In defense of Chartered Accountants
My reply to the report in Today’s ET article on page
14. Article link given at the end of this write up. Article title
Companies Bill, 2012: Will auditors become a vanishing breed?
I
read the article half an hour back and I felt that I must write this.
I am
neither a Chartered Accountant nor from a family of Chartered Accountants nor a
minister because my father happened to be a friend of Nehru family
It is
pathetic that persons of the ilk of Sachin
Pilots are allowed to make sweeping remarks on existing administrative
systems.
Well,
all administrative systems require modifications and minor changes to suit to
the changing scenario, or, to use a more acceptable modern jargon, to the paradigm
shifts in business trends. Indeed these trends are changing at a greater speed
than the shape of clouds.
However
all must know that proper measurement and evaluation are the sine qua non of scientific
approach to any activity. In a macro activity involving trade or corporate
affairs with too many wings/departments/too many players/ too many decision
making authorities etc it becomes imperative to monitor and check whether those
fundamental scientific aspects namely measurement and evaluation are properly
followed and wherever necessary to suggest change of course by the authorities who
are technically qualified to do that, namely auditors.
The
problem is this poor kid like many other kids in Congress ministers’ families who
have been placed on high pedestal without any proper technical or academic qualification
and devoid of any worthy experience are prone to such loose talks and statements.
When providence pours the three Ps, namely power, position and pelf without any logic or effort on your
part you cannot be expected to and you need not perceive things in the proper
perspective because those three Ps indicated earlier
compensate the necessity for perception, performance and proper functioning
based on that.
So
they cannot be expected to understand the role and significance of any decent,
scientifically developed administrative procedures. They have grown with scant
respect for any systems or systematic approaches as they have been spurned into
a career of success surrounded by sycophants and servile bureaucrats.
It is
also a sad fact that due to the wrong methods, bad practices of a few auditors there
is wrong perception among the many half baked academicians/technocrats/scientists
etc who think that the profession of
auditors is safe guarded by the
terminology ‘that the auditor has done his work to the best of his knowledge
based on or as per the statements and documents shown to him’ and they also feel
the profession of auditors is confined to dressing up balance sheets, educating
the business man how to cover up to
avoid taxes, showing him the escape routes of non compliance etc. This is the
handy work of some auditors and the wrong perception of the half baked public
.The reality is different. For that matter some judges take money and decide
the cases, there is even a very old saying which says “ a good lawyer knows the
law and a great lawyer knows the judge”. Does that mean we do not need lawyers or judges?
There
were many and there are a few politicians who have come up by doing real social
service, sound sense of economic development and through track record of able
governance but there are some who have become even ministers by other means. Does that mean that we do not need ministers concerned with economic development to govern?
Entrepreneurial
skills , management principles etc are creative enterprises and they will always grow exponentially as any
creative activity must, but then, any highly creative activity which impacts on
the social life of human beings , likely to create irrational social imbalances,
likely to harm the physical well being of human beings , likely to affect [corrupt]
the mental/intellectual faculties of human beings etc have to be bridled and
controlled by some logical and universally accepted control and monitoring mechanism.
This is where professions like audit play a significant part.
Let
me quote her two examples which are fresh in the memory of people living in
Tamil Nadu as these two activities took
place within the last ten days.
A
week back you might have read in the newspapers one chap in Tiruvallur created
a history of sorts by operating a mobile Alcohol shop by carrying some forty
bottles of liquor in his two wheeler and selling it to workers in their work
place relieving them the trouble of going to liquor shops, he was arrested and
is behind bars. Is that legally wrong, if yes, how? All that he did was doing door
delivery for a fee. Imagine if one day a Flipkart or Ebay starts selling all
types of liquor then this person would be the trend setter. Or probably seeing
the revenue potential in it the government itself may start setting up alcohol
vending machines everywhere. Why not?
Similarly
another chap showed his entrepreneurial skills by picking up uncared for mentally ill patients loitering in the roads and made
them beg and ran a business wherein he earned somewhere around 1.5 lakhs
per month. [He could not recruit Digvijay Singh because he was fortunately picked
by congress as its spokesperson].
People
like Sachin pilots have perhaps been made to foul mouth such versions because
the current Unscrupulous Political Affiliation is being troubled by CAG to such an extent that in Delhi
the popular joke is Audit is the oldest profession because ‘Adam turned a leaf and made an entry’ as ministry after ministry is getting
screwed up by CAG.
The
media on its part gleefully uses both the magnifying glass and micro scope and
projects the slides whenever it involves any other sector/profession whereas
you just sniff to them about FDI in media, investigation into their misdeeds
then they will recoil like snail to
pepper.
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