The Hindu Business Line : University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small

AFTER Tuesday's news that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India got a sharp rebuke from the Government for lending the ICAI name to a new university, I nervously visit the site of the University Grants Commission www.ugc.ac.in.

There, one finds an alert listing 20 `fake' universities, including names such as Commercial University Ltd and United Nations University (Delhi), and Gandhi Hindi Vidyapith (Allahabad). Much to my relief, ICAI University is not on the list.

As with many other activities of the Institute, most CAs don't know what this university talk is all about; and students are generally busy with their immediate problem of ongoing exams. The only input the ICAI offers its members is a page of info on www.icai.org/announ/icai_university.html, describing what it calls "yet another leap into a bright future".

Other phrases are: `a world-class University', `a mission to serve multifarious professional and academic interests of both the present and probable members of a vibrant CA community besides those connected with commerce education in India', and `facilities and scholars for fundamental accounting and auditing research'.

A key aim of the ICAI University is said to be "to bring qualitative change in commerce education by introducing higher course curriculum and formulating uniform syllabus for commerce education across the country, benchmarking at international standards and catering to the needs of higher studies and research in accountancy."

And there is lot more, such as how the university will help CAs do their Ph.Ds and earn MBA degrees. The communiqué concludes with the promise of adding "great value to the whole rubric of commerce and accounting education."

Inked in Pink City: Sunil Goyal, the then president of the ICAI, is learnt to have sounded a few States on the university idea but his own State grabbed the idea, under the Rajasthan Self-Financed Private Universities Ordinance 2004.

Quite generously, the Rajasthan Government allotted 100 acres of land at a nominal price, said to be about Rs 2 crore, the purchase of which was funded by the ICAI, through its arm ARF (Accounting Research Foundation), registered as a Section 25 company under the Companies Act 1956.

And there are the happy photographs on www.icai.org of Mr Goyal at the university foundation-stone-laying gala by the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ms Vasundhararaje Scindia, only two days before he laid down office in the first week of February.

On shaky foundations, it looks like, because the Ministry of Company Affairs seems to have swung into action within three months.

On its `advice', as the ICAI president, Mr Kamlesh Vikamsey, describes it, a resolution has been passed that the name of ICAI or its funds would not be used for any other body floated by the Institute without the approval of the Government.

One learns that the Institute has sent a long response to the Government, buttressed by legal opinion, and so forth. Highly-placed sources in the Institute say that due diligence was done before launching on this project.

They draw attention to Section 24A of the Chartered Accountants Act on "penalty for using the name of the Council, awarding degrees of chartered accountancy, etc."

It reads: "Save as otherwise provided in this Act, no person shall use a name or a common seal which is identical with the name or the common seal of the Institute or so nearly resembles it as to deceive or as is likely to deceive the public; award any degree, diploma or certificate or bestow any designation which indicates or purports to indicate the position or attainment of any qualification or competence similar to that of a member of the Institute; or seek to regulate in any manner whatsoever the profession of chartered accountants."

For contravention, the Section speaks of fine and/or imprisonment as penalty. At the end of the section is an enabling clause: "Nothing contained in this Section shall apply to any university established by law or to any body affiliated to the Institute."

Problem of plenty: Mr Vikamsey is trying to explain the fiasco as a `communication gap'. Such woes of the Institute are typical of what happens when an institution is flush with funds. Which explains the expense on building improvement, interior decoration, meetings facilities, and pet projects.

The Institute's Governing Council, though elected democratically, has its focus generally on the near term that the Council lasts. In such a situation, the recent reprimand by the Government cannot be brushed away as needless interference.

"The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself," said Allan Bloom, the American philosopher and academic who was critical of contemporary universities.

There can, therefore, be a healthy debate on whether the Government is trying to protect education from the ICAI, or vice versa. A quote to remember is that of Henry A. Kissinger: "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." Not always, because varsities can have deep pockets.

For instance, the US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice, was once Stanford University's Provost, responsible for a $1.5-billion annual budget, as www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ricebio.html informs us.

Perhaps, accounting politics are not as bad as Kissinger frightens us.

But, jokes apart, what happens if the ICAI is refused permission to go ahead with the university idea? "Then we won't," says Mr Vikamsey.

AccountSpeak@TheHindu.co.in

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