| Originally posted by :AMIT | ||
| " | Sir,thku so Much. Why all Chartered Accountants are not like you.u think a lot bt Students. i wonder whether some day i will be like you,or will be like those hypocrite Chartered Accountants. Sorry if Some1 hrts,but they all are Hypocrites.Hope to be like u some fine day sir. |
" |
Amit and all,
One cannot generalize all CAs to be hypocrites.There are many who are good too.Also, tommorow you and others who complain today would become hopefully into good CAs and samaritans to save our ICAI.
Do not hope for a future date, start right away! What can be done tommorow can be done today and what can be done today can be done now.
It is just that factors below make current practicing CAs behave like this:
1. The thought that they have cleared a tough exam, in all probability not the first attempt.So they extract this frustration they have and ensure that their students don't exceed them by clearing the exam in one go.That would be unbearable to their egoes.Yes, there are execeptions to this but exceptions do not make the rule.
2. ICAI gives them preference than students.According to ICAI, "Students are dime a dozen.They will be here today and gone tommorow and if they fail multiple times, they leave the course, it is something arbitrary, so why risk placing confidence,hope and respect in them? But members bear the torch for the Institute so it is a better strategy to support them."Also, students can be fooled with some minor changes here and there, a patchwork here a patchwork there to keep them happy.(Just like factory workers who are kept happy with some clothes and boxof sweets and a nominal bonus and a pat on the back during festival seasons).This proclivity toward members by the ICAI tends to make these CAs feel supreme.
"Power corrupts,absolute power corrupts absolutely."
3. Transfership ban and other student-affecting retrograde moves would only strengthen the above adage.
4. Labour is expensive.You got to pay through your nose when you pay some outsider,whereas a student can be fooled by emotionally blackmailing him thus:
"This is a tough course and work experience with me gives you the necessary maturity to handle pressure and also make you a better CA after you finish the course." (Actual logic:Quality of work experience is important.And maturity comes from observation not from age or doing work.)
"I myself took three attempts to clear this course and you here...."(Actual logic: Each person is different in capacities,time and situations)
"You must be ashamed of yourself to ask money while you are studying for the course.Are you here to study or to make money?"(Actual logic: The CA would have to pay through the nose if he or she employs someone from outside.This guilt-trip would twinge the heart strings of an average student, who anyways studies only in the last study leave months.)
"When we were articled clerks we never complained, we did what we were asked to do and we still managed to study and here you are like an useless idiot asking for more leave and pay.Dont you have any shame?"(Actual Logic: Times change Booda Bapu! The work then was little and monotonous compared to the quantity,sophistication,compuetrization,variety and couple this with toughness of the current exams,you got it!)
"Anyways, after you leave this firm, you are going to fly somewhere with your qualification with lots of money, atleast why don'tyou repay that back to me now by working hard?"(Actual Logic: If your son or daughter leaves to USA for a cushy job, you will celebrate with sweets, Im the son of my parents Ha!)
These and other beautiful guilt-trips,emotional blackmailings,reasonings,arguments and logicalities spout forth from these self-righteous CAs.However, a student should have his mental defences ready, excellent self-talk and strategies to avert any calamities.Even when my first auditor used to abuse me verbally, I used to pep myself and please him somehow and get some sops(though I never liked pleasing him for his behaviour).Later I shifted the firms(strategy) and finished the CA course in relative peace and unburdened myself of constant and useless(for the audit and me too) audit tours.
The pity is that most CAs, though well meaning,do not even do it consciously and they think they have to say such things and believe in the truth of their statements vehemently and think they are doing some big seva to the students.It is due to conditioning which has been passed on from generation to generation of CAs.
They do not know to think laterally,creatively or out of the box and how to create a good image of the profession in the public.Gone are the days when this used to be a cozy niche and now if the Institute does not perform well, then some other professional body or course is going to beta them at the game.
And if it a matter of signing balancesheets which CAs claim only they can do with the current legal sanction afforded to them alone, with the entry of foreign professional bodies,licensing them soon,making it easily accesible to Indian students to do those courses by these institutes(afterall they get huge revenues from such Indian students),change of laws,etc this advantage would soon decrease.These foreign professional bodies have more revenue,influence,etc too with our Indian government.And gone are the days when persistent pressure from ICAI used to force Government to take action against CFA kind of degrees.Once the big 5 institutes set up shop in India in a stable way then ICAI will have to run behind students big time, of this Im sure.
Members are useful, torchbearers too but then it is the students who make up for an educational and professional Institute.I accept that ICAI is not a mere educational insitute and has an unbound duty to safegaurd and monitor the profession as a whole but not at the cost of students, for that would be suicidal.
Just look at the quality of study materials--Touch your heart and say whether all can follow it and find it useful? Are all following it?
Look at the draconian rules,restrictions and clauses levied by the ICAI--Secondment ban and other issues
Look at the Institute coaching classes---Are they better than the best private Coaching classes?
Look at the way they respond to queries---Is it prompt,polite and courteous?
Look at the way they confuse students with repeated changes in syllabus and worst of all even changes in the name of the course---Is it warranted? or a mere knee-jerk reaction to changing times in the name of keeping pace with changes?
Look at the way rumors and myths are spread about the profession and ICAI--Do they do anything about it, except maybe give a bland circular?, Which no one reads anyways!
Look at the politics and jealousy of the institute with respect to other qualifications(CFA for example)---Is it esteemable to feel jealous against another qualification and try to create problems for other Indian institutes in an upperhanded way?
Not all know this hanky-panky business running behind the scenes and practicing CAs don't care as many are hand-in-glove with ICAI and infact secretly welcome any retrograde step by ICAI.
These people brainwash the current students and they dlegate their thinking to these moronic people.And then a vicious cycle starts, these verysame students become CAs and then they too behave like this and then they pass on the baton.In the end, the profession,India's image in the world and people suffer.
Till now ICAI has been able to nothing against the PWC for the Satyam debacle.They quote many many side-issues including detailed nuances of auditor's liability and statistical sampling faults for which auditor is not liable and the such.A fraud as big as this can be easily detected by any shop-keeper with minimal commonsense, yet they brow-beat everyone around.This is because of PWC having power,international stature and joining hands with ICAI.If this had happened to an American company then there would have been a hue and cry.(Example: Closure of Arthur Anderson and the promulgation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with the debacle of Enron Inc).Here if Satyam case is opened in detail a can of worms would be opened(not worms but poisionous snakes in the form of bloodsucking vampire politicians' coffers whom every big corporate necessarily fill up).
It takes someone like me as a CA to point out that the emperor is roaming about without clothes.I dont care about other issues much, those are too complicated,highly political and need radical changes at a fundamental level but atleast students' woes and germane issues can be tackled fast.
Im using this forum to inspire and impregnate my ideas into students psyches who read this whether they practice or not, whether they stay in the country or not because once collective consciousness is tickled, it will one day bear fruit.Let you all who would move forward into a brave new world as leading CAs mould this ICAI of ours into a primier Institution.
This is what "Vidhyashankar" wants! And this is what is good for all of us!
Normally when people end such talk,they say..."Please dont take anything to heart what I said, I said these in the best interest of us and the Institute and to do good"
I say "Kuch hatke"--"Please take everything I say to the heart DIRECT to create an awareness and action and the good automatically happens for everyone involved!"
Maa Thuje Salaaam!
Vidhyashankar
CAclubindia
