Some good news has come out of Nasscom in recent weeks. The organisation has announced the formation of a corporate governance and ethics committee to prevent a recurrence of Satyam-style corporate fraud and books-cooking. Satyam recently admitted that a figure of $1 billion on its books was fiction.
The new permanent committee linking business people with academics will be chaired by N R Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys, whose executives have been outspokenly critical of the damage done to India's reputation by the scandals.
Certainly, both India and Infosys stand to gain by association with the stand against corporate scandal. Infosys, along with other leading outsourcing giants, has done much to increase India's global reputation for service and price competitiveness.
That said, some US commentators have scented blood in the aftermath of Satyam's fall from grace, suggesting that poor financial reporting is rife throughout Indian business and that relations between some Indian companies and local government are a grey area.
Few, however, have put their name to the criticisms, while some of the sentiments smack of triumphalism.
An exception has been UK investment bank Noble, which published recent research claiming that 20% of India's top 500 companies indulge in accounting malpractice, including fictitious sales and revenue overstatement.
There may be a certain irony in today's banking sector taking pot-shots at an expanding market in the downturn, but the message is clear: Indian business needs to be seen to clean up its act to restore international confidence, even if the Satyam scandal does prove to be a one-off aberration.
• Reports from Reuters suggest Satyam may have up to a fifth fewer staff than it reported. The original report, exposed in India’s Economic Times, suggested that Satyam’s headcount could have been inflated by 15-20 percent.
According to the newspaper the Serious Frauds Investigation Office believes Satyam’s headcount could have been inflated to siphon off money as salary payments for non-existent employees.
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