 So, let me give you some briefing on this workshop. As a background, IIT Bombay runs several missions under the National Mission on Education using information and communication technology. A specific project called T10KT is a project under which we train very large number of teachers across the country. T10KT stands for train 10,000 teachers at a time. So, the capacity to train 10,000 teachers at a time. Let me very briefly tell you the motor sovereignty. 10,000 teachers apparently cannot come to IIT Bombay. So, they assemble for the two-week workshop conducted under the ages of ISTE, Indian Society for Technical Education, is a two-week workshop which is conducted at about 250 to 300 remote centres. So, teachers assemble at these remote centres in 30, 40, 50 numbers. And all 250 remote centres are connected on internet to IIT Bombay. The subject specific workshops have interactive lectures in the morning delivered from IIT Bombay. All participants across these 250 remote centres can interact with our faculty, can ask questions. And if you are asking a question from, let's say, Odisha or West Bengal, not only you and your class sees and hears the question being asked and answered being given, all 10,000 participants everywhere are able to see both the person asking the question and the faculty member answering the question. In this way, we try to simulate a live classroom across the country. In the afternoon, the local remote centres conduct tutorial discussions, assignments, labs, wherever relevant, etc. These are conducted under the supervision of a workshop coordinator who is appointed at each remote centre. The workshop coordinator is typically an expert faculty member from that remote centre. There are 250 remote centres, so most of them have expert faculty for a subject. Now, how do we ensure that the tutorials and labs are conducted in exactly the same rigorous way as we do them at IIT Bombay? To ensure that we collect all these 250 coordinators to IIT Bombay physically for one week orientation. And those 250 coordinators actually undergo the same kind of labs and tutorials that are conducted here under the guidance by the IIT Bombay expert faculty. Then they also decide what syllabus to cover, etc., etc. Then these coordinators go back to their respective remote centres, set up the labs, set up their tutorials sessions appropriately and two months later the main workshop starts in the way that I just described. We started with 1000 teacher training program. We scaled it up in 2012 to 10,000 teacher training program because the number of teachers in engineering colleges is extraordinarily large. As you know there are more than 5000 engineering colleges in the country and the number of teachers who need to be trained are very large. Why I tell you all of this is that this is the methodology that we have found successful in the government fields that this is the methodology that should be used in training people from different streams as well. We are also adopting massive online open courses and a variation of the training workshop that I just mentioned is underway wherein the 10,000 participating teachers actually work online for five weeks and then they come for face-to-face interaction at the remote centres only for one week so that they minimize the total time that they are away from their workplace from two weeks to only one week. This is the model that we propose to use in future. As I said the government wishes to use this methodology to train people in different streams. We are conducting for example a workshop on cyber security for trainers who will train about four lakh information security officers required in the country in next three years. It is to the credit of Mr Praveen Prakash the joint secretary at MHRD and the mission director who suggested whether IIT Bombay could conduct a workshop for best accounting practices as part of the capacity building. Now frankly IIT Bombay has no expertise in accounting. We have no faculty members who can authoritatively talk about accounting practices and so on. But like all of you we also need accounting we also do accounting. I was quite surprised when Mr Bakshi told me that the accounting practices in many of the centrally funded institutions and indeed in many educational institutions are not running as per the best practices today and that is the reason why they wanted to conduct a training programme an orientation programme for all the people who handle accounts in various educational institutions. Now you can imagine how many people would there be. Just take higher education 36,000 colleges. Arguably most of them are in private sector. But in good accounting practice private sector public sector doesn't matter. Good accounting practices are mandatory everywhere. So we need to train even if you imagine just two or three people from every institute of higher education we need to train more than a lack of people. How do we train them? We cannot train them 35, 40 at a time in the conventional way. So it is best that we use this opportunity to use the information communication technology. Now you will probably suspect what I am arriving at. You represent major institutions in the country. It will not be incorrect to say that after this orientation programme because most of you would already be following some of the good practices some of you would require perhaps a reorientation, a strengthening but all of you can act as workshop coordinators in future workshops which will be held from your colleges as remote centres and 10,000 people of your kind will assemble in these 150, how many institutions are represented here? Alright, so we will start with 150 remote centres. Now you don't know what a remote centre is, you don't know how the remote centre will function. In the course of this workshop we will still time from the regular schedule for half an hour somewhere here and there and we will inform you how that can be arranged. But in future workshops we would