Saturday, March 16, 2013

Famous Chartered Accountants (CA) Part - 2.

After I published my article on http://www.caclubindia.com/ about famous chartered accountants , I came to know about some more famous Chartered Accountants (CA), courtesy: people who commented on my article. After reading about them too, my pride in my profession sought up like an inflated cash balance account. The following people are those who have pushed the benchmark of this profession higher than ever:

CA Harish Salve: The Courtroom Badass.

Harish Salve is currently one of India's leading lawyers, who primarily practices at the Supreme Court of India. His demeanor during argument is often forthright, even while appearing in constitutionally significant cases, often surprising judges and audiences
. In 2009, India Today magazine ranked him the 18th most powerful person in the country. Harish Salve was the face of Vodafone.
Recently, he represented the Italian marines in the Italian Marines case. He withdrew because the Italian government had reneged on its assurance given to the Supreme Court that the Marines would be produced before the appropriate Indian legal authorities.
He wanted to do engineering. He failed thrice in his CA exams.                                                                 More: More: http://www.taxtitans.com/index.php/my-name-is-harish-salve


CA Naina Lal Kidwai: The Businesswoman. 

A male dominant society and here she is: Naina Lal Kidwai, a chartered accountant by profession, is an Indian banker and business executive.
She is currently the Group General Manager and Country Head of HSBC India. She was the President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
She also holds a Bachelors degree in Economics from University of Delhi and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1982. She has repeatedly ranked in the Fortune global list of Top Women in Business, 12th in the Wall Street Journal 2006 Global Listing of Women to Watch and listed by Time Magazine as one of their 15 Global Influentials 2002.
                                                               
More:
http://thewaywomenwork.com/2011/05/naina-lal-kidwai/
http://www.forbes.com/2006/09/05/06women_india_slide.html


CA N.K.P. Salve
: The Cricketer Politician Dude!

A chartered accountant by profession, he played club cricket in Nagpur in his early years.  He was the president of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
It was during his tenure that India won the 1983 Cricket World Cup, plus he managed to get joint hosting right for the 1987 Cricket World Cup for India and Pakistan.
He was appointed a Union cabinet minister in 1982, under Indira Gandhi. He also remained chairman of the 9th Finance Commission of India. Father of CA Harish Salve.


More:
 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/NKP-Salve-Statesman-raconteur-visionary/articleshow/12497296.cms




CA Rahul Roy : The Reformer.

He was a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He headed ICAI when he was just 34, thus being the youngest person to head ICAI.  The highly acclaimed "campus interview" scheme was introduced by him when he chaired the Committee for Members in Industry of the ICAI.
He was also the director of Ernst & Young India Pvt. Ltd. His daughter Rohini has authored his biography "Remembering Baba" which has been published by Penguin India.


More: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/financial-statements-have-become-unintelligible-to-lay-readers/article1656387.ece?ref=archive 
CA Sanjay Subrahmanyan: The CArnatic Singer.

Sanjay is a Chartered Accountant and a rank-holding Cost Accountant
. . He later switched to vocal music and was trained by Rukmini Rajagopalan for a period of almost eight years. He has been the subject of documentary film Aaraar aasaippadaar by filmmaker Prasanna Ramaswamy. It opened to rave reviews in November 2006 in Chennai.  He has performed with excellence and has enthralled the music loving audiences in Chennai as well as in Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore, Delhi and other places all over India. He has toured Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, US, Canada, UK, Switzerland and Oman.
More: 
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-01-04/edit-page/27743792_1_carnatic-music-classical-music-music-concert

CA Visakha Hari: From Commerce to CAtha

She has a State rank (Commerce) in school, and an all India rank in Chartered Accountancy. Visakha Hari is a mesmerising harikatha artiste, enchanting audiences in Tamil Nadu, India and abroad. Her remarkable eloquence is matched only by her delightful singing. Neither is used to astound the listener. Rather, the skills are geared to move hearts. Visakha Hari's style bears the unmistakable stamp of humility. More:http://www.hindu.com/fr/2006/07/14/stories/2006071402080600.htm


CA T.N. Manoharan: The Padamshri; Satyam Shivam. 

He became a Chartered Accountant in 1983 and set up his public practice in the same year.
 He was elected to the central council of ICAI in 2001 and its Vice President in 2005. He remained as a Central Council Member till 2007. In 2009, Manoharan was one of the four members (as representatives of Government of India) appointed to the board of the scandal hit information technology company Satyam Computer Services for restructuring the company. In 2009, he won the CNN-IBN "Indian of the Year" award in the business category. He was awarded the Padma Shri  in 2010. More:
http://www.mahindrasatyam.com/about-mahindra-satyam/Manoharan.asp

Thursday, March 7, 2013

How to save yourself from being Plagiarised

One day, I was reading about IIM Alumni. The fact that so many of them had excelled and reached to great heights deep down frustrated me. I wanted to be one of them but then, I wasn't from the IIMs.

I am a Chartered Accountancy student and in order to get inspiration, I decided to search for CAs who have excelled and reached to similar and greater heights.

See, the problem is not with my profession. The problem is with this media. Every time an entrepreneur from IIM or IIT gets successful, the media never fails to highlight the fact that they are from IITs or IIMs. Have you ever seen the media adding B.Com grad or Uneducated or CA before an entrepreneur who is such? No.

I respect the people from IITs and IIMs a lot since it takes a lot of hard work and mental acumen to get into these prestigious institutes but somewhere I feel that the media is more focused on them and also, they get a lot of coverage
because most of them are into e-commerce business. 


So, moral of the story is that I was frustrated and I searched a lot and wrote an article.


The article was titled, “Famous Chartered Accountants”.
Just as a matter of fact, I wrote this article on Thursday, February 16, 2012




One random day, I thought of posting this article on http://www.caclubindia.com/articles/famous-chartered-accountants-16789.asp
I edited the article a bit because http://www.caclubindia.com/ is a website for professionals and since I actually wrote this article when I was a pretty rebel teenager, it had some funky words.






I was pleased when my article got amore than 7.5k hits, I had never received this kind of response on my  article or on any of the numerous poems that I had written before.
I even tweeted to CAclubIndia about it. Being the good people that they are, they also retweeted me.








 So Far, So Good.

Enters Bhavin Pathak:

http://www.caclubindia.com/profile.asp?subdomain=bhavinpathak#.UTik5KIi4Vg
https://www.facebook.com/bhavin.pathak

He successfully plagiarises my article and is busy earning the praise for the same.

The only foolish thing he did was that he wrote it on February 28, 2013 at 12:18pm







 
















































@Devyash Patel: Haa bhai, mera hi article hai.
@Bhavin Pathak: Chalega to hai hi; waha pe post kiya to turant sab samajh jayenge.

So, just because you have a wider reach doesn’t mean that you can plagiarise articles from students and post them as your own. Also, being a CA article; I have done loads of vouching and have checked thousands of invoices. So, I am adept at checking dates. 


Just a word of praise for Mr. Bhavin Pathak: I loved your edits.

  1. All the pictures: Good job man, all you did was run the search query in google.
  2. Adding information on Aditya Puri: “Her daughter is well-known actress named Amrita Puri, recently acted in Kai Po Che! and earlier she acted in Blood Money as well.” Seems like, you read more of Bollywood Magazines than you read Chartered Accountant journals.

So, this is how you stop yourself from being a victim of plagiarism; you show the true face of the people who plagiarise your articles.


Warm Regards:
The original writer of this article
Akash Sarawgi

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The most important in my family.


I always thought I was the most important member of my family until I started living at home. Having lived in a hostel for 8 years, I expected a warm welcome when I came home. Away from my parents for 8 years, I expected that I would be treated as the most important member of my family, it was going well until she stopped coming. My mom went crazy; she started searching desperately for her in every corner, calling random people in order to find a single trace of her. She could not be found anywhere; she was gone, long gone.  Earlier, I had seen my mom waiting for her; more desperately than she waited for dad but it didn’t bother me until she was gone.

My mom became frustrated, the same food that was very tasty earlier, somehow became tasteless. I decided that it was high time and I should be a responsible son. I started searching for her. I made calls to unknown aunties and knocked random doors to search her, following the directions from my mom.

I survived for three days without her then on the fourth day she came and said, “Meri saas bimar thi, phone kharab tha aur aaj se jhaadoo, poccha aur bartan ka 4000 hoga”. Even in times of hyper inflation my mom agreed.

Sometimes money doesn’t matter at all. For some people, it's their presence that is most important.  

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Famous Chartered Accountants


  • Last night I decided to check a few good and famous Chartered Accountants. I found CAs who have excelled in their field and reached to great heights.

