On Sunday morning, Professor and I took the lift to the 104th floor,
Most of my readers know about my Friend who lives on the 104th floor in the tallest building in Mumbai. For those who don’t know, this friend of mine is the richest person in the world. His wealth is more than the wealth of Ambani’s (I mean Mukesh), Adanis, Tatas (including Shapoorji’s), Birla’s and Mahindra’s, Agarwal’s and Mittal’s all put together. He pays income tax as much as the annual budget of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. But despite the financial power he holds, he is an amazingly simple, friendly, well-meaning and a warm gentleman.
Professor and I are regular visitors to his residence.
We reached in under a minute in one of the fastest elevators in the world. I suspect, for people who are impatient even with gravity.
My Friend was happy to see us. After welcoming us with a glass of pomegranate juice in a silver glass, he said, “I have called you because I am thinking of transforming the global economy.”
I should pause here for a moment. My Friend uses the phrase “global economy” rather casually. In his world, this is not entirely unreasonable.
After all, a small group of advisory firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, PwC, and their peers move quietly between governments, corporations, and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank etc etc.
These firms do not govern these organizations in any formal sense, but they design policies, structure reforms, and translate ambition into frameworks that they implement. From privatization programs to climate transition strategies, their fingerprints are often present, subtle enough to be invisible, but consistent enough to be noticed if one looks closely.
“I have decided,” my Friend said, leaning forward, “to pay all consultants in the world their full fees… in advance.”
I waited.
“And then,” he added calmly, “request them to do absolutely nothing.”
There was silence. Even the expensive cuckoo clock on the wall, diamond-studded and made exclusively for him, seemed to pause.
“Is this your grand reform?” I asked.
“Think about it,” he said. “Consultants tell you the time using your own watch and then keep the watch as part of their fee. Worse, their advice is either wrong, and when it is right, it is simply obvious. And yet governments, multilateral banks, corporations… all are addicted to use of consultants.”
“So,” I said, “no more reports, no frameworks, no roadmaps. Just silence?”
“Exactly.”
“Imagine a ministry without consultants,” he continued.
“Yes,” I said. “What happens?”
“Ministry officials will then finally have to act on their own.”
Professor raised an eyebrow.
“Or,” my Friend said quietly, “they will finally discover that acting is difficult and that they no longer have anyone to blame.”
Professor nodded. “Inconvenient truth, yes. But necessary.”
“Let us consider corporations,” I said. “No consultants. Pure internal thinking.”
“Will there be clarity?” my friend asked.
“No, rather conflict,” Professor corrected.
Professor leaned forward.
“Every department will optimize itself. Finance will reduce costs. Operations will increase output. Sustainability will write reports. And no one will integrate.”
“Confusion will be internalized,” my Friend added. “Corporates will no longer be shielded by consultants. Today consultants cleverly rebrand confusion as strategy.”
“At least there will be no PowerPoints,” I said. “No use of Microsoft Copilot” Professor corrected.
Professor stood up and walked to the window.
“Tell me,” I asked after a pause, “why are people so cynical about consultants?”
Professor did not turn.
“Because,” my Friend said, “they are expensive mirrors.”
“Mirrors?”
“They show you what you already know,” Professor replied, “but charge you for the discomfort of seeing it clearly.”
I added, “So you think consultants do not solve problems and they simply make problems visible?”
My Friend leaned back.
“That is worse,” he said. “Just the visibility creates anxiety. So why pay at all?”
Professor turned.
“Organizations expect consultants to solve problems. Consultants expect organizations to implement solutions. Neither expectation is met.”
“That sounds like a stable business model,” I said.
“It is,” Professor replied calmly. It is on for several decades.
My Friend poured himself some coffee, specially sourced for him from Java.
“My concern is that consultants have no skin in the game,” he insisted. “They recommend and disappear.”
“Correct,” Professor said. “And yet you hired them.”
“Because we needed expertise.”
“No,” Professor said. “Because you needed distance.”
“Distance from what?” I asked.
“From your own decisions.”
“And these ‘global best practices’?” my Friend continued. “They appear everywhere.”
“Imported solutions, or those from ChatGPT ” Professor said, “are like winter coats in Mumbai. Impressive, different, and something nobody will advise”
My Friend added. “Useless.”
There was a long pause.
I stood up.
“Or,” I said, “you could try something more radical.”
Both of them looked at me.
“Instead of hiring consultants,” I continued, “hire them permanently at the organizations.”
My Friend quietly said . “That may make a sense. So I will pay every organization that is hiring Big4 consultants in advance even if their fees costs a fortune. They should then do nothing!”
“A generous gesture,” Professor said. “Give them skin in the game. Make them live with consequences. Let them implement what they recommend.”
My Friend looked unconvinced.
“And what happens then?”
Professor smiled faintly.
“They will discover,” he said, “that problems are harder to solve from the inside.”
“And organizations?” I asked.
“They will discover,” Professor said, “that thinking cannot be outsourced.”
My Friend leaned back and said, ‘Perhaps the problem is not that we have too many consultants… but too few who are willing to stay when the consequences arrive.’
Professor smiled. “In the Mahabharata, Lord Krishna did not behave like a consultant. He did not submit advice and withdraw. He chose a side, stood through the war, and carried the burden of what followed.”
My friend ushered us to the elevators. ‘Call him what you like,’ he said. “He stayed to ensure the outcome.’”
We kept shut.
We stepped into the elevator.
The doors began to close.
104 floors below, the city continued – occasionally guided by consultants, occasionally ignoring them, and quite often, indifferent to both.
Disclaimer
The author has spent over three decades working as a consultant across governments, industry, and development institutions. The reflections in this piece are therefore not from a distance, but from within the system itself.
The intention is not to diminish the value of consulting, which remains essential in many contexts, but to provoke a conversation on its limits, its misuse, and the shared responsibility between those who advise and those who decide.
If this piece appears critical at times, it is only because familiarity permits honesty.