expect all of you who would become complete stalwarts at the end of this workshop so we believe you should help the government, you should help the country to encourage all our colleagues elsewhere in the nation in other institutions to adopt these best practices. So this is the background. Now as I told you I had no clue on how to conduct a workshop on accounting practices Fortunately Mr Bakshi, let me introduce Mr Bakshi here who is the advisor in the MHRD He suggested that the best expertise is available with an issue of chartered accountants and then I said yes of course because I have a friend who belongs to that issue he was with me in the bank of Baroda board Mr Amarjeet Chopra if I am not mistaken he was past president of the association and I immediately remembered the methodical scrutiny that he would subject all the bank of Baroda accountants too as the chairman of the audit committee of the bank. So I also contacted him and fortunately for me he says he will definitely come here he is not here with us today, we had actually identified four faculty members let me read out their names Mr Amarjeet Chopra, Mr Pankaj Goel, Mr Anand Banka and Mr Shyamlal Agarwal let us give a big hand to all these four names who have agreed to come here now out of them we have Mr Shyamlal Agarwal with us let's give a big hand to him for coming all the way Mr Anand Banka whose session starts tomorrow but let me tell you when I had the first meeting it was Mr Anand Banka and Pankaj right two of them came they spent almost two or three hours here first of all giving us faculty members some gyan on what accounting is and then deciding on what should be the topics like us teachers what I was very pleasantly surprised to find is that like all of us teachers in IIT Bombay they also said that the time is too short and too many things are to be covered so we share the same spirit of course we somehow are able to manage that in the given time how best to utilize that time and that is how these faculty colleagues of ours have done I use this opportunity to thank the association and also thank Mr Agarwal, Mr Banka Mr Amarji Chopra and Mr Pankaj Goyal for sparing time all of you would know that charter accountants of their caliber would be extremely busy people it's not easy for them to find time but they have spared their time of course they have arranged a schedule such that somebody who comes from long distance would spend the time completely and then go back and thankful to them I would now request Mr Agarwal to say a few words on this occasion Good morning everybody Prof. Saab, Anunayit Tabada initiative has taken a very good initiative for this purpose I think such initiatives has to be taken around the country in a different and a lot more manner so I am highly thankful to you sir as a member of this society that you people are here to take this initiative to educate the mass institutions at a large sector Mr Buxy sits in Delhi normally we have been regularly talking day by day that we had to keep some program so basically we have Institute of Charter Accountants of India is a legal body statutory body set up under the act of parliament so this body rules the accounting and auditing practices in the country it makes the accounting standards and auditing standards to be applied throughout the country in all sectors education and other sector as well normally it is not that the accounting and auditing is meant for the business trade and commerce only this is a normal thinking but the things are very different when we have the course of accounting in the 10th standard I think 10th is the course starts so there we see that account when you go to the basics I will start when the session takes the basics of accounting is that accounting is applicable at every place even starting from the family you know to the all corners of the world anywhere we have to have an accounting you know applicability and the basic concept of accounting once we understand I don't think you will leave any gap to understand any transaction which is carried in your life so this is a very important subject though taken delayed by the ministry I have taken charge I am elected member of the council we have a council of you know in the institute there are 40 members in the council so out of 40 members, 32 members are elected throughout the country all members charge accountants more than 240,000 they vote in different sectors east zone, west zone, north zone like that and 32 members are elected throughout the country 8 members are nominated to government of India they are secretaries, they are the secretaries you know government of India so this 40% council sits normally once in a month 2 days, 3 days and we make out you know we come out with the policy on accounting and auditing, financial management, taxes and etc. so this is a regulatory body and under this regulatory body and this year particularly in 2014-15 I am elected member from the you know central zone you have 7 states Prasthan, UP, BR, MP, Jharkhand, Sathishgarh, Uttarakhand like that so I have been given charge for this 2014 as a chairman of profession development committee so as a profession development committee we work with the ministries regularly so Mr. Buxy and we are you know department we are regularly working all the way so this came in the way and I am very lucky that to meet professors a very high dignity herein and I will putting you know myself here I will take you know more from you instead of giving you something whatever I know you that is you know all general and for me it is normal for you it may be a specific thing but we normally carry out in the routine manner whatever things are there but I think as discussed you know with Mr. Buxy and all others regarding the accounting we will go by the concept and with the concept I think I have given 2 hours here to attend the inaugural session only against representative but you know whenever I go you know because I belong to a small village in the