But, we need to do something. We, in India, and all over the world, are waiting for a brilliant idea. Our country has led the world intellectually. Let us put our hearts and minds together, churn ideas and concepts that would make this world a better place. Now the bigger question, what lies ahead for Indian IT Industry? The outsourcing and Indian IT professionals'; future is bickering. The recession in the US is hurting Indian outsourcing companies quite significantly. Do you want your children to inherit a world where deceit and folly rule? Do you believe that sin is gravitation? To what extent the government will be able to infuse the confidence in the clients of Satyam? Who will become the member of the board of a tainted company and face the headache of millions of dollars of lawsuit filed against the company? Will Satyamites be able to give their best to a company whose future hangs in balance? Will the government extend any type of guarantee to the clients of the Satyam as a confidence measure? How the impact of the absence of huge so-called cash balance will be handled? What is the guarantee that the customers of Satyam will not be poached out by other companies in the field?
Scholarly speaking, the people are having different point of view regarding the impect of Satyam Freud on the reputation of the country. In this connection Dr Madhav Mehra, President of the United Kingdom-based World Council for Corporate Governance predicted that Satyam fraud could be the greatest threat to India';s corporate reputation unless handled proficiently. Owing to almost same balance sheet fraud, the Satyam is now being described as the Enron of India. People are telling that while Enron had deserved to die, Satyam deserve to be rescued. For the innocent some 53000 employees (the number which also is doubtful) who had not played any crooked game, certainly the iconic fourth largest company';s mercy petition of life deserves to be accepted. After all if you allow to crumble and sudden closure of such a gigantic company, you are throwing all these huge number of skilled people virtually on the road as global slowdown is already troubling the IT-Industry and their main customer BFSI segment most. And the repercussion of unemployment of such highly paid people will have on other industry too of whom these Satyamites are consumers/customers. Probably, sensing the gravity of the situation in an election year, government has taken control of the board of the Satyam and nominated a new board comprising of Deepak Parekh, Kiran Karnik and C. Achuthan. And news has come out on Monday evening that government may provide the liquidity to Satyam out of Indian taxpayer money. Probably same on the line of USA etc. Though this short of bailout funding doing may not be easy as for this government may need the parliament';s approval, which may not be an easy task. It may or may not be a matter of dispute whether the tax-payer';s money should be utilized to save a profit making company, but at this juncture government was having only two choices, either to allow the company to shut down since it has no cash or prop up its liquidity so that the company may remain alive and start generating cash. The revelation of Satyam Computer Services Ltd of about a Rs 7,800-crore fraud may dent the image of the World Bank as it kept quiet until last month about its suspicion of the IT firm';s corporate malpractices. In 2006, the World Bank told the US Justice department that it suspected Satyam might have been involved in bribery, the ';Wall Street Journal'; reported, citing bank officials. However, in late 2007, the bank completed an internal investigation and found that Satyam had acted improperly. Under World Bank rules, the company then had the chance to argue why it shouldn';t be banned? Now that its future is uncertain and it has now plunged many other Indian Software giants together. India';s third largest software exporter Wipro joined bribery-tainted Satyam Computer Services in a club of companies barred for four years from doing business with the World Bank on charges of offering improper benefits to the Bank staff. Wipro Technologies was followed by Megasoft, the third Indian software vendor to have attracted the bank';s ire, while non-IT vendors Nestor Pharmaceuticals and Gap International and an individual Surendra Singh were the other Indian entities to have faced debarment action by the bank. Though, in past the government had bailed out several PSU banks by infusing capital, but apart from the capital infusion the processes of that bailout were quite painful particularly for the employees of those bailed out banks. It must be learnt that apart from mental trauma of transfer etc the employees of those bailed out PSU banks have been force to defer their pay hikes, loose their various allowances for few years. The question of passing through such painful years for the employees, who are enjoying certainly better life than an employee of a PSU banks, appears to be a difficult question at least at this juncture. Are Satyamites ready to reduce the flab of their salary, perks and allowances? Will they be able to work in a company whose CEO has been put behind bar for committing biggest ever balance sheetfraud of India? Probably quite a lot of employees, particularly those who fear of facing difficulty in switching over to other companies, may think of compromising. After all a salary rather than no salary is always better. Speculations are that probably balance sheet games are being played in many companies in India and if any stern action against those companies initiated that may spark a series of post Lehman like debacle in India. But million dollars question is how to deter such fraud in future? How to ensure that once again some smiley and serious CEO face will not dupe the millions of retail investors overnight? Serious faces do sometime serious and cynical crime too which used to be capable of jittering the earth. How to punish this CEO to give a threat and strong message so that this short of wrong doing no body dare to do at all in future? Government needs to wake up in full swing…
