In India, whistle blowing is all about writing anonymous letters

Mention whistle blowing and the first name that comes to mind in India is probably that of Satyendranath Dubey, a project manager with NHAI who was shot dead in 2003.

Dubey had written a letter to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, informing him of widespread irregularities in the execution of his dream project, the Golden Quadrilateral highway that sought to connect all the four metros.

Whether Dubey was murdered for taking up the issue is yet a bone of contention (investigators concluded it was an attempted robbery), but his name has come to be associated with blowing the whistle and related issues in India.

After Dubey, there have been others too, who had the guts to put up a bold fight against corruption and irregularities in their respective organisations. Prominent among them is Shanmughan Manjunath, the IOC executive who took on the oil mafia in Uttar Pradesh and was brutally murdered.

More from Business

Hyundai India’s Rs 27,870 crore IPO oversubscribed by 2.28X, largely driven by institutional investors How Indian fintech startups are driving Malaysia’s UPI-like digital payments revolution

Nonetheless, whistle blowing is all about anonymous letters, say experts in a report in the Economic Times today.

One of the key reasons for this is that the country does not yet have whistle blower policy in place.

According to Adi Godrej, Chairman of the Godrej group, strictly speaking Deepak Thakur, who blew whistle over irregularities in Ranabxy, would not be considered a whistle blower at all in India.

[caption id=“attachment_784709” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] To be a whistle blower in India, he should have complained to an internal committee and not an external agency,[/caption]

To be a whistle blower in India, he should have complained to an internal committee and not an external agency, he says.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

Chennai Ranks #1 in Challan Checks: ACKO Insights for Smarter Car and Two Wheeler Insurance Decisions

Tata Harrier EV vs Mahindra XEV 9e: Design and road presence compared

As per Indian regulations, it is mandatory for companies to disclose the details of any such internal committee or policy in their annual reports. Interestingly, setting up such a committee or devising such a policy is not mandatory.

Moreover, while in the US there is a witness protection programme that would protect the whistle blower, in India there is no such system in place.

The whistle blower, who had the guts to complain to the authorities about own bosses or colleagues, is left out in the hot sun.

Because of this, most people limit their whistle blowing to sending anonymous letters, which lacks credibility.

Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director, InGovern Research Services Pvt. Ltd, says in the ET report that he has got many such anonymous letters from staff of accounts departments, alerting about irregularities in accounting.

Employees resort to such tactics also because for they are mostly not aware of any such policy or mechanism in their own company.

If companies are not sensitising their staff about such a policy, what is the point in even devising one?

As Monish Chatrath, leader for consulting and markets at Mazars India, says in this Business Standard report, companies need to embed these mechanisms into their corporate governance apparatus.

“For example, companies that integrate an effective whistle-blowing mechanism into the audit committee’s review and monitoring framework are in a superior position to ensure the integrity of their financial reports,” he has been quoted as saying in the report.

Subramanian of InGovern also thinks lack of any proactive regulators and rewards is also a reason for people refraining from spilling the beans about their companies.

However, a basic flaw in the whistle blower policy in the country is that it is an internal authority who would take decision on such matters.

According to another report in the Economic Times, Ranbaxy’s senior executives had tried to conceal the law violations and even attempted to destroy the evidence.

And Dinesh Thakkur, the whistle blower in Ranbaxy’s case, succeeded in bringing the pharma giant to its knees only because he could go to an external agency and get witness protection.

Had this happened in India, this would not have been the case. The company management could have easily made Thakkur’s life a hell and also got away with its wrong doing.

According to the BS report, the government is working on a whistle blower policy.

One can only hope that better sense will prevail and the government will realise that an internal committee is no authority to take an objective decision on such matters.