country and I have seen that you know the concept of accounting you know whenever I go I definitely take one lecture on it because people are terrorized for this accounting you know technically people and other people are they think very differently and what I take is it is a simplest thing in the country to understand and to implement so that concept I wanted to give and that is why wherever I go normally you know why we go for the accounting meetings and you know auditing meetings and all meetings throughout the country but anywhere I found a time I find a time in the institution I go and spare one hour just to you know come out with the concept of accounting so that will take and I think I am lucky enough to be here within you and I am thankful to the IIT and all these organizers to give me the opportunity to be with you and I will feel very happy to share my thoughts you know I am of the view that you know maximum interaction with the people will make me more boost to you know have more interaction with the people throughout the country and it will definitely an event for me to be remembered in my life and will definitely give what best I had in my life of accounting profession 33 years I am very content so I think 33 years are going to complete whatever I have learned in my life I will try to give within 2-3 hours and thanks a lot thank you very much and thanks for coming all the way since our friend Mr. Banka is here I will request him to say a few words he will of course be spending a lot more time with you later all of this hello friends I am glad to see so many people from different parts of especially when last round of voting is still left I think it is on 12th tomorrow is the last round but quite a few people made from all parts of our country I am glad about it especially for learning accounting as Mr. Agarwal said accounting is pretty easy for you know as a concept if you take it it is pretty easy and it is a bread and butter for us so we have to make it easy and therefore I will be spending some time with you almost every day and the last day is entirely mine and I hope you all will be able to bear with me and that is when I will be able to share my thoughts with you that is I will end up my speech today thanks so much thank you Mr. Banka and thanks for coming you know although he does not have a station he was kind enough to visit us today may I request Mr. Bakshi to say a few words on behalf of the ministry respect your professor Mr. Agarwal Mr. Banka and friends I welcome you all in this orientation program I am very sad that the number we expected we have not got it now you see it is very difficult to organize workshop for the last almost one year we are trying but when it materializes and though I am sending my professional invitation way back I think two months before I send it fast but the response I have got it is discouraging but still it is quite a good number of you have come now the reasons they have quoted some of the institutes have quoted finance committee meeting is due account is being prepared now if you slightly go back you will find that from this year 2013-14 now I mean 13-14 is over now you are preparing account as per the new accounting format so this workshop was actually forced on professor was telling no no no we do not have time we have these and that problem I said this is very important because the new format is being implemented so there are lot of challenges we are getting in writing also some of the things I have brought with me also lot of problems are coming up so I said this training program will help everybody to understand different nuances of the new format though in the last day I will make another announcement today I am just holding it back so many things are also happening but anyway the ministry wants to do more the number is enormous we want to reach out to everybody it is not only the government sector the objective is to go to the private sector also that means each and every educational institute should get covered that is why this talk to teacher program has been this is the suggestion of the secretary initially it was decided to have it through a view professor I think business learning is to coordinate professor business to coordinate so we went to the Ikai office also we had a meeting we installed a view there it was decided to upload from there then secretary suggested no use that talk to teacher program it is more effective more reliable and the student is very good so that is how it is landed on IIT initially it was not IIT it was not in our picture our picture was somewhat different a view platform and Ikai bubble daily so secretary higher education he changed it so ministry is very interested to bring reforms in the accounting sector our experience and the records we have a little bit survey I did it is very dismal the secretary says followed by many of the institutes are not comfortable with anything some of them still following cash based accounting anybody using still cash based I see you there are many few and the accrual system though everybody is talking about but what type of accrual accounting if we go back to the survey report it is discouraging the ministry is very sincere in the report so we need everybody's cooperation all institutes everybody should come forward to make it a big success so we have been allotted here 5 days we have got very good faculty from Ikai Ikai is supporting us very much we have already sent 3 booklets I understand working group report training materials volume 1 approval implementation accounting standard though I did not get any confirmation from anybody whether you have received it or not but I hope all of you have seen these 3 documents it is very important documents and also during this course I will be circling more survey format small format please respond to it and return it to me that few more decisions will be taken and also we will try to involve Ikai to develop the accounting standards we are supposed to