Firstly, I previously interned at the Byrraju Foundation, an NGO started by Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced Director of Satyam Computers, who is also a well-known philanthropist. Even though the NGO operates as a separate entity from Satyam and its subsidiaries, the staff at the Foundation talk about the Raju family with great awe and respect. There is immense pride in working for a Foundation bearing the Raju family's legacy, and at the same time following the time-honoured tradition of giving back to the community.
As the recruitment for new interns to work at the Foundation steps up in SMU, I often wonder how different an atmosphere they will encounter at the Foundation.
Secondly, this is the most significant scandal to come out of corporate India in many years (probably the first?). Until recently, Indian companies have never generated the same controversy as their US, Chinese and European counterparts. Instead, they have built up a steady reputation for diligence, excellence, value-for-money, and of course corporate responsibility.
From a PR perspective, the Satyam scandal threw all of that out of the window because Satyam was often seen as a corporate leader, a first-mover whom others followed, and ironically, they were seen as a role model in corporate governance. Now, there is rife talk that the scandal will not just force current and potential customers around the world to think twice before they outsource to Indian BPOs, but also affect the rest of corporate India.
With this, coupled with the current economic crisis that is affecting the real economy and even eating into the low-cost companies' bottemlines, how will the world and corporate India respond? This is a trend to watch in 2009.
Thirdly, this episode has come at a bad timing for global philanthrophy. The Madoff scandal in the US has shown us that even big-name philanthropists like Bernard Madoff are still susceptible to greed and not everything may be as rosy as it seems beyond the smiling faces and the feel-good image that philanthropists often portray when they talk of giving their wealth back to society.
But while it is easy for the media to portray these philanthropists as villains who have sucked investors of their money, are we overstepping the gun by doing so? An email from a friend who used to work at Satyam offers a different perspective on this issue:
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Dear all of my Satyam Friends,
Yesterday will be a memorable day to us throughout our life. Little bit of business & human nature knowledge is forcing me to write few of my thoughts (Please ignore them if they doesn’t make any sense). Ask yourself who is worst affected by all this mayhem. Is it u & me (employees), Govt or Satyam & Ramalingaraju ?. My conviction says that employees of any MNC are associated to that company as long as they don’t have any better option, the best thing government can do for a company is to keep itself away from it. But there was a visionary who created wealth for a nation for 20 years, the only thing that cannot be separated from satyam for these 20 years & ahead also if satyam remains was\is a name called “Ramalinga Raju”.
Fortunately I got some 15 min of time talking to him when i was an ELTP. He’s much softer then we see him. Imagine what would be going on in his mind when he was writing yesterday’s letter accepting all the things which he did only to save his company. All have made him scapegoat for what has happened & left the company keeping their integrity intact. He was cursed badly for putting the money of a public limited company into his family driven company but it only now clear that how he was transferrring the risk from 50,000 people to his two sons & his known-integrity.
The worst which can happen to we the employees is that we are out of our current job, jobless for time being & then again getting a job which we deserve & our families will be worried for us(as they are always). But a relatively bitter truth will be for the Raju-family who will be annoyed for ages & will be treated as miscreants by those who do not know the truth or more about Greedy investors & money market. And the truth is that he has not stolen some thousand crores rupees into his own pocket, it was a bubble he created which busted. (And every other company on earth does so, being wary of not getting trapped)
One more thing which annoys me is does a philanthropist guy deserve this disgraceful exit ? I really feel sad about the way he’s been portrait in the media. Our rustic fellows have already started comparing him with Harshad Mehta. Tell me any incident in corporate India where any chairman has dared to confess such irregularities in his own firm. And believe me it takes hell lot of guts to accept all this publicly. And as I read the news today morning it was published there that even his community members have suggested him not to tell anything and later on he can play with the Indian laws as every politician does in India. But as he mentioned it was all deep regret in his conscience which lead him to confess all this.
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So while Ramalinga Raju will have his more than fair share of the blame, let's not make him a scapegoat for the inadequacies of the Indian regulators and auditors in doing their job properly.
