Amritsar and Accountants

I was in Amritsar over the weekend and let me tell you that all the things people said about the wonderful food you can get in that city are true. I am neither a foodie nor a food expert (I am assuming you can be one with being the other) but even my limited senses of taste and tongue were left with a craving of partial satisfaction. I wanted one more dinner or one more lunch. Thanks to a friend, whose brother’s wedding I was attending, I sampled quite a bit of the local stuff. The theme for one of the lunches at the wedding house was itself ‘Amritsari food’ and in there I sampled Sugarcane juice (after ages!), kulcha and chhole; thin, crisp pooris with aloo ka subzi, some amazing carrot pickle, sweet but sublime phirni and an amazing gur ka halwa that I now regret at having just taken a single serving of. On both the nights of the wedding functions (sagan and the baraat night), the variety of non-vegetarian food on offer was tempting and hard to ignore. I had some succulent lamb kebabs and amazing rogan josh (a Kashmiri and not Amritsari dish though). The chopped up mutton served dry and fresh from the kadhai needed three servings to satisfy the buds and the meal was capped off with gajar ka halwa for dessert. Now I am a bit of prick for gajar ka halwa since I have been used to having some every winter at home made by my mother. Gajar ka halwa as a wedding dessert has rarely appealed to me. There is too much khoya to compensate for sweetness and the carrots are always a pale red in color. On this occasion though, the sweetness was just right, the carrots juicy red and the dry fruits were spread liberally to create a brilliant dessert. I found myself recommending the same to practically everyone I talked to later that night.

If you are in Amritsar then you have to do two things for sure – visit the Golden Temple and the Wagah border (apart from the eating that I mentioned above). My friend, who was co-ordinating transport for almost 50-60 out of town guests, bemoaned the fact that most of his baraatis wanted to rush straight to the temple from the railway station. The poor fellow struggled in vain to persuade them to offload their luggage at the hotel first and have a meal at the wedding home. Now I am not sure how it works, and perhaps I do not even care enough, but there was this strange sentiment amongst those headed to the temple to not take liquor or non-vegetarian food prior to visit. I saw the poor mutton being abandoned and the bar being deserted by men who couldn’t separate themselves from either the night before (And post the visit they were back to mutton and whiskey at night).

Wagah though makes no pious demands from you. All it requires are strong vocal chords and a little bit of enthusiasm. We went there on a Saturday expecting huge crowds and sure, the seats were filled. Someone in the group arranged for VIP access (that typical and shameful Indian privilege) and we got quite decent seats to watch the action from. Both the BSF and the Pakistan Rangers men turned up dressed in their regal uniforms, though the BSF guys had some trouble maintaining their elaborate head gear that kept slipping on them occasionally. The announcers from both sides worked their audiences and cries of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ and ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ went up the air. It was pop patriotism at its best. The audience was egged on to out-shout their Pakistani counterparts and many in the crowd took it open themselves to lead the slogan shouting. The entire martial spectacle obviously rouses emotions which quickly get dispelled the moment it is all over. Everyone rushes in a stampede like fashion to get a glimpse of the border gates, get photographs clicked with the BSF guards and then it’s back to usual grind of littering garbage at the bus stand, leering at women and being the model Indian citizen. Two things about Wagah that day though – First, while the Indian stands were packed to the seams, the Pakistani stands were half empty. Now I imagine it might have been because it was the day of Bakr Eid but I wonder if there are larger signs to be read into the same. The second – Indians of all faiths and colors and foreign tourists alike, no one had a problem shouting ‘Vande Mataram’ that evening.

*************************************************

It is election season once again (no I am not talking about the Jharkhand polls. Ha! Caught you didn’t I? You barely knew there were polls going on in poor Maoist infested Jharkhand). It is election season for the ‘vibrant’ and ‘esteemed’ community of Chartered Accountants (this is not an attempt at self-aggrandizement but simply words that I have picked up from one of the myriad campaign mails that have flooded my inbox over the last two days). Being a professional community, the campaigning is also professional. SMSes, emails and telephone calls are passé. They are the lowest common denominator. Candidates resort to innovative vote catching methods. One of them is alumni meets. A candidate tries to align himself with some entity or a CA coaching institution and an invitation is sent for an alumni party calling all to attend and of course in return for a free night of socializing, light ego massage, food and drinks (depending upon average age profile of alumni and the social sophistication of the candidate) the attendees are expected to vote for the implicit host. Some of the candidates with more elaborate social connections organize musical nights to promote their agenda for the development of the profession. I was told that during the last election one candidate had girls standing outside the polling booth and handing over flowers to everyone coming out of the booth who had voted for him. How the girls managed to figure out who the voter had cast his preference for in the secret ballot is something that was not explained!

