The Hindu Business Line : Enough of being the twelfth man

TARTAR limbo. A place worse than hell, describes Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors. He speaks of the devil there, with a hard heart `button'd up with steel'.

Adds Dromio: "A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough... a back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands the passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands; a hound that runs... "

Suits accountants well, not only because of the `hound' there, reminding one of Lord Justice Lopes's metaphor in the Kingston Cotton Mill Co case, that the auditor is a watchdog not a bloodhound. Also, because, as a profession, accountants are predominantly in far narrower lands and lanes than they can traverse.

Take, for instance, the accounting profession's usual reactions to Budget. These are in the constricted space of tax proposals, which but form only a portion of the whole.

Last year's speech of the Finance Minister had, in Part A, eleven topics, viz., the macroeconomic backdrop, assault on poverty and unemployment, Bharat Nirman, investment, agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, financial sector, other proposals, fiscal consolidation and budget estimates.

What generally worries the CAs, however, comes in Part B of the speech, where there's but one topic, `tax proposals', apart from the usual `conclusion', peppered with a verse of the Finance Minister's choice.

One may justify such a narrow focus on the ground that tax changes are of interest to the general public. True, Budget changes impact the assessees, and are therefore anxiously tracked by many.

Yet, a profession that is capable of greater contribution can't afford to limit itself to a thin slice of a country's fiscal document, unless it has chosen to make itself irrelevant in due course.

If the Finance Minister were to stick to numbering tax proposals this year too as XII, accountants may soon end up as the `twelfth man' in cricket. The phrase, as you know, refers to "a designated substitute player," who may field but not bat or bowl, as Wiktionary defines.

`12th Man' also means a tradition of the Texas A&M University football team, and the fans at an American football game, going by Wikipedia's explanations. What a parody, you may fret! But, `The Twelfth Man' is, in fact, the name of `a series of comedy productions by Australian satirist Billy Birmingham', as http://en.wikipedia.org explains.

"As befits the name (a reference to the non-playing reserve in a cricket side), Birmingham particularly focuses on cricket commentators such as Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry and Tony Greig. This is also due to the fact that many of Australia's cricket commentators have distinctive and easily-identifiable voices and accents."

Twelfth man in cricket is "a punishment for not making the team," explains a dictionary of cricketing terms on www.cricketman.com. "You are the team's servant for the remainder of the match." So, there we are, the whole clan of accountants fielding the shots that the Finance Minister drives to the fence, provided they come within our blinkered view.

In cricket, the twelfth man seems to have broken free from the historic taboos. A report dated July 7, 2005 on http://news.webindia123.com informs that the International Cricket Council has changed the role of the 12th man, "whose work has so far been restricted to taking towels and drinks in the field for his team mates."

Thus, now the 12th man "can also bat, bowl and field if his captain feels he will fare better than any of the 11 players originally picked in the team." Once the 12th man replaces a player in the XI, the outgoing player can no longer take part in that match.

While that's a sobering thought for the 11 others to forsake complacency, useful lesson for accountants is to give up inhabiting, inhibited, only `the passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands'.

How ominous, therefore, is a new study from CareerBuilder.com, which shows that about 25 per cent of those in the accounting or finance profession are dissatisfied in their current jobs!

"Some 33 per cent said they planned to find a new job in 2006," reports www.accountingweb.com, on the US scene. Accountants may become endangered, but don't miss `Accounting for Endangered Species' on http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com, in response to an article titled `The True Cost of Protection?' in The Washington Post. "The cost is not of `protection' as the writer asserts, it is instead the cost of heedlessly trampling ecosystems," says the blog.

AccountSpeak@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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