D. Murali

THE recipe for gathering big numbers at Institute conferences is no longer a secret. Dole out a big number as `credit' for continuing professional education and have all the other standard ingredients, such as big names for inaugural and valedictory sessions, well laid out presentations, food, kit, stalls and so on. Ah, don't forget to have a theme, even if it doesn't convey much, as it happened at the recently concluded all-India event held in Chennai. The more one looked at the phrase, "enrichment for excellence", the more confusing it appeared.

In any meet of this nature, there is usually at least one speaker who lauds the organisers for the theme as being very thoughtful, capturing the spirit of the profession, conveying the right message to the world outside and so on. Well, excellence was explained as what CAs are capable of — you know already that they are the best in the world — but enrichment was left, probably as anybody's guess. I guess that whoever thought of the pitch-line should have had as inspiration before him a tin of baby-food where messages announce the product to be vitamin or calcium enriched and so on. Or reading a review of "SpiderMan for PlayStation 2" on how "aside from the normal enriched story mode, there are varies training modes to improve one's handling of SpiderMan."

However, to test out my hypothesis, I asked a CA, "Hey, buddy, what do you make out of the theme?" He looked at me quite belligerently to answer, "A/C is not working!" I reasoned with him that it was a big hall, not a thatched shed as used in political conclaves, but there was another accountant who came by to get talking about the conference idea: "The programme is enriched with excellent topics!" He had a volunteer badge and so I moved on to get some independent opinion, as from a member busy taking notes: "In fact, I became poorer by Rs 1,000," he said. "May be all the inputs they give here will pay me back manifold."

Again, I caught up with my neighbour in the queue for the kitbag: "Somebody is getting rich in the process," he said. "And that enrichment is for getting something excellent!" A veteran CA could not wait to clear my doubt: "You see, we all end up getting rich and richer, with economy on a double march and the feel-good refusing to go away with the change in government. Only difference is that CAs should use their enrichment for excellence."

Too idealistic, too vague, and too amateurish, so let's leave it at that. The inaugural session dragged on for about two hours with nothing much said, except each one scratching the others' backs and generally passing on many mementos. I begin to wonder if it may become necessary to have some guidelines on presenting gifts and accounting for the same. Like, for example, how to audit a voucher that is for a hefty sum spent for buying and presenting dignitaries with `tokens of appreciation'.

Would anybody know if the giver squirreled away the thing and put a fake inside a well-wrapped box and cameras captured the event, as usual, on second takes?

Nobody puts a cash memo inside the gift-pack nor would any decent guest call back to recheck on the gift. That perhaps justifies the FM's new twist to gift tax regime, bringing in the `unrelated' angle.

About the press meet that the Institute arranged, less said the better.

Its president got stumped by the `Lodha' questions and responded with, `we're watching the situation' or some such which didn't mean much. "Somebody has to complain to the Institute before we can initiate disciplinary proceedings," was a line that many failed to digest, in view of the wide media coverage of the will fallout.

To a different question, on whether there were any disciplinary cases pending against the council members, the Institute honcho replied he would not be able to say, and that nothing had come up to him.

Is there an urgent need to enrich the ICAI's communications with some plainness, rather than add masks of inscrutability?

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