This takes me back to the last CA elections held in the winter of 2006. The firm I was employed with then had one of its senior partners standing as a candidate for the Central Council. The council is the supreme governing body of the profession and has equal representation from all the five zones of North, South, West, East and Central. Our region was North and six candidates had to be chosen out of a field of maybe ten to twelve. A large number of the resources of the firm were sent to polling booths on the voting day and I found myself with a senior colleague in a small town in North India overseeing a small election stall in the local town school. Only one observer was allowed in the actual polling room, the principal’s office, and my colleague was stationed there along with representatives of five of the other candidates. Being a small town, the number of eligible voters was limited; around 50 odd if I remember correctly. There was much bantering going on in the voting room with tea and snacks being served for the local representatives camped there. My colleague, slightly uncomfortable with the celebratory mood would keep coming out often. Voters came in at a trickle – 4 or 5 every hour. By late afternoon, I had wrapped up my stall and was all ready to scoot back to Delhi the moment voting got over at 6 in the evening. However, it was then that all the drama really began. With half an hour to go for the voting to end, my colleague and I were strolling in the school lawn when two of the local agents of the candidates came to us with a proposition. Only around half of the eligible votes had been cast. There was no point in ‘wasting’ the ‘precious’ remaining votes. Let us all oblige each other and split the remaining votes equally between the six candidates whose representatives were present. Signatures on the voter sheet could be forged and the school principal who was the returning officer for the town could be convinced. Quite obviously, we were taken aback. Our first and natural instinct was to refuse. ‘Nahin aaya koi to nahin sahi’, I remember my colleague remarking to the others. Ten minutes later, after a huddled conference between the other representatives, pat came another offer. We could take majority of the remaining votes for the Central Council (as many as we wanted!) but the North India Council votes had to go to their preferred candidate (a voter votes both for the Central as well as the Regional Council). We were cajoled to talk to our ‘seniors in Dilli’ and discuss with them. Voting had finished by now and the ballot box was yet to be sealed. My colleague and I, slightly disturbed, decided to call Delhi and inform the election managers of this offer and our intended response of refusal. Incredulously, the senior manager we spoke to responded by asking us, ‘What do you think? Should we accept this?’ Upon hearing this, my colleague insisted on speaking to the partner in charge of the campaigning, who promptly asked us to refuse any such deal making and leave the place immediately after sealing of the ballot box. Our response disappointed the local agents. They were guarded and muted in their remarks. I could sniggers of ‘Yeh Dilliwale kya jaane’ and exhortations of how ‘aadmi aadmi ke kaam aata hai’. Ballot boxes sealed, we rushed straight into our car and headed back home.

It is easy to understand the attachment small town CAs have for the elections. Infact, this holds true for most CAs outside the corporate or the Big 4 set up. As someone running his own practice, it is of immense benefit for you to have friends in the right places in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). They ensure that your firm’s name comes up for empanelment for bank audits, that any disciplinary proceedings against you are ‘taken care’ of and that you constantly keep getting invitations for technical forums and seminars and other ‘social’ events. For many self employed CAs such an association carries the prospect of visibility, professional networking and improved social standing. How such deal making and shenanigans help the profession is something that I am yet to find out. All the campaign mails received by me thus far have been individual focused. So and so has been serving the profession for X years (usually above 15), has been on various committees of the Institute for X years and has done such and such while on such committees. In a year when the profession took its severest hit ever in the form of Satyam and its missing cash balance of Rs 5000cr, no one talks of the reform both the system of studies of CA (the new course requires students to choose between graduation or CA; if you want to pursue it post grad, be prepared to spend a minimum of 5 years) or the conduct of the members of the profession need. No one talks of how frauds like Satyam can be avoided and where the auditors are going wrong. No one talks of regulation and the Institute’s role. All you hear of are personal bio-datas, social gatherings and mud-slinging at others. Given all this, is it any surprise that Satyam happened and that the man who signed that Balance Sheet for many years and has been in jail since January, was a member of the Central Council and that had Satyam not broken out he would perhaps have become the President of the ICAI a month later?

|