Although Kalam did not once mention ‘Satyam’ by name, he underlined the scandal by outlining the goals for the present audience — of cost and management accountants — as “promoting profit with integrity because the country needs it”.

“We are meeting at a time when the country has seen a setback because of an unfortunate event in the corporate sector,” he said while speaking at the golden jubilee celebration of the enactment of the Cost and Works Accountants Act, organised by the Institute of cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) at the IUCAA auditorium in the University of Pune. “National pride, investor confidence and employee reassurance need to be regained,” he said and asked ICWAI to conduct systemic studies and root cause analysis to ensure that ‘such situations are not repeated’.

Kalam called for the need to build consciousness of ethics for sustained growth and create clean environments that promote ‘righteousness of the heart’. Typical of a Kalam-talk, he asked the audience to repeat a verse after him - “righteousness in the heart leads to beauty in character, which leads to harmony at home, then order in the nation, to peace in the world.”

Earlier, Kunal Banerjee, the president of the ICWAI, also obliquely referred to Satyam and said several measures were needed to ensure that companies report on the efficiency performance in greater detail and to the benefit of stakeholders to evaluate the company. “SEBI has desired a second audit of all the listed companies. We feel that such an audit should be conducted not by another peer firm of Chartered Accountants but by a firm of Cost Accountants, who have greater capabilities to find justification and correctness of declared profits,” he said.