Former Satyam chief may have siphoned cash - NYT

B. Ramalinga Raju, the founder and former head of Satyam Computer Services may have skimmed huge amounts of cash from the company, rather than padded its books as he claims, according to a report in the New York Times that cited a person involved in the Satyam investigation.

Satyam, India's No. 4 software services exporter, has been battling for survival since Raju resigned as chairman earlier this month, revealing profits had been falsified for years and that $1 billion of cash on the books did not exist.

Investigators looking into the fraud have found a maze of about 300 companies related to Raju that were used to siphon as much as $1 billion in cash from Satyam, the report said, citing a senior official involved in the inquiry.

The article said the picture emerging from the investigation of Satyam is very different from the one painted by Raju in a letter to Satyam's board earlier this month.

In the letter, Raju said about $1 billion of Satyam's cash was "non-existent" and that he had falsified its profits for years to avoid losing control of the company.

Raju said neither he nor his brother, B. Rama Raju, who co-founded Satyam, "took even one rupee/dollar from the company."

The New York Times report, citing the person involved with the investigation, said the entire $1 billion Raju said was faked might have actually been earned by the company but then skimmed from it.

A spokesman for Satyam declined to comment on the report.

The report said Raju's lawyer did not return calls seeking comment

'Satyam con will have a huge impact on India Inc'

The Satyam controversy has come as a rude shock and is going to have a larger impact on India Inc. The roles of independent directors, the external auditing agencies and the regulatory mechanisms will undergo major upheaval.
This was the verdict that emerged at a congregation of human resource and business experts at the three-day Nirma International Conference on Management (NICOM 2009), which started here on Thursday.
Dalit Mirchandani, chairman, Ingersol Rand, India, who was the chief guest, said: "The Statutory Audit Committee in every company relies solely on the audit report. It is surprising how a fraud of this magnitude escaped at least three filters."
He elaborated on such frauds being related to issues of corporate governance in India, as the majority of businesses here are family-run. "Unless the Indian corporates learn to attract and retain the best of talent, my advice to them is always to exit from business," Mirchandani added.
Endorsing this, Prof Allan Cohen, former Harvard professor and co-founder of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said: "The situation in the west is the same. Although on the face of it, the hierarchy may appear neutral, the underlining issues don't differ much."
Another issue that the delegates at the NICOM, which aims for 'Strategic Human Resource Management and Entrepreneurship in the Changing Business Scenario', discussed was the ailing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Gujarat.
Suggesting a three-pronged strategy to tackle such problems, Mirchandani said: "All stakeholders in the SME sector must develop a future organisational model for growth; attract and manage human talent; and must learn risk mitigation while enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship."

GHAJINI - The film

Tamil version :

The film was a super hit in Tamil. It was directed by A.R. Muruga Dhas, the third film for him as a director. The other two films were Dheena and Ramana, both the films were a great hit in the industry. Ghajini was his third film and the film was starred by Surya and Asin. The screen play was excellent so is the story of the film.

Story:

Actually Surya is a business magnet and Asin gets some contact with him accidentally. The interesting thing is that she doesn’t know him as a business magnet but as an ordinary man. Surya fells in love and expresses it to her as an ordinary man. He wanted to make her knew the truth only if she accepts his love. Before he tells the truth there comes a situation for both of them to travel to different places. On Asin’s journey she saves some girls who were under the custody of villain group. After finishing her travel she returns home and Surya comes there to meet her. At the same time the villain group waits there to kill Asin. And both Surya and Asin will be attacked by that group and Asin is killed and Surya severely injured. The scenes where both were attacked is the best they could have imagined. It was excellently filmed and no words to express. Hats off to everyone who worked for that. The whole part described above comes in flash back.

The film starts with surya suffering from a disease. The disease is that he forgets every thing in every five minutes. That is his memory gets cleared for every five minutes. So he has a camera, some digital calendar/diary and photo always with him so that he could remember what to do and who their friends are. He will have some mobile number and some persons name written in his body so that he could make him remember such things. He plans and kills persons and he misses one for the first time. Police will be searching for the person. The second heroine comes here who is a medical student. She just wanted to know about the diseased Surya and she collects more details. She comes to know that it’s Surya who tried to kill that person and informs it to the one who escaped from him. First the second heroine acts against Surya; later on reading the diaries which she had collected it from Surya’s room she helps him to kill that person. Actully that person was the one who killed Asin. The whole flash back comes when the second heroine reads the diary.

