Village refuses to abandon Satyam chief

Prasaad Bhosekar

Whether or not the wealth created by IT giant Satyam percolated down to the village of its founder, the crisis now affecting the company certainly has. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju’s is a rags to riches story, of the kind loved in a ‘rising’ country like India. Raju’s father Byrraju Satyanarayana Raju was a humble farmer in Garagaparru village in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. Satyanarayana Raju migrated to Hyderabad in the 1960s. He first started a spinning mill on the outskirts of Hyderabad, and then bought land for farming, while his sons continued their studies. It was in Hyderabad that Satyam was founded in the 1980s. The company today is in deep trouble. On January 7, 2009, Ramalinga Raju resigned as the Chairman of the Satyam Board, along with brother and Managing Director B Rama Raju, after confessing that the company’s balance sheets were manipulated to show fictitious balance of Rs 5,040 crore. And all this apparently happened without the knowledge of any of the other Board member. Satyam was pushed into crisis after Raju was forced to abandon the acquisition of Maytas Infrastructure and Maytas Properties – two companies promoted by his sons. Raju was accused of trying to buy, at a huge premium, the two companies with Satyam’s money. In the wake of the crisis, Satyam’s shares have taken a heavy beating, quite a few of its Board Directors have resigned, and irate investors are mulling a change of the Board altogether. Ramalinga Raju, the founder, has been left fighting for the survival of his company. When a Zee News team went to Raju’s village prior to his resignation to gauge the reaction of the people there to the troubles that Satyam has been going through, it became clear that this is the kind of story that lends a halo to the person at the centre of it. "Whatever news and reports are coming that he has done something wrong to benefit his sons` companies is wrong... it might be some business rivalry,” said Satyanarayana Raju, sarpanch of the village. "I know him from his childhood... he is very fair, straight forward person. He would not do anything which would harm others," opined V Ramaraju, a teacher by profession and a relative of Ramalinga Raju. "Ramalinga Raju always listened to his father. In fact, on his father`s name he christened the company, Satyam. Thousands have benefited from this company since last many years... he cannot do anything wrong,`` he added. The fact that the company has created jobs for many in the village is of course a factor. For Madhusudhan, a software engineer from this village, Ramalinga Raju is a hero. He is sure that Raju and Satyam will bounce back. "This is recession time... everyone is in trouble… but I am sure Rajus and Satyam will bounce back,” he said. However, it seems Madhusudhan and others’ hope that Raju will bounce back may never get fulfilled. While Satyam as a company might bounce back, Raju – after resigning from the company’s Board – will have to face the consequences of his wrongdoings. To quote in his own words, Raju is ready to face the "laws of the land". And in Garagaparru, on the main street of the village stands a statue of Lord Krishna, perhaps symbolically reminding that Ramalinga Raju would require divine intervention to save himself, and his company. Adapted by: Shafey Danish