Business | Ramu Das

I walk from home for office. I stretch my neck and look up toward the sky. It’s dark and cloudy. Today, it might rain, I think. I have been thinking the same for the past few days. I look for my umbrella but it is nowhere in sight. It has been a year that I made any use of it and god knows where it is. Maybe I can buy a brand new umbrella, but I ain’t got no time for it. I don’t want to be late in my office once again like I was yesterday; I’m least inclined to receive a piece of the senior manager’s mind.

Now I’m in my office’s premises. Just as I’m about to go onto the elevator, so it can carry me to the fifth floor where my office is, the sky roars with all its might and gives me a start. It is going to rain, now I’m dead certain. The sky didn’t roar this season until today.

Upon reaching my desk, I pull the chair from behind the desk and switch on the computer system. The computer glows, I look out the window, and what I see brightens me up: it’s raining, and it’s raining ferociously.

Tip, tip, tip, comes the sound of falling rain. It’s falling incessantly – tip, tip, tip – and I know it won’t stop any time sooner. The rain bangs the windowpane of my cabin aggressively. I open the window a little and a few drops of rain falls on my trousers, soaking it wet.

Now, I am visible to my colleagues and a broad smile comes on their faces as well as on my face. As they pass by my desk, they greet me with ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ and I greet them back. On full swing I continue my 9 hours shift and time slips away so swiftly that now I’m ready to go back home.

By the same lift I go down to the ground floor, but lo, what with the roads covered with water all over up to my knees! No passenger vehicle is visible to me, and as I said earlier I got no umbrella to protect me from the rain.

Why, I wonder, should there be a winter vacation and a summer vacation, and no vacation during the rainy days? What would be nicer than spending the rainy days with a cup of tea to sip and some good books to read! So heavenly it would be to spend the rainy days listening to the most melodious of music, or watching the best of movies, and I would prefer silence as much as all other things. Why, at all, do I have to go to office and work! “Money!” cries the heart. Yes, how else will I fill the stomach?

I’m waiting under the cover of a shop for the rain to thin out a little so I can step ahead and walk homeward. It will take at the most 15 minutes for me to reach home paddling. I wait for the rain to thin out. I wait. Two hours have passed; the rain isn’t falling as ferociously as before, now it’s just drizzling. At this hour, that is to say, midnight, the road is empty. I’m the solitary walker, save for a few cars running on and off.

With great difficulty, I walk the road, and now I climb up the steps to my room. I insert the key in the keyhole of the lock and grab the knob of the door and push it. Duh, what is this I see?! The floor is full of water (at least five inches high), where did it come from I cannot tell for sure. As I touch the mattress of my bed, I observe its dampness. Perhaps I can find some leaks somewhere in the ceiling of my room, and if I am successful in doing that, I promise, I wouldn’t hesitate not to pay a month’s rent to the property owner. And, if the owner of the flat tries to act tough, I will blow his head… just kidding.

At first, the management of my college wanted the students to finish and submit the project, which every final year students had to compulsorily write, by the 24^th of December 2012. But then they postponed it to 26^th of December. And on the 8^th of January, 2013, we faced the Viva.

For those who do not know what a Viva is, let me say: Viva or Viva Voce is a spoken examination held at the end of a University Course. A good friend of mine had in one of his comments on one of my post asked me if I could write about the Viva once it is conducted, and I said I would be glad to do that. I am writing this here not just because that friend had asked me to, but because I know I need to write something. It’s not going to be everything but just the synopsis.

I wrote a project titled “Making Corporate Governance Meaningful”. The copy consists of seventy-nine pages (leaving aside pages numbered in Roman).

Corporate Governance, in simple words, means the systems, principles and processes by which a company is directed and controlled.

Globalization is the most current and demanding arenas where corporations have to define and legitimate the ‘right or wrong’ of their behavior. A lot of issues emerge in the process relating to cultural, legal and accountability. However, serious efforts have been directed at overhauling the system. Every day we read in the papers about corporate scandals, government failure, etc. A corporate scandal is a scandal involving allegations of unethical behavior by people acting within or on behalf of a corporation. Corporate scandals sometimes involve accounting fraud of some sort. If we happen to look at the list of corporate scandals around the world and particularly in India, the list can go and on, and it is startling!

Therefore, ethics can play a crucial role in making corporate governance meaningful. There should be a moral responsibility, which need not be necessarily taught, but it is something that comes from within oneself. Many everyday business activities require the maintenance of basic ethical standards, such as honesty, trustworthiness and cooperation. One must know the difference between vice and virtue. One must not think that the shareholders’ interest means the interest of all, nor can one compromise the rights of other stakeholders. Failure in Corporate Governance is a real threat to the future of every corporation; therefore, the auditing standard has to be improved. Auditing should comply with international standards.

Well, yes I had to refer some books while writing this, and I had to simply copy some of the things, because somebody has already written about the subject, and I had to simply reproduce that. How can I change something that really is! All my classmates did the same, but they, very shamefully, directly copied everything from other peoples’ project report.

If you simply type a certain topic on Google you get it. There are already a lot of project reports in PDF format over the internet which my friends easily access, and they very easily change the original author’s name, and copy-and-past, and produce the whole thing saying it is their own work! That, too, without changing or modifying the contents! Most of my classmates didn’t even understand or tried to understand the contents.

Writing the project, to speak the truth, wasn’t my cup of tea, though I learnt a lot. I have a good imagination power, and I like writing stories, mostly fiction, but partly based on reality. I am a realist, you see.

Shreyanshi Awasthi was the external examiner’s name. She spoke with me for more than 20 minutes, while with others she spoke not more than 10 minutes. We spoke about many things, apart from the project, ranging from the issues in our country; we spoke about nationality, language, literature, etcetera and etcetera. At one instance she asked me what my interests were. Among other things, I said writing is one. Then she asked me in which language I write. When I said English she appeared a little disappointed, and enquired why I don’t write in Bengali (which is my mother tongue) or in Hindi, which is spoken by most of us in India. And finally she asked me a few questions related to the project. How lucky I was! Though I read the whole project thoroughly but I knew what she would ask me (I assumed it). I was fully prepared for it in advance. And she did what I thought!

She was so much impressed by my answers that she asked me what grade I wanted. I answered, “Ma’am, whatever you think fit.”

“ Hmm m… alright!” she sighed.

“Could you mail me the softcopy of your project; I really like it, and would like to read more?” She asked with a smile on her face.

“Sure.”

While parting from the classroom where we were having the conversation, she said, “Glad to meet you, Ramu Das.” She put her right hand forward to shake mine.

“Glad to meet you, too, ma’am,” I replied promptly. And firmly with my right hand gave her hand a manly shake.

A Thinking Man