Hindi( dubbed ) version :

Directed by the same director A.R.Muruga Dhas on Amir Khan’s request. The role of Surya is performed by Amir Khan and Asin holds her place in Hindi too. Hope the director would have corrected the small mistakes that he had made in Tamil. There is no doubt that the film is going to be a super hit as everyone ranks the story at the top.

Survey results : Sachin is India's role model

Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar has been voted as India's role model of health and happiness in a countrywide survey initiated by a magazine.

According to the survey done by global research firm Synovate for 'Complete Wellbeing' magazine for its December issue, out of 320 nominations, Tendulkar emerged as the best, a media release said.

Alongside Tendulkar, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan and former President A P J Abdul Kalam emerged in the top three bracket.

Tendulkar, who only on Monday guided India to a sensational Test victory in Chennai against England, expressed pleasant surprise at being crowned as the top role model of health and happiness.

"Is it true? My countrymen think I am the healthiest and happiest person in the country? What a compliment! I am truly overwhelmed. I will cherish this compliment forever," Tendulkar was said to have reacted to the survey results, the release added.

Donate to the died soldiers

Hello people! Can you donate only Rs. 3 to the died soldiers family of Mumbai incident by sending a text as SALAAM to 56388. Its an NDTV initiative . Hope you will do.

Realize the fact: Past and future are not there

Our mind finds it hard to accept the fact that the two tenses other than the present are not there. But the reality is that both past and future are virtual or imaginary. Coming to the point, consider a point of time so that it could be treated as present. Then the previous time period is said to be the past and the coming period to be the future. If you plot a graph with the above statements you could find that the past pushes the present where as the future gets destructed giving way to the present. In such a case where could we plot the present? Is it there no present?
Take an example...
A guy is standing under a coconut tree and another one is at the top of the tree. The one at the top has to pluck the coconuts and put it down. So he asks the one who is beneath him to see if any vehicle comes so that the work shall be stopped for a moment and let the vehicle go making sure that the vehicle does not have any damage while putting the coconuts down. And a vehicle comes and the one underneath informs to stop the work. So, the guy who is at the top stops his work and watches the vehicle to go past from there. After a moment the one underneath asks the person above to restart his work as the vehicle has passed away. The one above looks for the vehicle and he could still find it moving. Actually as he is at a greater height he could find the car moving but it’s not visible to the one underneath. Both men are true to their knowledge. For the one underneath, now the scene (car scene) is past and to the one at the top it’s present. The same thing is viewed differently from the same place at different heights.
When you raise your attitude and vision to greater altitudes you could realize past and future to be virtual/imaginary and it’s only the present that rules/holds everything

Chennai rains - NOV 2008

One of the worst rains Chennai has ever come accross. Lots of people suffered as they even couldn't step out to shops to get things and sure the daily life got disturbed. People got struck into their houses for almost a week . Just now the climate has changed a bit and now its fine.

Wanna know how much it rained in chennai.. Just view the pictures below.

