Satyam Shivam Scandalum

The world may now think twice before dealing with Indian IT and ITeS companies especially after Satyam chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted to fraud in company balance sheet. This is what a section of business analysts feel, but industry bodies want to separate the scam as an one-off issue that does not necessarily muddy the image of India’s corporate governance.
Not just the world, the fall from grace of this iconic business leader and the shocking revelations have come as a shock to his peers, rivals, friends and fans. The scam has the potential to shortchange the otherwise unblemished Indian growth story dominated by IT.
“Raju has certainly inflicted a huge blow to the India story on the global business arena and the companies across the world would be much more vigilant before engaging any Indian company for business,” an analyst said.
Ramalinga Raju’s resignation along with that of managing director B. Rama Raju came a day after over 100 Satyam employees quit their jobs, fearing trouble. The latest developments could force more employees to hunt for jobs in other companies. Satyam has nearly 53,000 employees and development and delivery centres in India, the US, Canada, Brazil, Britain, China, Hungary, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.
 
Shine wanes
“Satyam was always seen as one of the top Indian IT companies and often represented a shining example of Indian liberalisation and entrepreneurship. This fraud on the investors and employees of the company shows a systemic breakdown in audit and also the oversight of the company board. Questions will need to be asked and quickly established how this happened and who caused it to happen,” Ficci president Rajeev Chandrasekhar  said.
Ramalinga Raju was once considered the pride of Andhra Pradesh. Now the fraud he has admitted to has badly shaken all industrialists in the state. “I was one of the greatest fans of Ramalinga Raju, but today I am very upset,” Harish Chandra Prasad, vice-chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Andhra Pradesh, said. 

The course of law
Business analysts privately say that Ramalinga Raju could face a jail term. The law will take its own course but nothing can shoo away the reality that the Indian IT-BPO industry, which had set very high standards of ethics and corporate governance, will be  somewhat hit by the Satyam scam. 
But Nasscom wants industry to perceive the Satyam scam as a stand-alone case of failure of corporate governance. It is critical that it be viewed in this light, Nasscom, the apex body of the IT-BPO industry, said.
“Let us first understand that scams happen worldwide — Enron, Barrings, Madoff and now Satyam is one more. I feel regulators need to show to the world that decisive action is taken against the culprits,” Siddharth Shankar, financial expert and economist, said.
Asked what PriceWaterhouse Coopers in the US was doing when all this happened, Shankar said, “I feel the auditors and regulators in the US and India need also be pulled up along with the board and the independent directors of Satyam.”
Industry body CII, too, believes there is a need to immediately examine the loopholes in regulation, accounting, audit and governance that allowed such lapses to occur and address them with urgency.
 
Image India not tainted
Chandrasekhar, too, stressed the need for regulators to move in quickly to demonstrate that this is an exceptional case amongst corporates.
“The investors need not worry about Indian corporate governance and accounting standards. This is critical to revive and rebuild the confidence and trust in India Inc amongst investors,” he said.
“While the occurrence of such events in a major company is a matter of deep regret, it would be inappropriate to question general governance standards in other companies,” the CII said.
“We are sure that all the stakeholders would also treat this as an isolated issue. This is not in any manner a reflection on the industry or corporate India. We will ensure that customers and other stakeholders get the right perspective,” the Nasscom said.
Corporate India must, however, reflect on ways to demonstrate its quality of governance and enhance the confidence of stakeholders, the CII said.
Nasscom said it would also work with the Satyam Task Force to reach out to their customers and employees and guide them through the transition.
 
What next?
According to Shankar, Satyam does not decide the course of economy or the stock market.
Though he added that the impact will be bad in terms of the corporate governance image of India and that we may see some negative sentiment in terms of foreign investments, in the long term, the markets will behave keeping in mind the macro-economic factors.
Regulators and Auditors will become more vigilant and companies who are still cooking their balance sheets will get shut or will correct their balance sheet, said Shankar.
Referring to the sharp fall in Satyam shares, an analyst said it was a natural reaction by the investors. “Satyam’s share today is not even worth Rs 10.”

Do you think the scam will seriously affect India’s image abroad?

