Reminiscences of the profession in the Society

In those days, the important meetings were felicitation of
the President of the Institute, which were normally held at Radio Club in
informal atmosphere and constituted important source of information about the
Institute and its activities. The other annual feature was the talk on the
Budget by late N. A. Palkhivala. These meetings were held at the Greens Hotel,
which is now no more there. The attendance by the members was large but can-not
be compared to the meetings held in later years at the Brabourne Stadium by
Forum of Free Enterprise.

I also remember the first conference held by the Society at
Taj, which was attended by many senior members of the profession and many
subjects of professional interest were discussed at the conference. The meetings
were also addressed, amongst others by R. P. Dalal, who was earlier the member
of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and who humorously introduced himself as
out-standing member of the Tribunal after retirement from the Tribunal. The main
characteristic of the Study Circle and Lecture meetings was the informal
atmosphere in which they were held.

But the more notable feature of the Society was that normally
the President was selected by the Committee of the past Presidents taking into
consideration the erudition and leadership qualities of the person and was
respected by the members except on one or two occasions. This healthy tradition
is continued till today. There was scope for aspiring members of the Society to
work in honorary capacity as Committee members, Secretary and Treasurer and also
without being members of the Committee. The seeds of democracy and
responsibility as good professionals were sown by the members during their work
for the Society.

Another landmark stage was reached when the Society hired the
Office of Circle Literaire for its Study Circle and lecture meetings usually
held on Wednesdays. It was not necessary to know a single word of the French
language to attend the meetings there ! ‘60, Forbes Street’ became the famous
address of BCA Society for a number of years. The larger space gave a boost to
the Study Circle and lecture meetings and the publication of the Journal of the
Society, which was issued in cyclostyled form and which was the precursor of the
present ‘The Bombay Chartered Accountant Journal’ of the Society. One cannot
forget the services of Shyam Argade, as the editor of the Journal for a number
of years. The Study Circle and Lecture meetings gave opportunity, encouragement
and confidence to the new members to participate in the meetings. The meetings
of the Managing Committee were usually followed by dinner of the Committee
members and Past Presidents, which was frequently held at Ripon Club, Opp.
Bombay University.

But the real contribution of the Society to the profession
was by its leading role in representation to the authorities concerned on tax
matters and other professional problems relating to the Companies Act,
Partnership Act, etc. and the educational programmes like Seminars, Residential
Refresher Course, Workshops, etc., I remember the stormy meeting held at the
Greens Hotel to oppose tooth and nail the introduction of Rule to certify Income
Tax Return of the clients, a move fraught with danger to the professional filing
his clients’ Tax Returns.

One of the interesting features of the social activities was
the annual picnic of the members to Mahableshwar and Matheran, Lonavala, Pune,
Malavali Fort, etc. The present generation will not be able to believe that one
of the courses organised by the Society was at Mahableshwar for a charge of Rs.6
per day including boarding. Likewise, the annual social held more or less
regularly every year provided musical programmes including veteran Music
Directors like Naushad, not to mention the Qawali programme of Shakila Banoo
Bhopali on the boat cruise. A memorable event in one of these programmes was the
failure of the brakes of the car on ‘Ghat Road’ of Homi Banaji, one of the
amiable members and President of the Society. Likewise, the distinguished
gallery of the Presidents included personalities like late S. V. Ghatalia, S. N.
Desai, and E. C. Pavri besides the trinity of Shri Dinubhai, Shri Ambalal and
Shri Narandas.

The Society was the first to organise a Residential Refresher Course at Matheran under the Presidentship of P. N. Shah, which was inaugurated by S. P. Mehta whom the Society had accepted as the Hon. Member. The faculty included Bansi Mehta and I had the opportunity to write my first paper at the RRC on the evergreen subject of depreciation, which never depreciated in its value. Since then the Society has organised the course every year and is one of the most popular programmes, for which the enrolment is full within hours of the commencement and faster than some of the listed companies’ issues. This pioneering activity was followed by other professional bodies including Western Indian Regional Council of Chartered Accounts, Chamber of Tax Consultants and All India Federation of Tax Practitioners. It was in one of such programmes that I had contributed a paper on Public Trusts, which was repeated in sub-sequent courses and became a monograph on the subject, of which revised editions were brought out from time to time, the later ones being with Shariq Contractor and Gautam Nayak.