Since we are not allowed to advertise I had to try hard and was able to come up with a few names.
  1. K.M Birla- The chairman of Aditya Birla (the Tata Birla wala Birla) Group. This guy is my main inspiration. A Marwari and a CA. I can almost connect with him (except the fact that he was born with a silver spoon). Also did MBA from London Business School.
  2. MotilalOswal - Co Promoter, Chairman & Managing Director of Motilal OswalGroup(As of end of financial year 2008, the group net worth was Rs.7 billion) . One of the dudes who said a no to their family business and did wonders withbroking business.
  3.  ShekharKapur - You know this guy if you have watched India’s Got Talent Season 1.He was the only guy who sat beside Sonali Bendre and he was there because he directed Mr. India. And yes he is a CA. The most amazing thing is that his Wikipedia profile says that he did CharteredAccountancy at the behest of his parents.
  4.  DeepakParekh - Padma Bhushan winner and the Chairman of HDFC. Quoting Wikipedia, “Apioneer in mortgage finance, he has enabled scores of Indian middle classpeople to own their houses or apartments through affordable loans.” This guyshould be the ideal role model for all chartered accountants. A bunch of rebelsmight have Shekhar Kapur as their role model too.
  5. S.Gurumurthy– The only greatest thing Abhishek Bacchan did apart from marrying AishwaryaRai was act in a movie called Guru. In the movie R.Madhvan plays an aggressive journalistwho is hell bent on exposing the corrupt means of reliance( guru’s company withsome other name in the movie).
    Guru is based on true events and R.Madhvan is strongly based on S. Gurumurthy. 
    Gurumurthy’sarticles in The Indian Express caused a national stir in the corporate worldand did massive damage to Reliance. Yes! Chartered Accountants have been glorified in the movies too.
  6.  AdityaPuri – MD of HDFC. We told you we are bad at advertising. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.
  7.  RakeshJhunjhunwala – Another Investor. A few boring facts that he is India’s 51strichest man and world’s 1062th. He has been described as the "Pied Piperof Indian bourses".
  8.  PrannoyRoy – The founder and Executive Chairman of NDTV. First cousin of ArundhatiRoy. Also studied at Queen Marry, University of London.  His father was known as Hurricane Roy.  Some people are just weird and successful.
  9.    RameshwarThakur – Senior Indian National Congress Politician. Former Governor of MP,AP, Kartnatka. Like a true politician, he is surrounded by controversies ofeating money.
  10.  T.V.Mohandas Pai –  (Imagine a guy with TV as his name). CFO of Infosys from 1994 to 2006. In 2000, he, along withothers, founded the Akshaya Patra Foundation, Bangalore, to start a midday mealprogram for school children. Today, the midday meal program feeds over12,00,000 children in 7,669 government schools across seven states in India,primarily in Bangalore's rural and urban areas, Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli,Mathura, Jaipur, Baran district of Rajasthan, Nayagarh district of Orissa,Puri, Bhilai, Guwahati, Ahmedabad and Vadodara. This initiative has turned outto be the largest midday meal program in the world.
  11. Shri K.Rahman Khan - A chartered accountant turned politician from Karnataka, anda long-time member of the Indian National Congress. He is the Deputy Chairmanof the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. Before holdingthe post of the Dy Chairman he was the Union Minister of State for Chemicalsand Fertilizers. Mr Khan is one of the most prominent Muslim leaders of thecountry.
  12. AkashSarawgi – Just another CA Aspirant. preparing for the final exams now. Took Science but loathed it more than anything. Finally studying commerce. Ok! I will shut up now.

    Wait… I am not even a Chartered Accountant.

    Since we are not allowed to advertise, you can always come up with more names. If you know more, please tell me too.


Monday, January 9, 2012

Do we really want to be corruption free?


The other day I and two of my friends had to go to play cricket. My bike’s rear tube had a whole in it. All of us rode on one bike and escaped a traffic check and were laughing on the incompetency of the traffic policeman to catch us and admiring my friend’s biking skills at the same time. Later did I realize that we had broken the law without paying for it.

 I thought about the other alternative: I could have spent about 100 bucks on an auto rickshaw after 10 minutes of painful bargaining. I would like to stress on the word painful because to me it seems that the auto drivers have some business mantra which may sound like, “A man in need is a man to be screwed”. Mumbaikars are one of the few lucky ones who do not have to go through this bargaining pain. Coming to the point, we had broken the law and didn’t pay for it. Yet we do not have any shame in sharing Anna Hazare's picture on Facebook titled, “Stop Corruption”. Do we really want to stop it?

The other day on the birthday of Legendary A.R Rehman I downloaded some of his songs from the website Songs.pk. Again I realized that I have done an act of corruption and by the ongoing rumors I have also funded the terror attacks on India.

As a Chartered Accountant student(yeah, we are the ones who save your money so that you don't give it in the hands of people you hate) I do have ethical dilemmas about Tax Planning. Is it morally correct? Whether manipulating the law in a systematic and legal way makes me honest? Am I really contributing to the nation ?

Tax has to be the best investment a man makes in his entire life. It is supposed to take care of the needy and the people who make this investment. It is supposed to improve our standard of living and provide us with a better country and a better infrastructure. Though for ages and years tax is shown under the Head “Expenses”. A finance minister is supposed to be the best man who can handle your money and when people get a feeling that their money is being mishandled then tax is termed as an expense and evaded.

By now, piracy is something that we all have committed. If you haven't done it yet then either your dad is a billionaire or possibly you don't know how to do it (which is very improbable). Many of us do piracy without  even knowing that we are doing something wrong but since "Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat" (Ignorance of law is not an excuse) you really don't have an excuse.

We even don't know how many times we have broken the laws of Motor Vehicles Act, 1998 and yet we are very pleased in supporting the cause of Anna Hazare's blindly.

Do we really want to have strict laws ? Are we of the opinion that corruption when done by others is crime and when done by us stands correct ? Do we really want to change the nation ? Do you swear that you won't touch a bike or a car before 18 ? Will you never download pirated stuff from internet ? Are you really ready to change? Isn't it that we want others to change without changing ourselves ?