Strike force

Strikes by truckers, lawyers and oil PSUs have brought the city to a standstill

Six million trucks went off roads across the country on January 5, triggering fears of shortfall of essential items. The government has already threatened to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), if needed. The truckers are seeking decrease in diesel prices and heavy road taxes imposed by the government.
“There is no visible impact on prices of fruits and vegetable so far. The increase or decrease in prices is very marginal. But I can’t say the same thing will continue tomorrow,” Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Azadpur secretary, Madhu Garg said. The truckers have threatened to stop the supply of vegetables and milk – the supply of which until the third of strike on Wednesday remained unaffected — from Thursday.
Meanwhile, work in all five district courts suffered on Wednesday as lawyers went on a strike demanding a repeal of the amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
The amendment provides the police the freedom to arrest or not arrest a person in offences punishable by a seven-year jail term.
Though the lawyers struck work, there is a section of them, which is backing the amendment. The supporters say it will ultimately help the public not be afraid of an arrest. The amendment also puts the onus on the police as they will have to justify an arrest in a court.
D.B. Goswami, a lawyer in the Supreme Court, said, “Laws are made to protect the people and not for a particular section of society. The amendment is beneficial for the people. Until now, people were afraid to get a police complaint lodged as the police never gave an opportunity to the accused. And if a person is put behind bars without an investigation, the police will now be forced to justify the arrest.”
The agitating lawyers, on the other hand, said the amendment will give the police undue powers, which will be misused. Giving the cops the discretion will spread corruption.
They said the fear of arrest was one of the major differences between a civil and criminal case. An arrest in criminal case was a deterrent and if it is left to the police, it will only spend corruption.
The decision to strike work at the Patiala House, Tis Hazari, Karkardooma, Rohini and Dwarka courts was taken on Tuesday at a meeting of the Co-ordination Committee, All Bar Associations of Delhi. All bar associations in the NCR will meet on Thursday to decide the course of action.
And this is not all. Defying the high court orders, oil PSU executives on Wednesday stopped work forcing stoppage of natural gas supplies to industries on the nation’s main trunk pipeline but aviation services and fuel supplies continued to be normal.
“The strike is total in all oil PSUs except Hindustan Petroleum. The strike began at 6 am,” Oil Sector Officers Association (OSOA) President Amit Kumar said here.
Officers of Oil and Natural Gas Corp stopped natural gas supplies from the country’s largest field in Mumbai offshore, forcing a shutdown of the Hazira-Vijaipur-Jagdishpur pipeline.
GAIL is maintaining supplies to priority sector from the volumes already available in the pipeline. ONGC also stopped most of the gas supplies from privately operated fields as the fuel from these passes through its processing units and pipelines. The strike was most visible in ONGC, while it has no impact in HPCL. Indian Oil Corp, the nation’s largest refiner, was maintaining aviation services but operations at four of its refineries were impacted.

Do you think strikes like these prove any point or are they just a ploy not to work?

‘We’ll shoot them if they are rapists!’

While the whole country is demanding the harshest punishment possible for the 10 accused in the gang-rape of an MBA student in Noida, the family members of the accused and village elders say if the boys are guilty, they themselves will shoot each one of them. Till Wednesday night, the police had arrested six boys. Four are absconding.
“If there is any truth in the accusations, we will shoot each one of them,” says Bharat Yadav, a village elder. Till the boys are proved guilty, the entire village is standing behind all ten. The villagers including the parents of the accused are still not willing to believe that their sons could commit such a heinous crime. And so sure are they of their wayward sons’ innocence that they are willing to bite the bullet for them.
The shock and disbelief that descended on the village with the swooping Noida cops on Tuesday morning has still not settled down. Giani, the father of Sanjay, one of the accused boys, shooed us away when we tried to talk to him. On seeing us, another man accompanying him immediately took off in a Swift. We thought he was going to gather a crowd, but were relieved to find him returning with the village elders and a former village head, Bharat Yadav.
“We have seen these boys since they were babies. It is not possible that they could have done something like this,” says everyone. But they admit that there was a fight with the boy. “Our boys were on their way to the village and spotted the car near Sector 123 at Pushta Pathala Khanjarpur. They say that the couple was in an objectionable position and they objected to this. A brawl ensued. Our boys may have hit the boy, but they could not have raped the girl,” says Bharat Yadav. He will find it difficult to argue with forensic evidence.
“Everyone wants to know the truth. More than 250 cops came on Tuesday and took away the boys without any explanation. No one knew what was happening. Where were the boys being taken or why? Even after that when we tried to meet them we were not allowed. We went to the police station where the boys were kept but they were not allowed to meet their son. Even the parents want the truth to be out. If their sons have done something wrong they should be punished but for that a proper procedure should be followed and a balanced approach is necessary which the police are not ready to do,” said one of the parents.
They, however, have no explanation for the fact that one of the accused boys has made a statement before television cameras not only confessing to his crime but also giving the entire list of names of the nine others involved.