I had the good fortune to work as Treasurer and Secretary, and finally the President of the Society in the year 1963-64 along with R. J. Damanwala as Secretary, who was very meticulous about various activities. These positions gave me the basic training of presiding over the meetings of the members and various committees, the number of which was not very large at that time.

The growth and development of the Society compelled it to acquire the larger office at Dol-Bin-Shir. The bigger office but with a smaller lift gave boost to the meetings and library activity. One interesting feature of this office was that the office of that witty, principled Chartered Accountant, late Jal Dastur was in the same building involving greater participation by him. With the holding of Residential Refresher Courses at Bangalore, Pune, Aurangabad, Goa, Jaipur, Agra, Mount Abu and Indore, the Society became an All India Society which brought in new talent from younger members like Pinakin D. Desai, Kishor Karia and seniors like Y. H. Malegam, M. L. Bhakta, K. H. Kaji and others. The special invitees or the chief guests included the President of the Institute and persons from academic field like Prof. Rege of Bombay University. The scope of the subjects was extended to Indirect Taxes, Company Law, Computers, etc., so that the RRC became the hallmark of the Society. Another first was the RRC held at Dubai, which was participated by many local members also and meetings with Government officials and fol-lowed in the evening by Harbour visit, socials and dinners in Desert Safari.

The annual budget lectures were given by S. P. Mehta for a number of years and after his demise, are being given by Soli Dastur, Senior Advocate, whose popularity is evidenced by the fact that even the Birla Hall proved too small, compelling the Society to shift the venue to the architecturally beautiful hall of Swaminarayan Sanstha with a ca-pacity of more than 2000 persons. This was followed by annual half-day meeting on the Finance Act, after it was passed in Parliament. The mile-stone programme was the Silver and the Golden Jubilee conferences, the last being inaugurated by the President of the Institute and valedictory address by Shri Chidambaram, the present Finance Minister.

The next milestone in the Society’s history was the acquisition of new office premises at Churchgate Chambers, ‘A’ Road, Mumbai, further expanded by two premises in the same building. The larger office gave a further boost to the activities of the Society led by Narayan Varma, past President of the Society, with originality and number of new ideas for the growth of the Society and vision. The Society adopted the vision with the implementation of the goals set therein as its foundation. On his initiative the Society started educational programmes with the first such programme for management training jointly with Jamnalal Bajaj Institute. The success of this programme led to the launching of several new courses one after the other, namely, Professional Accountant, Internal Audit, Corporate Directors, Arbitration, etc. and also enhanced the value of the Chartered Accountants by giving them certificate for the training, approved by the University of Mumbai.

Shri Varma also gave a thrust to the activities of the BCA Foundation, a public trust established for help to the Chartered Accountants and the stu-dents, by very large collection for the Tsunami victims, by helping them to restore the schools in Tamil Nadu and development of computer programmes. Last but not the least, on account of his interest and enthusiasm, the foundation also devoted itself to the activities under the Right to Information Act, which proved to be a very pow-erful instrument in the hands of the people.

The publication activity received a big fillip with issue of marathon tax audit manual by five joint authors, Narayan Varma, Kishor Karia, Dilip Lakhani, Sunil Kothare and myself which helped the Chartered Accountants engaged in the task of carrying out tax audit. Likewise, many other publications were brought out on the subject of various aspects of Income Tax law, Accounting Standards, Auditing’ Standards, Service Tax, International Taxation, Computers, FEMA, Indirect Taxes, etc. The fantastic utility of more than fifty publications, revised from time to time enhanced the image of the Society as educational body.

The pre-budget and post-budget representations assumed great importance and were even followed by visits to Delhi for meeting with the Chairman and members of the CBDT and officials of the Finance Ministry. Similar representations were made on Company Law, Indirect Taxes, etc. The Society was recognised for appearance before the various committees appointed by the Government for ‘simplification’ and rationalisation, like the Choksi Committee, the Committee for Rationalisation of Tax Laws, the Kelkar Committee, Vanchoo Committee, etc.

