Ramalinga Raju has done everything to smudge Lord Ram’s name. This was a shocker which came from Land of Tirupati. He is a disgrace for every Indian and Andhrite. IT business runs on transparency and integrity. He has maligned both. What was he thinking all these seven years that he would never be caught? Every person has to bear the consequences of his wrong doings. Some face them sooner and some face them later. Everyone is talking about that he would not have been successful in his deeds without complicity of senior management.
So far we have witnessed lackadaisical approach of ICAI. How can a self regulatory body act against one of its powerful and distinguished member like PWC? Will we see same fate of PWC as Anderson consulting? Probably not, So far, PWC has come out with the claim that it is not responsible in this mess. How a company like PWC be so immoral not to even accept mistake and come out with a public apology.
Other interesting thing is huge political support for Raju. It is strongly believed that he had put all this money(7000 crore) in real estate with full support from present congress government. How will state government find fault in Raju without itself getting caught in the muddle? People call it accounting scandal. In fact it is a Real estate scandal. Real estate in Indian is most non transparent and poorly regulated investment sector. It’s through this sector all the black money is converted into white. Realty investment is considered a safe haven as far as black money is considered. Until now, nobody has talked about bringing transparency and uniformity in Land Transactions, their valuations, regulations and affordability.
Everyone agrees in India that every company cooks books. Why don’t we have a single sting operation from media to uncover this? I guess their TRPS will equally boost if they focus on illicit relations of businessmen with politicians as well as on non performance of crooked politicians. CNBC has over the years given tips for buying and selling stocks, Why don’t they start and do some investigative business journalism than just talking about market techincals and having sophisticated talks with CEOs.
Everyone from NRN to Nandan has said that “you can’t paint every company with the same brush” which is true and everyone agrees to it. Economist has recently said that “not a single Indian company not even an IT company is close to corporate and accounting standards followed by Infosys. If that is the case then, why don’t’ we make it mandatory for all companies to follow those standards?
In India, common populace is always fooled for its financial ignorance and illiteracy. What have we done to educate high school and college kids about money management? For e.g. very few colleges such IITs have economics as a subject for students. How and when will these engineers learn about financial markets? Are they supposed to earn and not understand and learn about financial world? A greater understanding will lead to better valuations in terms of market cap and respectability of these companies.
Not a single PIL has been filed to sue Regulator such as SEBI and ICAI, Ministry of Finance, Company Law Board. Why Indian regulators are always reactive and not proactive?We haven’t seen any CEO behind the bars for cooking books and insider trading? Why are we so lax towards well educated, well literate, corrupt and immoral businessmen?
Businessmen have always been shown in bad light in Bollywood movies of 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. It was only after 90s post liberalization, we started not to see scripts written around sahukars, strikes and blood sucking businessmen. Businessmen and traders were always seen second worst after politicians. People had almost forgotten about malpractices and have for a decade or so appreciated entrepreneurial spirit before this Satyam scandal came into being. This event will once again shake faith on Indian businessmen as no one expected that somebody from new economy sector such IT, with transparent and suave corporate culture would do such a thing.
Numerous awards are given to such wrong doers; hardly anybody questions their methods and credibility. That’s why Golden Peacock Award was given to Satyam for corporate governance. One question arises, why was Infosys not chosen for the award when it is highly regarded as the company with best corporate governance standards? Can people who give these awards answer this question?
Now Coming to Investors, As soon as SEBI got letter from Raju, why didn’t it order BSE and NSE to stop trading? Why did it allow the freefall? Why did it allow gullible small investors to buy the stock during the freefall? Who bought the stock and who sold the stock? Big institutional investor sold the stock and small investors bought it? Why was this allowed? Why small investors have to suffer while they were paring losses of big investors? Can we sue stock exchange and SEBI for this? Have they ever paid a single rupee in penalty to investors for their non performance?
While we are hearing bailout worth Rs 2000 crore for Satyam, there is no such boon for marginal investors. Why don’t we try to earn the trust of individual investors by bailing them out at least this time? Only 3-4 % percent people invest in equities directly. Can we ever think of a bigger equity investor base in india?
I have been reading Basab pradhan’s posts on Satyam
He has been very active in penning down his opinion on Satyam. How many IT CEOS have made their stand public? I heard neither from Mr. Azim Premji nor from Mr. Ramadorai. It seems only Infy has lot of media friendly senior management folks, with no work at their disposal to appear on all the shows of NDTV and CNN IBN. People who have nothing to hide, they always express their opinions freely. Have you ever seen an informal interview of Raju like Nandan and NRN does? I am not comparing personal choice of people but these are some cost efficient ways of making a good public image. You don’t need to run costly commercials if you can have a public conversation. This is why blogging from senior management is so important?
These incidents will have long lasting impact on how business is governed and accounts are managed. Hope we learn from this and make laws stringent, punish the culprits and make regulators active.