Do you think society as a whole can play a constructive role in helping the girl get justice and set a precedent?

Please the minister; patients can wait

Attending to the ill and the infirm seems to have taken a backseat in Aiims, with the premier medical institute’s ongoing beautification drive hogging administrative focus. As Aiims gets a facelift, nobody cares to attend to patients who have been waiting at the turnstile for days and weeks, and some even for months.
Ahead of Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss’ visit to the hospital, the security cover at Aiims is being improved as patient care slips down the list of priorities.
A new security agency has been contracted to provide guards with crisp, new uniform to man the premises. Campus roads that don’t need repairs are being spruced up.
Senior faculty members claim the facelift is owing to the minister’s visit to the 36th convocation scheduled to be held on Wednesday. Incidentally, the institute’s faculty is boycotting the event.
Denying that the cosmetic touches were being put just to impress Ramadoss, Aiims Deputy Director of Administration Shailesh Yadav says, “The plan to repair the roads was in the offing since the start of the monsoon. We were not able to find a good contractor earlier but now we have one from the National Highways Authority of India. It is just a coincidence that things are taking shape now.”
Agreeing, Aiims spokesperson, Dr Y.K. Gupta, says that the process for repairing the roads had started at least six months ago.
But the patients who line up outside Aiims wards waiting for their turn are being neglected as usual, some doctors say. “They continue to shiver and huddle in the cold,” a senior faculty member says.

Should hospital administration be blamed for causing inconvenience to patients?

Learner’s licence: A click away!

Getting learner’s licence is no more a cumbersome process. Under the on-going Road Safety Week initiative, the southwest district transport authority has come up with online tests to make the process of getting learner’s licence easily.
Standing in long queues to appear for the test and waiting for ages to get a learner’s licence will be a thing of the past soon. “The process is called Automated Learner’s Licence. We have a separate unit called Learner License Unit. Now we don’t conduct tests on papers. The earlier process wasn’t fair and transparent. It had a lot of loopholes. Even the touts would not be able to extract money under the new process. There is a set of 20 questions with multiple choices. Candidates will be given 20 minutes to answer all the questions,” Anil Kumar Chhikara, a Motor Licensing officer, said.
The officer said that now more women candidates have started coming to appear for the test. “It has become so easy that people themselves prefer to come instead of sending the touts,” Chikara said.
The software has been prepared in such a way so that each question paper has a different set of questions. A batch of seven to eight people can appear for the test at the same time. “The manual process was time consuming,” he said.
Not only this, the biometric system saves the information of the candidates which helps save time. The system captures the face of the candidate, fingerprints and digital signature. One has to pay the fees at the first counter, move to the second counter which has the biometric system and then appear for the test. If a candidate fails the test, another chance id provided without extra fees.
Do you think the online process will prevent touts from getting false licences made?

Bastards!

