowing from banks or taking credit from suppliers. If dividends are too high, the business may be starved of funding to reinvest in growing revenues and profit further. KINGFISHER AIRLINES: INTRODUCTION: Kingfisher airline is one of the seven airlines to be ranked as a five-star airline by the independent research consultancy firm Skytrax. They operate more than 375 daily flights to 71 destinations, with regional and long-haul international services. In May 2009, they also carried more than a million passengers, giving it the highest market share among airlines in India. They also the sponsor of F1 racing outfit, which Vijay Malaya also owns. Kingfisher airlines serve 63 domestic destinations in 8 countries across Asia and Europe. Their short haul routes are mostly domestic apart from some cities in south Asia, Southeast Asia and western Asia. All short haul routes are operated on the airbus A320 family aircraft ATR 42S and ATR 72S are used mainly on domestic regional routes. They have its medium, long haul destination in East Asia, South Asia and Europe. Its first long haul destination was London, United Kingdom. This was launched in September 2008. It has plans to launch new l ong haul flights to cities in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania with deliveries of new aircraft. All long haul routes are operated on the airbus 330-200. DEPT. FINANCING FOR A MEDIUM SIZED FOR BOTH THE SHORT -TERM AND LONG -TERM: SHORT TERM FINANCING: Short-Term Financing referring to any investment, financial plan, or anything else lasting for one year or less. Short-term investments and financial plans usually involve less uncertainly than long term investments and financial plan because generally speaking, markets trends are easily predictable for one year than for any longer period likewise, short term financial plans are more easily amendable, as a result of the short time frame short-term financial plans usually involve investing in short term securities, such as T-Bills or Commercial Paper. LONG-TERM FINANCING: Long-Term financing is describing a plan, strategy, security or anything else with a term of longer than one year, the exact number of year varies according to the usage. For example a long term financial plan outline investment and other financial goal for any time more than one fiscal year, while a long term bond has a maturity of 10 or more years. Anything long term involves more uncertainly than anything short-term because generally speaking, market trends are more easily predictable in the short-term. Thus, while planning for the long-term is necessary, ones plan must be flexible to account for its inherent uncertainly. EQUITY FINANCING: Equity financing is a term used for companys issuance of shares of common or preferred stock to raise money. It is also commonly done when its per share prices are high the most money that can be raised for the smallest number of shares. Equity financing also known as capital structure As we can see the equity financing or you can say capital structure of kingfisher airlines as shown in the chart. IMPORTANCE OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: The management of the finances of a business/organization in order to achieve financial objectives. Taking a commercial business as the most common organizational structure the key objectives of financial management would be to as follows: Create wealth for the business. Generate cash, and Provide an adequate return on investment bearing in mind the risks that the business is taking and the resources invested. IMPORTANCE OF CREDIT CONTROL WITHIN A FINANCE DEPARTMENT: A strategy employed by manufacturers and retailers to promote good credit among the creditworthy and deny it to delinquent borrowers. This will both increases sales and decrease debts, thus improving a companys cash flow credits control is an important component in the overall profitability of many firms also known as credit management. Financial control is a critically important activity to help the business ensure that the business is meeting its objectives, financial control addresses question such as Are assets being used efficiently? Are the businesses assets secure? Does management act in