Turbulent Times and My Sentiments

Today we are living in such a time where anything & everything is possible. We saw a upsurge in the mood of Indians over high speed growth of Indian economy, we saw a great reversal of mood also when Indian economy too, got caught in the Global Economic Tsunami despite numerous confidence statements by Finance minister that Indian economy is, to the extent, decoupled from world economy. I think Finmin upped the ante by saying this, as results of Corporate India, Industrial growth, Inflation etc proved Minister false and his claims baseless. Spate of steps were taken by RBI to tackle Inflation, while doing so they sacrificed Growth. Rising prices forced people to squeeze their spending habits, everybody was feeling the heat and decided not to burn fingers in such a volatile atmosphere, as a result demand dried up from the market be it for cars, consumer durables or luxury items. Sub Prime crisis of US fueled crisis of Indian Financial Institutions. They became wary of lending. Trust dried up from the markets. Inter bank lending rates increased so much that virtually applied brakes on fund transfers between various FIs/NBFCs . Corporates were not getting loans from banks to fund their operations. Many corporate postponed their expansion plans to the next five year period. On the other side, Indian Stock markets were bleeding by the bearish attack in which many investors lost their hard earned money. FIIs moved out from Indian Markets after sniffing uncertainties of Indian Economy. Crisis in USA led to decrease in Dollar value leading to dollar outflow from many countries which increased the demand of dollar and Rupee became weak against dollars.

I think this much was not enough. We came across to "Satyam Fraud". Fourth largest IT company's Chairman accepted $1b scam and accepted that Satyam's balance sheet was fabricated by corrupt deeds to quench greed, excessive greed for money which forced AP govt to incarcerate Raju for his dastardly act of cheating trust of Indian investors and tarnishing image of "Brand India". When the "greed for money" graduates to "greed for wealth" such scams become imminent. Few years ago I read an article about Ramlinga Raju as how he started with an idea of Satyam and made it one of the India's biggest IT giant employing more than 50000 employees spread across the globe promoting Brand 'India". I never thought that company like "Satyam" would flout all rules of Corporate Governance and will mar Corporate Indian Brand. It drew flak from many corporates and brand India got busy in strengthening its magical power of attracting business with parallel investigations into Satyam's to A-Satyam path. Much to the investigator's chagrin, this path was full of fraud, cheat, bribery, unethical means of making and diverting money etc. Satyam flouted all accounting rules and its balance sheet was full of "virtual Cash" which never existed with Banks which its balance sheet claimed. Further investigations could not convince us that Raju has large lands in and around Hyderabad in his or his family member's name. After all this, today there are as many as 25 lawyers who are fighting for Raju to make him escape the "punishments" from the law of land which he convincingly accepted virtually in his letter to SEBI.

According to me, we should take a break and reconfigure our laws and make them easily executable. Laws should accord more power to the executors. Besides, for extreme cases I have one idea on how to decide the punishment of the culprits who play with the Indian sentiments and trust. We in our democracy use "People Power" as "Supreme Power", as this power makes or breaks Governments. If this power exists so why cant we use it to decide the fate of culprits. If people can decide who can rule the country, cant they decide the fate of criminals. We can have a poll on various options of execution of "Raju" and then based on that verdict we can decide the fate of culprits. I know it is easier said than done but my point is, if this is not possible and then why Pan India is thinking Raju may go scot-free and he may not be disassociated with Satyam. If 25 lawyers can defend him for something which he had accepted himself in public through a letter written to Govt. What more play you want at courts ?