Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Emergency - Dial 108

108 is the emergency number for ambulances. This is a dedicated sincere effort to serve the urban and rural unfortunate of AP by Ramalinga Raju. The same Ramalinga Raju who resigned from Satyam after some very unfortunate events. First of course was the corporate governance fiasco regarding acquisition of Maytas. Second the inflated profits and cash present on its balance sheet.
This has been touted as India's Enron.

But does Raju be deemed as a villian here? Was he being immoral, scandalous? In many cases legal acts turn out to be scandalous. But here is actual fraud, an illegal act but I won't deem it as being illicit or scandalous. Pardon my ignorance, but it might just be gambler's fallacy.

Raju was and I should say still would be a good samaritan. Unlike many other promoters, he just held an 8% stake in his company which meant he didn't lay a claim to a lot of the profits. His good deeds would be vouched for by millions of Andhraites. The problem here was that Satyam as a company while doing well was never able to make the next leap. Leading to a lot of frustration, Raju took on some highly questionable bets and these acts might just be ways to rationalize them. Here I am not justifying these acts, they should be condemned and have breached the confidence of a lot of investors. Even in the recession, people had faith in the India story which may be shaken now. I am only making a point that Raju should not be considered evil even after illegal acts. Surely he is a much bigger man that what has come out of all this.
This can be easily seen in the fact that he did not gain monetarily from all this.

Of course, the public would have forgotten all his good deeds by now would be gunning for his blood. Lets just hope the man who was so respected till some weeks back has the strength to face this crisis and still the drive to carry on the samaritan work.