The Bloc Interview. ICAI President pledges ‘each one teach one’ initiative

In the foundation course, we saw 49,000 registrations. In the intermediate course, 58,900 students registered and in the final course 21,185 students registered. We have been able to attract young talent after the new course curriculum. Though its too early to tell, there has been a substantial increase in student registrations since the launch of new curriculum.

We have integrated subjects of ethics and technology in the course curriculum at the final level so that our students can evolve into global chartered accountants well versed with best practices and technological changes around the world. The new course curriculum will make our country prosperous as far as accounting is concerned. These students, once they become CAs, would therefore be well-equipped to compete around the world.

Last year, 22,000 students became CAs. Of these, more than 9,000 had opted for campus placements offered by 138 companies. The average salary package in campus placement was ₹12.5 lakh per annum, with highest package internationally at ₹41 lakh per annum and highest domestic package was ₹24 lakh per annum. Note that the entire cost of this course is ₹75,000 for a five-year period.

We have four lakh members. We are going to introduce a programme — ‘Each One, Teach One’ where one CA will adopt one student. If one CA adopts one student, we can adopt four lakh students to nurture and groom and hand hold them. We are coming up with a portal so that each member can update how they are helping the student. This data can be used by us for further refinements in the programme and also motivate and better guide the students.

The reading room initiative, which was introduced to CA students across the country, will continue during my Presidency as well. This initiative is making sure that the students are not deprived of any reading material and opportunities towards realising their aspirations of becoming a CA professional.

We are digitalising our classrooms so that students can benefit from the best of faculty from any part of the country. ICAI has initiated to setup of Smart Classrooms across all its Regional Councils and Branches. The first smart classroom was inaugurated in ICAI BKC Tower, Mumbai early this year. Skill development and educational materials would soon get seamlessly distributed across the country.

We are planning one more initiative this year. We will be recording all the lectures given out by our faculty for all the subjects and give it to students free of cost. This will also be put on ICAI’s YouTube channel so that the best of content is always available to our students on demand. Further, we had also launched a mobile application called “ICAI BOS” on July 1, 2021, where students can get all learning material with a single click. Currently 5.62 lakh plus students taking use the app to live-stream lectures.

I don’t see AI replacing CAs, but it will be a tool that will help CAs perform their tasks proactively. It will be more of an enabler.

We have now set up a committee on ‘Aggregation of CA firms’. This committee will deliberate and devise mechanism as to how Indian firms can become bigger. There is a long-pending demand of the government that Indian firms should become bigger. Taking a cue from that we have made a formal committee which will frame the standard operating procedures (SoPs) and guidelines.

We had recommended joint audits to the government in 2019. We had debated this in the council and felt that joint audit is the need of the hour. We would be happy if the government brings this legal amendment.