Raju, NOT Hosiery!

The names 'Ramalinga Raju' and 'Satyam' seem to be the order of the day's idle discussions. The sort of thing that, if missed, would only make for pitiful ignorance considering the average Bengali's previous acquaintance with a hosiery brand named 'RAJU' which promised " shorir juurey norom chhowaa....aaponjoner moto" (tenderly touches you...just like your own) opposed to the itchy discomfiture that the Hyderabadi Honcho has put the entire nation in.

So let me not waste this God-presented opportunity of writing something useless yet verbose in the first place and drop in my two-pence if only to air my concern. So, here goes.

While FII, CII and God-knows-what IIs huddle together to salvage credibility for the rest of India Inc. a different set of predicaments, arguably more grave, seem to have raised its ugly head amidst the cauldron of chaos going full-steam under the circumstance -

The future of the freshers recruited by Satyam in the year 2007 and 2008.

The 'Business'-page of every leading daily has been abuzz with rumors of the Satyam take-over bids by IT firms such as Accenture, IBM and Cognizant. Though the pre-acquisition game of denying everything have been played well by all the concerned parties one wonders if the cards that are being held so close to their chests still bear the names of the panic-stricken individuals to whom the Satyam offer-letters were distributed with gay abandon till a few months back. If Mr. Raju was certain that the "tiger he was riding" would soon devour him whole why did he not stall the recruitment process a year back and hence spare unsuspecting engineering graduates the trauma of uncertainty in this volatile times. He can plead that he did not want to induce suspicion in a already super-competitive outsourcing market by halting the ritual recruitment drive but given the total vacuum of assurance that the freshers are now living in one can only guess the veracity of his "call of conscience" act that ultimately made the fraud public.

One shudders at the ordeal that awaits those who were taken in Satyam's fold and questions like the following arise:

Will the post-merger/acquisition scenario assure the jobs already pledged?
If the jobs remain a reality, albeit considerably blurred at this moment, what time-frame are we looking at ?
In case of bankruptcy being filed, malpractices being proved, assets ( if any) being liquidated what course of action should the 53,000 odd Satyam work-force follow ?
Is the Finance Ministry thinking on these lines of providing job-assurance?
Will anybody intervene?
Will the Left chip in with their own brand of hartals, michhils and dharnas to protest such a massive loss of employment ?
Will Mamata Banerjee storm the Satyam office ?
And lastly,
When can we next expect a Satyam ?


link: rediff.com