Warne doubts Ganguly's Leadership/Batting

Shane Warne has good things to say for almost all the top-100 cricketers of his choice in his book but could not camouflage his dislike for former India captain Sourav Ganguly in whom he found neither the hallmarks of a great batsman nor an extraordinary leader."Sourav Ganguly might not be my cup of tea as a bloke, but what he did for Indian cricket has to be respected," he said justifying the Indian's inclusion in his book 'Shane Warne's Century'."He is a feisty sort of character, not short of self-confidence or unaware of his standing in Indian life. He is regarded over there, especially around his teeming home city of Calcutta, as one of the greatest ever Indian captains. They won more games under him than anybody else, so I guess the statistics back that up. Personally, I am not so sure," he said."I think he had some outstanding players and solid characters in the team. Do you need to be a great leader to win games with Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble in the ranks. Tactically, he was not among the best leaders I came up against, and his management skills left a bit to be desired."Warne felt Ganguly was not outstanding as a batsman and said even minnows Bangladesh tried to encash on his vulnerability to short-pitched bowling."I think that every bowling attack in the world, even Bangladesh, has tried to get him with the short ball or has placed a couple of gullies for those left-handed slashes that he likes." "Maybe his strength is in one-day cricket, where there are strict rules on the use of bouncers... He can also play some glorious looking drives with perfect timing, like most of the Indian batmen," Warne said."...But he did have the knack of rubbing up opponents (and even teammates when he went to Lancashire) the wrong way without seeming to try very hard."When we arrived in India in 2000, in the middle of our really good run, he said that we had only beaten weak teams in the past. Funny, that, as India were one of them."Warne also does not seem to have pardoned Ganguly for making then Australia captain Steve Waugh wait for the toss in the 2000 Kolkata Test."He would also be late for the toss and then walk off on his own without waiting for Steve Waugh, our captain. To be a minute or so behind because an issue crops up is one thing, but more than that is just taking the mickey."He will say that the results are in the book and, yes, India did beat us in that series -- thanks, I would say, to a great stand between Laxman and Dravid at Calcutta and Harbhajan's bowling rather than any tactical genius on Ganguly's part."Warne also took a dig at Ganguly, saying "Supporters know him as the Prince of Calcutta'. The story is that he gave himself the nickname and it stuck."Ditto were his feelings for former Sri Lanka skipper Arjuna Ranatunga, whom, Warne has confessed, he did "not like" and found "irritating". "Through gritted teeth, I have put Arjuna Ranatunga in my 100... because everybody knows I don't like Ranatunga... if there was any way I could knock him down to number 101 for the purposes of this book, I'd be delighted to do so," Warne wrote."The basic problem I had with Ranatunga was his attitude towards the game. He didn't play cricket in the right spirit and tried to manipulate the laws and regulations without actually breaking them," he said."I can remember occasions when he led his team off the field because he was unhappy with an umpiring decision, ordered an umpire where to stand behind the wicket, called for a runner by faking injury to disguise his own fitness - he looked as though he'd swallowed a sheep - and told his teammates not to shake our hands after a match..."Warne felt Ranatunga enjoyed being known for his autocratic ways and the Sri Lankan was clear that he was not out there "to win popularity contest"."He was described as a little Napoleon early in his captaincy career and I think he took it as a praise... he was so irritating... I have not heard a good word for him from a single international player outside Sri Lanka."The spin wizard found it funny that Ranatunga idolised former Australia skipper Allan Border."It was funny to see him puffing and panting after a chase. He once said that he based his game and attitude on Allan Border. Border would be horrified to know that," he said but added "Putting all the baggage aside, he was quite a talented batsman, especially against spin."

NOTHING IS DIFFICULT FOR US – Reply of a brave heart

The above words are from an Indian commando who had just finished the operation cyclone (operation that went on the Hotel Taj). As a reply for the question “How difficult it was for you to battle against the terrorist” by a reporter the Indian commando spelled the following words “NOTHING WAS DIFFICULT FOR US IN FACING THE TERRORIST”. It shows the spirit of the people who actually fought. Those words won’t come from a person who works to earn for him. Probably because he serves (actually I can’t and won’t put the word worked here even though they are paid) for the country and the civilians, he could have spelled out those words. I am proud to see the service they (the security departments) do and the security they provide, risking their life. They have succeeded in their operation and a few security persons have lost their life in providing the security for us (the Indians). I salute each and every security person for their brilliant work. The worrying factor is that the hard work is don by the army men who risked their life and the bleady politicians is gonna take the reward. If it happens this time too its a shame on us(Every Indian).
Also I heard that the General Manager of the Hotel Taj had lost his wife and his two children in the very same hotel during the attack. Even then he was there in the hotel lobby providing the information (about the hotel infrastructure/layout, so and so...) to the security till the operation got over. Hats off to him for his service.

Some of my questions to the Indian Government

Is it yet another terror attack as it had happened in the past?
We don’t need a Govt. that says “yes, yet another”. And a Govt. is not meant for that.

What steps were taken after the previous attacks?
We don’t need such steps that can’t provide security and that has allowed another attack.

Is the 500000 rupees a compensation for a person’s life?
Expecting the response for this question very sharply. However a human life can’t be compensated.

How much compensation for the Policemen’s life?
Is it the same 500000? I have to quote something here. When a sports person wins something you the Govt. offer him an amount that I’m not going to mention that is several times larger than the one you offer for the policemen/army/commando who has sacrificed his life for the safety of the people that includes every Indian. I feel bad that a person who sacrifices his life is offered much lower than the sportsmen who won somewhere. Both of them have brought pride to the nation. The nations should have felt more proud about the army men than the sports men. Right?

Have you succeeded in providing security to the public?
If “yes” why such attacks happen; that too not once in a while but frequently. If “NO” why don’t you leave way for someone who can provide that security?

Visitor’s comments are most welcomed...