Dear Fellow Members,
As I write this first ‘From the President’, I am filled with a sense of humility and honor. It is a singular honor for a third generation member of the Society to write these pages as its 67th president. As my team considers the road that will unfold before us, I am well aware of the diversity of the BCAS membership and our credo to serve members with the best possible learning events and tools.
At the Society, we have based our theme on three words – Learn, Share and Grow. The next 12 months are bound to be professionally stimulating ones, with Ind ASs, GST, Income Computation and Disclosure Standards, the Black Money Act and Internal Financial Controls amongst other topics taking shape. BCA Journal, as always, will cover those topics through articles and features.
When you receive this Journal it will be August, a month when we celebrate our 69th Independence Day. For some of us who grew up without any sacrifice to win independence, do not know and cannot feel enough of what it is to live in a nation that is Independent of foreign rule. It is never enough to look back and understand what foreign occupation does to a civilization.
When the British arrived in India, our share of the world Economy was about 20%, and when they left it was less than 4%. India was governed for the benefit of a few million British or even few hundred Englishmen. In fact, Britain’s rise was financed by India. That was not it though! The entire fabric of India’s strength was attacked in 150 years of colonisation. The weavers, the artisans and the tradesmen, whose products were sought after across the globe, became beggars. From being an exporter of goods, India became the world’s biggest purchaser of British goods. Indian taxes were used to pay British civil servants and running the government machinery that oppressed the Indians and benefited the British private enterprises.
The impact on collective social capital was even bigger. This invasion was of a higher order, an invasion on our mindset and fundamental values. For example, the colonial rule brought an education system that was perhaps diametrically opposed to India’s own temperament. It projected Europe as democratic and progressive, and on the other hand, they pursued a systematic condemnation of Indian culture, traditions, crafts, cottage industries, and social institutions. Anand Coomaraswamy, the famous art critique writes:
It is hard to realize how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future. The greatest danger for India is the loss of her spiritual integrity. Of all Indian problems the educational is the most difficult and most tragic.
A form of that colonisation still continues in our present rote learning based education system and socialistic pattern. Consider, delegitimizing business class in a pseudo socialistic pattern adopted post 1947. However, nearly 50% of GDP comes from unincorporated or informal sector and about 15% from corporate sector, (listed companies being only 5%). Most of these smaller, independent enterprises are really the cornerstone people’s dignity and self-sufficiency. But the media remains focused on this small segment of listed entities, flashing them in news and giving an impression that they are the barometer of our progress.
In the last 68 years, we have not overcome all our problems, we have even created some. As a nation we perpetuate racial, ethnic, religious, narrow minded whims and bad governance. Yet, we have come a long way – we developed indigenous missile technology, our scientists sent a spacecraft to Mars at a cost lower than that of a Hollywood movie, our communities uplift their fellowmen out of deprivation, family values still hold good, we are a surplus food grains country, our banking system opened millions of bank accounts in just a few months, Indians living abroad sent more than $70 billion in 2013-14 which is more than the total FDI inflows.
On 15th August, we celebrate this socio culturally unique phenomena called INDIA. It can neither be run as a market economy nor through a socialistic policy. We have poverty, but we are not poor, we are tolerant, but aren’t weak. Workers may not have a degree, but have skills. Whether you are a Chartered Accountant sitting on the 16th floor office or living in a village cooking from a bio gas stove, slowly but firmly colonisation of our mind is ending. We are BELIEVING that TOGETHER we can be a developed nation. Paradoxes don’t stop us from marching on in our common journey with greater youthful confidence.
Gurudev Tagore, in his immortal prayer, portrayed a dream of a new and awakened India in the most exquisite and heartfelt way. Reading it even for the 100th time, still gives me goose bumps. I leave you with it:
