My take on the Satyam fiasco

By now, most of you would have heard about the fiasco at Satyam. Reams and reams have been written speculating about what actually happened and various agencies response to the crises. More has been written and will be written about the impact on India's standing; it's IT sector and creditability of Indian business. Among all this, the people I sympathize the most with, are Satyam's 53,000 employees. Nothing is more crushing to the employees than a person, whom you looked up to, a person whom you idolized even, turns out to be a fraud.

So my take on the sad Satyam episode is that more than anything else, it is a failure of leadership. Raju betrayed the moral and fiduciary responsibility he had as a leader of Satyam and as a leader in the IT services industry.

Even if he is not found guilty and punished for anything else, he must be held responsible and punished for his failure as a leader and for the betrayal of trust placed on him by so many in the company and in the society at large.