use because everything is not applicable to us only few accounting standards are applicable to us so in the practical approach they will cover only those accounting standards and elaborate it make it easy to understand and implementable and the faculties are quite cooperative please interact with them so much you also gain I also gain and everybody gets the benefit and professor also gets some satisfaction that is first initiative has become a rolling success depending on that success I think it will be carried forward we want to reach to millions of school and millions of accountant across this country thanks to all thank you I do not know how many of you realize the underlying threat in his last words he says millions of people have to be reached he says he is thankful to IIT Bombay for starting this and he hopes IIT Bombay will continue my problem is I am primarily required to train teachers in engineering and science colleges and that is our mainstay however I am very happy to do the I understand how important the accounting practices are I was quite surprised when Mr. Bakshi told me that many of our educational institutions do not follow double entry system of accounting which was quite surprising to me I thought that was a standard thing in fact in our interviews when somebody with a commerce background comes the standard question I ask him is if I go to the bank to withdraw 500 rupees what would the cashier credit and what would the cashier debit they can all say they will debit my account but they don't say they will create the cash which is a simple double entry requirement so our conventional education in commerce degree is perhaps inadequate to train people in even simple accounting practices it is expected that stalwarts like you would take this mentor forward but let me share although we are 8 minutes late I will take only another 30 or 4 minutes but I think what I am going to tell you is important Mr. Bakshi mentioned some circulation of some books I would like to know whether these books are available in pdf format on the internet or not now I train 10,000 teachers we don't send them books we send them ebooks we expect them to read on internet in IIT Bombay we avoid printing of paper as much as possible not just to save trees but also to save time and to save time for circulation save time for people to read now it is in the educational sector the use of internet as a carrier of information as a carrier of knowledge is well established I would humbly submit that in all other areas of knowledge activities such as yours the use of net should be extensively done associated with the use of net is the use of computers for state of art accounting now how many of your institutions do not have completely computerized accounting systems there is no problem IIT Bombay also did not have a regular accounting system which was fully computerized when I say fully computerized accounting system that means there is not a single laser maintain to enter any information not a single physical laser maintain so there is there is no issue by the way there is nothing to feel bad about it because the whole world used paper based accounting till very recently the banking sector with which I am familiar with was the first one to adapt computerized accounting but increasingly all other segments are also doing that it is important to do that that is because A it guarantees much better accuracy B it has complete traceability because you have login IDs so you can trace the entry who has made what entry when at what point from which machine and so on of course we do not have sometimes they are company discipline like I remember when I was advising state bank for their bank master comparison in 86-87 me and my colleague Prasada from branch and we found a slip there with some funny latest written there and I was wondering what it was it turned out to be the password of the clerk who had gone for a cup of tea and he had asked this colleague that if someone is urgently getting a customer then this is my password now giving password to anybody is considered giving your signature to someone it is just not done but this will take a long time for us to acclimatize with very very important that in modern days we use computers to the hill not for anything else but simply for increasing our own efficiency simply for increasing our own effectiveness I remember the early banks which adopted bank master in state bank of India they could close the accounts at 5 minutes past 3 when 3 o'clock was the closure of all transaction and this the clerks told me never happened in their lives earlier in fact Mr. Lakshmi Narseveya who was the chairman of the union of state bank of India who were opposing computerization personally came to meet me in Hyderabad and told me that all his colleague clerks are much happier now that the computerization has saved a lot of their time I would request all of you not only to understand from the stalwart faculty members the essentials of the modern practices but please go back to whatever is the extent of computerization in your accounts please extend it as much as possible to make it fully online let me tell you that in IIT Bombay I was associated with early efforts and it's not an easy ride it took a lot of time it took a lot of time for my programmers to understand what accounting is it took a lot of time for my accounting staff members to understand that they can do without a laser without a signature that a digital signature is as valid and as guaranteed as anything else it takes time because it requires a mindset check but let us use this opportunity and as I told you I would expect if not all of you most of you to go back and prepare your own institution to become a a sort of local hub where the teachers from the not teachers the accounting experts and the accounting colleagues from other colleges can assemble in future workshops please understand it is important to use technology even for such training physically only 