Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Mar 14, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Mar 14, 2002 |
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Opinion
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Accountancy Columns - Account Speak Death dance
MY daily route shares a stretch with funeral marchers. The routine that happens during these occasions would be a novelty for many outside the city. There is much fanfare and noise — whistling, drumbeats and flower-throwing — forcing motorists to pull to the kerb. Whenever I see a final `adieu', I pause to see who's laid back. Somehow, this afternoon, the crowd that followed the mortuary van seemed familiarly different from the usual. "Who?" I asked somebody in the tenth row of the procession as he passed by my window. "Andersen," he said. "It can't be!" I protested. "Aren't they trying to resuscitate it?" "There are two views about it," he explained, as always all accountants do. "We, of KA — the Kannammapet Accountants — hold the other view." "That it's all over?" I asked. "Have you thought of the impact?" "I understand your breast-beating," he said sympathetically. "But I am sure we can weather this." "After the ashes get strewn all over the Marina?" "It has been long," he looked farther into the horizon, "since we needed a whipping boy, a lamb for the sacrificial altar. What we are now offering is actually a King-Kong with 85,000 staff in 80-plus countries!" "Are you suggesting," I asked in a hush, "that the people will believe the accountants more after the fires die down at the ghat?" "Very right," he said. "That proves how independent we are, fiercely holding on to our principles. When there is a conflict of interest, we can give up the conflict and retain the interest." "Pragmatic," I observed, "but I can't understand... " "Why we have turned against one among our own brethren," he had anticipated my query. "When there were already so many others with drawn knives." "Something more than winning back public confidence?" I asked suspiciously. "True," he said almost biting off my ear. "They didn't play the `game' by the rules. They botched it up."
D. Murali
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