The Society also organised Press Conferences when very serious problems were involved in Tax Laws and also participated in T. V. programmes after the presentation of the Finance Bill. The can-cerous corruption did not escape the attention of the Society, resulting in appointment of a small group comprising representatives of other professional bodies to provide machinery for fighting corruption, but unfortunately, due to inherent limi-tations, the group could not make much headway.

With the liberalisation and opening of the economy to international trade, FEMA and International Taxation became very important and Study Circles and other groups made special study of the subject with a view to equip the members to deal with issues arising therefrom and the need of foreign companies for attending to their work in India. Transfer pricing was not ignored and Conferences and special programmes were annually held to discuss the various issues.

The latest development in the field of education is to develop several modules on different subjects like Service Tax, TDS, etc., for the distant education programme and though, it may face teething trouble, it will succeed ultimately in its goal of educating Chartered Accountants as well as others. The idea has been picked up by other professional bodies also.

The role of the Society for the professional development has to be considered in the context of co-ordination and rapport with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, our official body governing the profession. In the early 50s the Society was asked to consider whether it was necessary to continue and expand the Society and whether it was duplicating the work of the Institute. However, the majority of the members did not subscribe to this view, as they considered that the Society is performing useful role to supplement the activities of the Institute and not to supplant the official organisation, some of whose Presidents and Council members also were actively involved with the Society. Hence, every new President and Vice-President was invited to visit the Society for be stowing felicitations and discussing the professional problems with them. In addition, in some cases the President of the Institute also inaugurated the technical programmes or gave talks on current issues like Accounting & Auditing Standards. Thus, the rapport of the Society with the parent body has been excellent throughout the years.

The clinics started by the Society for guidance of members and the public for Charitable Trusts, Accounts and Audit, and Right to Information have been doing excellent work in the education of professional as well as others who attend the clinics and take advantage thereof to solve their difficulties. The other way of public education is to bring out booklets for exposition of the changes brought in by the Budget within three days in not only English but also Hindi and Gujarati languages, so that more than 40,000 copies are circulated to professionals as well as members of the public. likewise, the education of students is not overlooked by starting revisional classes for them and lower subscription for journal of the Society and attending other programmes at concessional rates.

The last lap of expansion has been acquiring the present premises at New Marine lines, equipped with facilities for library, computers, Conference Hall for about 100 persons over an area of about 2500 sq. ft.

I have been associated with the Society in different capacities as member of the Managing Committee and Core Group and Invitee as past President over more than 50 years and have been member of the various committees including Taxation, International Taxation, and Accounting & Auditing. life is an unending educational process, so that I continue to contribute to the activities of the Society by participating in its Seminars, Conferences, Brains Trust, RRC, etc. I had therefore, the opportunity to overview the growth and development of the Society from seven members to more than 8,000 members today. There is difference in professional life in the 50s and 60s of the last century when the laws and the practice were very simple, though effective. But today with the increasingly important role of the Chartered Accountant in the core subjects of Taxation and Auditing and the new fields of International Accounting & Auditing Standards, IFRS and International Taxation, FEMA, audits of Public Sector Companies, Banks and Insurance, with greater expectation by the C&AG and the new pastures of Government Accounting, Local Bodies and the whole gamut of Indirect Taxation covering Excise & Customs Duties, Modvat and Service Tax – the list is endless and the ever-increasing need for continuing professional education is amply served by the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society.

In view of the knowledge required on several fronts, the need of the hour is specialisation and bigger firms rendering services in all directions under one roof. This has witnessed even the amalgamation and mergers of the big eight firms into big four firms today and merger of other middling firms to cope with the need of the professional services, raising a question whether there is scope for proprietary or small firms of two or three members. But my observation of the small firms in U.S. and even European countries leads me to conclude that even the smaller firms have the scope for practising with the advantage of greater personal attention and intimate rapport with the clients and specialisation by the firms and partners only in some subjects. Time alone will show whether this prediction will turn out to be right or wrong.