The Hindu Business Line : Indian audit system is `pathetic': Chidambaram

The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, handing over the four volumes of Quintessence Series written by the former Chief Secretary of West Bengal, Mr B.S. Raghavan (right), to Mr K. Parasaran, former Attorney General of India, at a function in Chennai on Sunday. - Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , Oct. 9

THE audit system in India is "pathetic", the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, said today.

Mr Chidambaram said this at a function held to release a book of articles written in Business Line by Mr B.S. Raghavan, former Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal.

One of the articles was in support of the movement spearheaded by Mr S. Gurumurthy, auditor and convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which protests the US audit firms (the Big Four) getting assignments in India.

"But our audit system is pathetic. Our corporate governance is poor," Mr Chidambaram said, referring to that article. "The Big 4 (Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and KPMG) may dominate India, but in due course, Indians will dominate the Big 4."

When told of this statement, Mr Gurumurthy told Business Line: "It is pathetic that the Finance Minister of India should make such a statement."

While commending Mr Raghavan's book, titled Quintessence, Mr Chidambaram said that he did not agree with some of the views, such as those against globalisation.

"No economy can be insulated from the rest of the world," he said.

"The correct approach to globalisation would be to accept the inevitability of globalisation and try to reap the benefits of it."

Mr Chidambaram said that India's stature was increasing the world over - evidence being the invitations to join G-7 meetings.

He added that India was the only big country whose working age population would increase, and not decrease, over the next 15-20 years. By 2020, India would have 700-800 million people in the working age, he said.

Earlier, Mr K. Venugopal, Joint Editor, The Hindu, recalled Mr Raghavan's contributions to the creation of Business Line, adding that long before companies like Infosys and Wipro had distinguished themselves, Mr Raghavan had suggested a full page exclusively for IT.

The book has been published by ICFAI University Press.

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Indian audit system is `pathetic': Chidambaram