The Hindu Business Line : Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance

TO BETTER understand why you need a PC, or personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life, says Dave Barry. To better understand PC, or Mr P. Chidambaram, though, we need to take a look at the `pathetic' mess he sees in what we call our audit system.

"The comment made by the FM has deep implications for the Indian chartered accountants in practice," says an e-mail from Tosh K. Toshniwal, a Bangalore-based CA. "On the one side each member of the Institute should understand specific details and points which prompted the FM to make such remark; and, on the other side, the Institute has the onus to get into some serious thinking on what has been said and take corrective action."

Quite seriously, therefore, I turn to Concise Oxford English Dictionary, where pathetic comes after path-breaking and before pathfinder. The word means `arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness'; and, naturally, accountants are suddenly too sad ever since they learnt about the FM's remarks. "Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye even that your pity is enough to cure me," is not what they are telling the Minister yet, but a line from a sonnet of the Bard.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary traces the etymology of the word to "Middle French pathetique, from late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos capable of feeling," and offers more at `pathos'. That word, in turn, means "an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion; an emotion of sympathetic pity".

True enough, I'd say, since accountants engage themselves in artistic representation, despite being straight-faced, or more often, cheerless enough to evoke pity. Tell me, when was it that you saw a happy and chirpy accountant or auditor? "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us," applies squarely to number-crunching, as much as to what Jerry Garcia had in mind.

For a more detailed travel to the roots, see Online Etymology Dictionary. "1598, `affecting the emotions, exciting the passions'," it says and finds pathetic coming from pathetos `liable to suffer,' verbal adjective of pathein `to suffer'". Well, that's what the fraternity ends up with — suffering, both for errors of commission and omission. If `pathetic' makes auditors panic, they may do well to remember that the word pertains to the trochlear nerve, as Dorlands Medical Dictionary informs.

"Meaning `arousing pity, pitiful' is first recorded in 1737. Colloquial sense of `so miserable as to be ridiculous' is attested from 1937. Pathetic fallacy (1856, first used by Ruskin) is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects," adds www.etymonline.com. To these you may add: `Pathetic audit system, from 2005.'

To be fair, PC is not the first; you can see at least a dozen `pathetic audit' hits on Google, such as: `Pathetic audit spies' (www.moneycontrol.co.in); `Yes Sir! It's a pathetic Audit, if you ask Me' (www.maddentips.com); `Complete security searches in wake of the pathetic audit' (www.pprune.org); `A pathetic audit unblushingly held' (www.degreeme.com); and `The result of our pathetic audit IRS letter' (http://irs.nosys.info).

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives two options for pathetic, sad and unsuccessful. The first, it explains as, "causing feelings of sadness, sympathy or sometimes lack of respect, especially because a person or an animal is suffering," and provides two examples: "The refugees were a pathetic sight — starving, frightened and cold. After the accident he became a pathetic figure, a shadow of his former self." T. Casey Brennan sympathises with animals: "How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies... that which to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself."

Adverb is pathetically, as in: "Other former captives spoke of pathetically inadequate food rations. My parents' advice on sex was pathetically inadequate." Or, to gel with the context, `Those who heard the FM spoke of pathetically inadequate reasons to chide the accountants!' The second sense, `unsuccessful', leads to lack of respect, owing to lack of ability, effort or bravery. Examples on http://dictionary.cambridge.org are: "A pathetic attempt/ joke/ excuse. Are you telling me you're frightened to speak to her? Don't be so pathetic!" In return for our investment we get a pathetic three per cent interest, rues an example on www.infoplease.com, reminding one of naïve clients who lament that in return for a fat fee what they get is but a one-page boilerplate audit report.

An obsolete meaning of pathetic, as in Webster Dictionary, 1913, is "Expressing or showing anger; passionate." This may not be what Mr Chidambaram meant. "Affecting or moving the tender emotions, especially pity or grief," is another meaning, as in "a pathetic song or story". That should be true for the majority of the lay who try to make sense of the published accounts in their hands; for, they'd pity the ones who know not what has been done by the professionals, and they'd suffer grief on account of what the numbers actually mean, when read with undecipherable notes.

Sensuous used to mean `tender; pathetic', long ago, as Webster's 1828 Dictionary informs. But today's synonyms from Word for pathetic are wretched, dismal, sad, weak and useless; while sensuous has synonyms such as rich, opulent, luxurious, aesthetic and sumptuous.

"The old, rather shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic," is a quote of John Galsworthy cited in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which also defines pathetic as "arousing or capable of arousing scornful pity". Pathetic, pitiful, pitiable, piteous, and lamentable are adjectives that describe what inspires or deserves pity, explains www.bartleby.com. "A most earnest... entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you," is a snatch from Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, cited in the URL.

What can be the reasons for the pathetic state of the profession? Tosh feels that historically, there has been a large mismatch between the practical training of CA students: their exposure to the corporate world and real-life situations during this period, passing the examination and practising the profession. "There have been no structured guidelines on training and unfortunately, quite a number of the practising firms do not have the volume or the kind of business that could expose the students to even a reasonable level of technicalities and proficiency in any subject of the profession," he adds.

"The Institute is never seen having on the agenda the issue of the settling of newcomers or even many of the old timers in the practice. The inequitable distribution of work and the resultant fight for the bare survival obviously results in the compromise on quality of work, the clientele and delivery," is how Tosh analyses the reasons for the present `pathetic' status.

"Most of the professional speeches listing out the huge opportunities, and now also talking about the global market, hardly suggest or guide on the ways or means required to tap these opportunities and, therefore, are scarcely of any usefulness to many `not so resourceful' practising CAs," says Tosh.

"The Institute has never tried to deliberate on or to evolve some kind of mechanism whereby it could assume a proactive role in ensuring a level playing field to the practising entities, small, medium and large. The fee for the same services and the same output is so different between the practising entities (that is, the ones enjoying brand equity and the others fighting for their survival); at times, it is 5:1. Add to it, there are the private and even the public sector clients who offer a fee that is ridiculously low as compared to the scope of assignment, and in both cases the Institute is a mute spectator. That `pathetic' service is given under `pathetic conditions' must also be appreciated," notes Tosh.

"Bank audits are often `audit under pressure'; it is openly demanded in pre-audit meetings that the audit must be completed in the given few days time to avoid the `delay being viewed seriously' and sadly, the demand is made in presence of the senior auditors quietly sitting on the dais and requesting their colleagues to cooperate. The concurrent, revenue, stock audits and other assignments are largely allocated without any defined automatic selection process and therefore are subject to relationship management. The fee offered by these banks for concurrent and other assignments has just no relationship with the scope of reporting and the attendance requirement," is a paragraph on bank audit that deserves the attention of the ICAI. "There is no defined selection process in allotment of routine professional work in any of the other Ministries or Government departments, at all levels — Central, State, District or Panchayat, where again the relationship management skills are desired. The fee offered has no respect to the time and resources requirement on the part of the auditors. The private sector has always been a `personal contact and referral' business. Can we consider that the audit of all public listed companies should be allotted by SEBI directly, somewhere on the lines what C&AG does?"

Anyone who thinks he is important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential, says William Thomas, and that seems to strike dangerously close home.

But Mark Twain reassures, saying, "Everything human is pathetic". Plus, there is this helpful quote of H. L. Mencken — that democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

AccountSpeak@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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