the best interest of shareholders and in accordance with business rules? VARIABLE AND FIXED COSTS DURING ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS IN KINGFISHER AIRLINES: Buying the big jets: fleet planning for airline FLEET SIZE ECONOMICS: Fleet size economic alliance due to a major shift in their strategic direction. Although it was not the case, it could have been disasters if Aer lingus had allowed their fleet strategy to be driven by their alliance partners only to find themselves compromised upon leaving the alliances. Airline undoubted reap revenue benefits due to alliance membership but true cost savings in big tickets items such as fleet acquisition may be out of reach for all but a handful of airlines. There will always be institutional obstacles, such as union issues and manufacturing pricing strategies, to airline reaping the fleet cost savings that might be apparent on paper. THE PROBLEM OF EXTERNAL FACTORS: Airline economics have always been affected by external factors, some of which are conditioned of the geographical area in which airlines operate and some of which just conspire to make difficult. The huge fuel price increases of the 2000s affected the entire industry and even those airlines able to hedge the majority of their fuel bill were simply postponing the moment when the higher fuel prices ate into profit margins. INVESTING SPECIFIC AMOUNT OF MONEY IN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: There are three keys elements to the process of financial management:- Financial planning Financial control and Financial decision making FINANCIAL PLANNING: Management need to ensure that enough funding is available at the right time to meet the needs of the business. In the short term funding may be needed to invest in equipment and stocks pay employees and fund sales made on credit. FINANCIAL CONTROL: Financial control is a critically important activity to help the business ensure that the business is meeting its objectives financial control addresses question such as:- Are assets being used efficiently? Are the businesses assets secure? Does management act in the best interest of shareholders and in accordance with business rules? FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING: The keys aspects of financial decision-making relate to investment, financing and dividends:- Investments must be financed in some way. However there are always financing alternatives that can be considered. For example it is possible to raise finance from selling new shares, borrowing from banks or taking credit from suppliers. If dividends are too high, the business may be starved of funding to reinvest in growing revenues and profit further. PAYBACK AND DIVIDEND RATIO FOR KINGFISHER AIRLINES: PAYBACK RATIO: The amount of time taken to break even on an investment. Since this method ignores the time value of money and cash flows after the payback period, it can provide only a partial pictures of whether the investments is worthwhile. DIVIDEND RATIO: Five fundamentals reasons I am positive on dividends: Corporate earnings have significantly rebounded from their recessions level and are now approaching record levels low interest rates. Corporate cash on hand stands at an all time high payouts remain low, partly due to the speed of earnings improvements and the slower rate of dividend increases. Coverage rates, earnings dividends are very high. DIVIDEND AND PAYBACK RATIOS OF KINGFISHER AIRLINES: Dividend and payback ratios in RS.CR. JUNE 2007 MARCH 2008 MARCH 2009 MARCH 2010 Adjusted EPS -55.05 -18.64 -60.67 -48.5 Adjusted Cash EPS -51.81 -15.94 -54.22 -40.33 Reported EPS -30.97 -13.85 -60.5 -61.95 Reported Cash EPS -27.73 -11.16 -54.65 -53.78 Dividend Per Share 0 0 0 0 Operating Profit Per Share -19.37 -23.95 -20.8 -35.71 Net Operating Income Per Share 132.89 107.24 198.16 190.59 Free Reserves Per Share 15.46 2.68 -94.05 -167.98 Operating Margin -14.57 -22.32 -10.49 -18.75 Gross Profit Margin -15.55 -23.58 -13.02 -21.94 Net Profit Margin -22.92 -12.5 -27.43 -31.25 Adjusted Cash Margin -38.34 -14.38 -24.58 -20.34 Adjusted Return On Net Worth -209.52 -147.04 0 0 Reported Return On Net Worth -117.87 -109.29 0 0 Return On Long Term Funds -36.27 -36.52 -7.9 -23.99 Long Term Debt / Equity 0.98 3.54 0 0 Total Debt 2.38 4.95 0 0 Owners Funds 29.56 16.8 -63.14 -99.65 Fixed Assets Turnover Ratio 5.37 4.61 2.85 2.47 Current Ratio 2.33 1.71 1.09 1.34 Current Ratio (inc. st loans) 0.79 0.96 0.64 1.34 Quick ratio 2.2 0.87 0.52 0.57 Inventory Turnover Ratio 28.8 0 5,738.39 30.74 Dividend payout Ratio (net profit) 0 0 0 0 Dividend Payout ratio (cash profit) 0 0 0 0 Earning Retention Ratio 0 0 0 0 Cash Earning Retention Ratio 0 0 0 0 Adjusted Cash Flow Time Total Debt 0 0 0 0 Financial Charges Coverage Ratio -0.49 -0.63 0.02 -0.68 Financial Charges Coverage Ratio (post tax) 0.19 0.65 0.29 -0.3 Material Cost Component 2.55 3 0.97 0.8 Selling Cost component 0.99 5.83 12.97 0 Exports As Percent Of Total Sales 18.56 3.42 4.54 13.79 Import Comp. In Raw Materials Co nsumed 0 0 0 0 Long term Assets/Total Assets 0.01 0.03 -0.01 0 Bonus Component in Equity Capital (%) 20.14 20.09 10.26 10.26 PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT OF KINGFISHER AIRLINES: profit and loss account in RS.CR. JUNE 2007 12 MONTHS MARCH 2008 9 MONTHS MARCH 2009 12 MONTHS MARCH 2010 12 MONTHS INCOME SALES TURNOVER 1,800.21 1,456.28 5,269.17 5,067.92 EXCISE DUTY 0 0 0 0 NET SALES 1,800.21 1,456.28 5,269.17 5,067.92 OTHER INCOME 342.1 113.62 598.9 -333.3 STOCK ADJUSTMENTS 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 TOTAL INCOME 2,142.31 1,569.00 5,868.07 4,734.62 Raw materials 45.94 43.79 51.19 40.89 Power and fuel costs 979.5 889.3 2,602.62 1,802.99 employee cost 247.72 244.96 825.42 689.38 Other manufacturing expenses 617.56 408.21 1,112.85 1,108.82 Selling and admin expenses 148.78 180.39 1,062.74 1,067.54 Miscellenous expenses 25.11 14.81 167.55 108.58 Preoperative exp capitalised 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 TOTAL EXPENSES 2,062.61 1,781.46 5,822.37 4,818.20 JUNE 2007 MARCH 2008 MARCH 2009 MARCH 2010 12 MONTHS 9 MONTHS 12 MONTHS 12 MONTHS OPERATING PROFIT -262.4 -325.18 -553.2 249.72 PBDIT 79.7 -211.56 45.7 -83.58 Interest 466.05 434.44 2029.33 2,243.39 PBDT -386.35 -646 -1,983.63 -2,329.17 Depreciation 17.67 18.28 133.2 162.8 Other written off 26.25 18.31 38.39 54.49 Profit before tax -430.27 -682.59 -2,155.22 -2,546.46 Extra ordinary items 14.09 -0.97 0 31.28 PBT(post extra ord items) -416.18 -683.56 2,155.22 -2,515.18 Tax 3.4 -494.45 -546.38 -770.69 REPORTED NET PROFIT -419.58 -188.14 -1,608.83 1,647.22 Total value addition 2,016.67 1,737.67 5,771.17 4,777.31 Preference dividend 0 0 0 0 Equity dividend 0 0 0.00 0.00 Corporate dividend tax 0 0 0 0 PER SHARE DATA (ANNUALIZED) Shares in issue(lakhs) 1,354.70 1,357.99 2,659.09 2,659.09 Earning per share(Rs) -30.79 -13.85 -60.5 -61.95 Equity dividend (%) 0 0 0 0 Book value (Rs) 28.4 13.9 -83.88 -150.54 CASH FLOW OF KINGFISHER AIRLINES: Cash flow account in RS.CR. JUNE 2007 12 MONTHS MARCH 2008 9 MONTHS MARCH 2009 12 MONTHS MARCH 2010 12 MONTHS NET PROFIT BEFORE TAX -416.18 -682.59 -2155.21 -2417.92 Net cash from operating activities -552.58 -541.52 -645.78 -1665.09 Net cash from investing activities 119.48 13.82 206.63 235.13 Net cash from financing activities 993.68 -9.23 290.11 1964.55 Net(decrease)/Increase in cash and cash equivalents 560.57 -536.93 -149.04 34.6 Opening cash and cash equivalents 256.47 817.05 -320.91 171.87 Closing cash and cash equivalents 817.05 280.12 171.81 206.47 CONCLUSION: After doing a study of this project representing on Kingfisher Airlines, I have come to a conclusion that Kingfisher Airlines is one of the largest and most widespread airlines of the country providing its services not only in India as well as outside India also. It has alliance with many other airlines in this sector. Kingfisher Airlines offers world class services to the customer at a nominal rate. The national carrier takes immense pride in having successfully played a pivotal role in making various facets of India popular with the people of the world and acting as the countrys cultural ambassador. The airline uses the services of one of the advanced plans been operated in the world. To sum up I would like to say that Kingfisher Airlines is serving its customer in an appreciated way and going to be in the list of best services providers in coming years