TThe urban investing community has been feeling despair due to constant falling of Equity Sensexes and so is the rural Indian concerned about the bleak fortunes of Agricultural sector's performance in the current season when the sky has remained cloudless with scanty or no rains in major portions of more than a dozen states of the country, surprisingly, the monsoon having started well and at proper times barring few regions. The center has admitted that it may turn out to be most widespread draught of the last two decades.
Although Indian economy is not as crucially dependent on agriculture as it was 25 years back, but one cannot undercount its importance where nearly 1/3rd of GDP is contributed by it.
In contradiction to the above, there are floods in Bihar and Assam. The Garland Canal Yojana covering the whole country conceived during the tenure of Mrs. Indira Gandhi remained on paper though widely discussed. The result is, most of the rivers have shrunk to trickle, reservoirs dried out, water levels in the borewells having gone down by several hundred meters, resulting into shortage of enough drinking water leave aside supply for irrigation and industries.
It proved to be a mistake to depend upon the forecasts by Indian Metereological Department and to ignore the signals of Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, according to which the delicate balance in the global circulation patterns is disturbed due to man made circumstances to be followed by non-linear and sudden changes culminating into erratic behavior of monsoon which the India has experienced at a great cost.
Timely information and its in-depth analysis and implications help to take necessary steps to manage such disasters and to dilute and mitigate hardships by equipping the affected ones with remedial measures.
The recent events occurring in one of the most developed countries, United States, have been the fall of the giant Corporates to the utter dismay of stakeholders therein, which could neither be contemplated in the recent past either by the management (may be intentional hiding) or by the Auditors (whose role is to report any irregularity in the accounts if the regulating laws have been overlooked - accepting that scope of his duties in discharge of his functions, does not include future projections).
The failure like that on the part of rain pundits, of the "Analysts" to predict the nearby fate of the said corporates, is attributed to the trend among most of the experts to take a "broad view" of the matter rather than "in-depth" one. Perhaps our education, training and licensing systems for the people in the profession of Accounting and Auditing, do not teach us to look "deep" rather than "through the breadth" of the issue. The era is of specialization. Let us accept it, so that ICAI Council continues to the allowed to function as a autonomous body so far the matters concerning conduct of the Chartered Accountant is concerned or else a day is not far when an outside Board is formed to regulate the Institute and the Profession, may it be the need of the hour or an experiment on the part of the Government.
As a Chairman of NEWS AND VIEWS committee for the year 2001-02, this is my last editorial communication and I take this opportunity to thank the contributors and compilers of the materials enriching the magazine of our Association and maintaining its utility to the readers during our tenure.