Satyam, Sharam, Scandalum !

This was the caption on one of Amul Butter hoardings at a busy traffic junction ! Besides of course the obvious disturbance of each passerby stretching to see and savor the hoarding, one could not but pass a silent chuckle on seeing this satire. True our own version of the 'Enron' scandal has come in the form of Satyam and the seething rage is also because the organisation has the audacity to fudge a bluebook of its 'socially and environmentally concerned' policies and win the Golden peacock award for corporate governance !

Perhaps one of the good outcomes of such a scandal is the stricter review of what auditors do at the firm during the periodic audits. True it is very difficult for auditors to pick out anomalies in organisation which have cooked and marinated records for years and even the law suggests that the auditors need to treat the records furnished as bonafide ! But now auditors will go the extra mile and ask more questions to vouch their work.

The hapless employees of such organisations - my sympathy goes with them. After doing all the right things - burning the midnight oil and delivering value to the orgnisation and its clients, one fine day uncertanity walks into their lives as an invited guest and eats up their supper and usurps their houses. To add to it the general stigma attached to them - as if they were somewhere part of a unholy nexus which cheated not a company but an entire industry and the aspirations of a nation. Then the auditing firm PWC. Once such scandal is enough to turn stars into pariahs and the obvious plethora of coments like the Shakespearean " There is something rotten in the state of Denmark!"

With able names and eminent personalities joining hands to clean the mess, one hopes and prays that this will also pass !