10 men take turns to rape MBA student inside car in Noida. Five arrested, others absconding …
Dad tells the story of how his son, Amit, was assaulted and his friend raped

It was around 9 pm on Monday. I had been worried sick about my son. He is a responsible boy and generally returns from his MBA classes around 7 pm. If he is going to be late, he always informs us. But on Monday he was late and was not even answering his cell phone.
I had called up all his friends and was wondering what to do next when he walked into my office with a girl. Both appeared to have been injured.
My first thought was maybe he has been in an accident. But when he told me what had happened, I was shocked and enraged.
The girl is our neighbour and also goes to the same B-school as my son. Since there are a number of kids the same age in our colony who go to Noida to study, they all use a car pool. On Monday, the girl had brought her Wagon R and my son had left with her.
After the classes ended, they went to the Great India Place in Sector 18 to shop and around 5 pm, they decided to return. They had driven for about half-a-kilometre when they noticed two motorcycles following them. There were four men on the bikes.
All of a sudden, these men surrounded the car and forced my son to stop. Before he could realise what was happening, they had hit him with a brick, pushed him to the passenger’s seat and got behind the wheel. The others had come towards the girl’s side and forced her into the backseat before getting in with her. While one of the boys was driving, the other two in the back seat began assaulting her. They also kept hitting my son. The fourth man kept pace with the car on his bike. They left the second bike at the spot.
For about an hour, they kept driving around, perhaps looking for a dark and lonely spot. As the sun set and it became darker, they became bolder. They took turns raping the girl in the moving car.
What is even more horrifying is that they even called up some other friends and asked them to join in. By the time the girl’s ordeal ended, she had been assaulted by 10 men.
They drove the car to a secluded dark and deserted place in Sector-71, where about 10 persons raped the girl one by one.
After raping the girl, all ten boys abandoned them in a deserted place. But before they could escape, my son managed to note the number of one of the bikes. But he could not call me or anyone else for help because before escaping, the rapists snatched his mobile phone, wrist watch and wallet.
I called the girl’s family members to my office and we went to the police station in Noida’s Sector-39 and reported the incident.
The Noida police immediately swung into action and with the help of the motorbike number my son gave them, they raided several premises of the accused. By the end of the day, all the accused persons had been apprehended.
My son has a fractured elbow apart from several other injuries. He is in hospital where the doctors have advised bed-rest. He is having severe pain in the abdomen. The girl’s condition is worse. She is also in hospital.
(As told to Pradip R. Sagar)

Should gangrape be punished with a life sentence or death?

Lesson in behaviour for ‘Auto’cratic drivers

Everybody — be it a driver or a pedestrian — in the city must have cursed the autorickshaw drivers at least once for their total lack of traffic sense and their rudeness.
Those who have had to take autos for commuting, know first-hand about their automatic refusal go by the meter or plain rude refusal.
But, there still might be hope. The Delhi Traffic Police have to teach them a lesson. Not by punishing. The traffic police will provide “classroom” lessons on good behaviour and traffic sense into the autorickshaw drivers.
Senior traffic police officers said the main aim of this exercise is to instill better behaviour. The decision came in view of the upcoming Commonwealth Games, so that the auto drivers behave well with foreigners as well as compatriots. The other purpose is to teach them about road safety.
Road Safety cell of Delhi Traffic Police has begun weekly lectures on good behaviour and road safety in different parts of the city. The classes will be taken every Saturday at different locations. To ensure participation of maximum drivers, Traffic Police is getting help from various associations and an NGO, which works for the drivers’ welfare.
The good news is that “it seems they are paying attention to the classes as many of them told us they never thought on these lines,” Ramesh Kaushik, ACP (Road Safety Cell) Delhi Traffic Police, said.

Do you think the traffic cops would succeed in their drive?

House that for a scam?

The Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police is quizzing several property dealers in Dwarka and Rohini in connection with the alleged DDA housing scam. According to the sources, these property dealers had filed applications with the DDA in fictitious names. The property dealers processed bank loans on forged PAN cards and residential proofs.
Moreover, the EOW is also looking into any irregularities in the submission of the applications under General category. The EOW had received complaints that some applications under the ST category were also filed under forged names.
The roles of few banks and income tax officials and the DDA are under scrutiny of the investigating officers of the crime branch of Delhi Police.
“Information has been sought from other agencies like banks, I-T department and the DDA as well, as there are complaints of an alleged forgery in processing bank loans (on the basis of forged PAN cards, issued from the Income Tax department). If there is any irregularity, nobody will be spared,” a senior police officer of crime branch said.
During the course of investigation, it was learnt that several property dealers in connivance with banks had filed applications under fictitious or forged names.
Udit Raj, chairman of All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisation, who had filed a complaint with the Delhi Police, maintained that the property dealers and bank agents in connivance with the DDA have forged applications in the names of the ST candidates.
“More than 100 letters were posted to Jhunjhunu, Kotputli and Jaipur to verify if the applicants knew if the loans were sanctioned in their names and if the PAN cards were issued for the applications, a few of then have replied that they did not ever apply for any housing scheme,” Raj said.
“When contacted Murari Lal, an ST category applicant from Jhunjhunu district, had replied that he did not apply for any housing scheme. Similarly, retired army personnel Jamnaram had replied that one of his relatives had taken photocopy of his passport and ration card, but did not inform him about any DDA housing scheme. Bank loan was issued against his name, which he had never applied for,” he added.
Investigation also revealed that a Chandigarh-based finance company had hired a bank executive for clearing application amount of Rs 1.5 lakh in the name of more than 2,000 applicants.
Raj has demanded a CBI probe into the alleged housing scam. He said the engineering department of the DDA had announced a list of 6,500 ready flats, which was later changed to 5,500 flats; however, allotment was made only on 5,238 flats.

The scam and how it was made possible:
*  A cartel of property dealers forged applications and applied under the ST category.
* The cartel prepared PAN cards and other residential proofs in order to avail bank loans for the application fee. In some cases, they fraudulently obtained photographs/ identity cards of a group of STs living in various ST-dominated villages.
* In connivance with the bank officials, loans were processed under fictitious names by paying interest fee to the bank.
* Application forms were submitted either directly to the DDA or through banks by the cartel.

Is there any way of sorting out this mess?

‘Genuine’ applicants cry foul, want flats

With the government directing the DDA to stop transfer of flats till an inquiry into alleged irregularities in the draw are completed, harried allottees on Monday thronged the office of the house agency saying the “genuine” applicants should not be made to suffer.
“Genuine applicants who have been dreaming of a house of their own and have emerged successful in the lottery should not be made to pay in the name of rigging in allotments,” said Nikki Gupta, an allottee who visited the the DDA office here.
“If some persons have applied through bogus documents, why all the successful applicants should be penalised for no fault of their own,” said Bindu, another allottee.
Urban Development Ministry on Monday directed the DDA to stop physical allotment of flats hours after the housing agency said the process of allotment will continue notwithstanding the controversy surrounding the draw of lots.
A large number of successful applicants thronged the DDA office and demanded an explanation over the issue, saying that they were ready for any type of verification.
“If even one per cent of the allottees have got the flats through fair means, cancellation of the lottery would amount to violation of their rights,” claimed Ghulam Nabi, a successful applicant.
The agitated applicants said the Union Urban Development Ministry should conduct a fair  probe in the matter. “The Ministry and the DDA can take time of their own, but our rights should be protected at any cost,” an irate allottee said.

Will you apply for a flat in the DDA’s next scheme?

Now, you can call Rahul!

Here’s you chance to speak your heart out to the AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi. You can call him, text him and that too direct! Seems impossible? It isn’t.
The youth icon is working on a call centre  idea so that he can be accessible to each and every youth of the country without any hitch or hindrance. The novel idea will be executed soon and is being implemented by a Bangalore-based friend of Rahul.
According to party sources, Rahul was looking out for a way to be in touch with the youth of the country directly. He expressed this desire to organisations like Youth Congress and NSUI and said he would like to reach those who want to do constructive work or want to register their grievances directly. He also said that there should not be any kind of blockade or hindrance in accessing him under the scheme.
The idea finally starting taking shape after Rahul’s friend suggested setting-up call-centres to get real feedback from the youth. Rahul was also suggested to give-out a number so that people could directly register their grievances to him.
Although all calls may not be attended by Rahul himself, the crux of the message or the call will directly be observed by him.
Under the system not even a single call or SMS will go unnoticed and each text sent to him will appear on a screen directly accessible to Rahul. For this, the Congress and the Youth Congress is planning to set-up call-centres in all major cities.
According to sources, the proposed system will start working before the General elections. “The system ensures transparency and it will also end the myth that top leadership is not accessible to the common people,” a senior leader associated with Rahul said.

Do you think the public should get numbers of all politicians so as to reach them directly?