150-200 of you can come at a place 10000 people cannot come physically our colleagues however enthusiastic they are they cannot train 10000 teachers 10000 people one after another they also have limited time at their disposal we have found our method to be quite effective surely it is not exactly equal to face to face training but it is better than having no training at all it also amounts to significant reduction in cost since you are all accountants I would like to share that with you the standard ISD norm for conducting a workshop for 35-40 teachers for a 2 week workshop is 14000 rupees per participant most of that cost is spent in travel of the people who come from all over the country 35-40 numbers in an institution their food, their stay there are four or five backward faculty who would come to train them like our people here now those faculty members you have to acknowledge the time that they are spending you have to give them at least a token on a radium you have to arrange for their travel you have to arrange for their stay and that cost gets amortized only over 35-40 participants and therefore the cost increases significantly when we started 1000 teachers training program by assembling 1000 teachers at 30-40 remote centers we cut down significantly on the travel cost and we could amortize the expertise and experience of the expert faculty here their cost could be amortized of 1000 people we brought down that cost to 9000 rupees per person participant we further reduced it when we increased it to 10,000 teachers our estimated budget which is approved is only 6200 rupees per participant this is less than half of the cost that government has approved for ISD workshop more importantly by further tweaking it by saying that a 2 week workshop need not all 2 weeks be face to face 1 week equivalent of work can be done by 10,000 participants spread over 5 weeks on internet the first such workshop is being conducted as we speak 9,400 teachers have joined that workshop on computer programming they will be working online for 5 weeks from tomorrow onwards every week they will be doing an assignment then they will come for face to face interaction for 1 week in 280 remote centers the 280 workshop coordinators as I mentioned have already been trained last week by us and even those workshop coordinators have undergone an online training of 4 weeks before they came here we have found that method not only to be extremely effective in fact more effective than complete face to face interaction because when people do homework for 5 weeks and they are required to submit their assignments every week they are much more familiar with things that are coming and therefore the face to face interaction portion is used far more effectively to clear doubts to ask questions and so on and guess what we estimate that the cost of this workshop per participant for 10,000 teachers will be only 3,200 rupees per person it is very very important for all of us to realize that while it is very nice and good for people to interact physically as we are doing and surely there should be such opportunities but for consistently training large number of people this model is very wasteful I would rather spend more money in getting more experts to come here I would rather spend more money to get the best people from wherever in the world and I would rather spend that money to give you more training material and more extensive training with this we plan the future workshop whether we conduct it or NITTR conducts it or whatever the ministry takes a decision but I would appeal to you and you would understand this better than most teachers don't understand but you understand what cost is and you understand what is the effective utilization of money every paisa of the taxpayer that we spend should go maximally in enriching people's knowledge so that that knowledge is more effectively used for people that's the only ambition that we have not withstanding anything that I have said I am extremely thankful to all of you for having come here for having spared your time although Mr. Bakshi was not very convinced on your engagements at home with closing of account etc etc but I know how hard those engagements are my own institute has problems during these months all banks that I know of have problems during these months it is not easy for you to have spared your time I am thankful for doing that I hope you will enjoy this day make maximum use of this time not only to interact with our expert faculty from Ikai but also from the other aspects of the institute having come here do imbibe some of the nice things that happen around in IIT Bombay there are PhD interviews going on currently as we speak there are a lot of activities that are always happening all of you come from sister institutions someday I also hope to come to one of your institutions to see how you people function not only from an accounting point of view but from an academic point of view also I also take this opportunity once again to profusely thank our colleagues from Ikai Mr. Banka and Mr. Agarwal are here thank you very much Mr. Agarwal for sparing time here I also take this opportunity to thank in advance Mr. Amarjeet Chopra and Pankaj Goyal I am of course thankful to the ministry well grudging thanks because they have interrupted our normal training schedule many of our sister institutions who are conducting these workshops are worried as to why we are spending suddenly one full week of summer activities summer is the only time when teachers are free by the way and every day of the summer we try to utilize it either for conducting workshop for coordinators or workshop for teachers and so on so this is a heavy investment for IIT Bombay but I am doing it not just for the ministry not for you but for one person's dream Mr. Praveen Prakash who wishes this technological approach to training to be used in as many different and diverse fields as possible so thanks again to him in absentia and thank you very much