Satyam didn't just represent Indian IT's Big Four. In a matter of a few years, it put Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and Telugu tech entrepreneurship on the global scene. When US President Bill Clinton chose to visit Hyderabad over Bangalore, it was seen as a triumph for Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu. The state is India's most successful example on e-governance; it accounts for nearly a third of India's IT workforce exports to the US.
Today, many of the world's top software firms have a large presence in Hyderabad. But Satyam was the first. It was Satyam that signaled the start of the decade-long metamorphosis of the Hyderabad of old--slow, leisurely, uncluttered, cheap--to the chaotic, fast-paced, crowded, expensive dynamic of today.
The city and the state, in turn, lauded Satyam. Whenever Raju launched any social initiative, the political and news channels went into raptures. When Raju created a new business entity, Maytas, exclusively for his son Teja, declaring that he wanted his next generation to outdo his achievements, the state fast-forwarded all clearances for Maytas's projects including the award Hyderabad's prestigious showpiece, the rail metro, to Maytas. Questions and whispers of wrongdoing on the metro project and land deals, were quickly put down, by the state government's spokespersons and departments. Even a person of the stature of E Sreedharan, Delhi's metro man, had to take back his objections on the Hyderabad metro as being a 'scandal' after the bureaucrat in charge of the Hyderabad metro project threatened to sue Sreedharan for defamation.
Now, we learn that Satyam was nothing but a mirage. Ramalinga Raju has confessed to being a cheat and a liar. If he has been lying all along, what's to be sure that he is not plotting bigger scandals elsewhere? Maytas may technically be a private company, but it is very public in its scope and reach: its biggest project involves Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh even more intimately.
We can be sure that the politicians, bureaucrats, and the news media will now go into overdrive, tripping over each other to bring more skeletons not only out of Raju's closet, but also of those others even remotely connected with him. The city that has taken so much out of Satyam, and given so much in return, will question every transaction and every document linked to him and his family. All those who signed on the dotted line in awe of the Raju name, will see it as their bounden duty to dither on all his family's projects.
As Hyderabad has grown with Ramalinga Raju, so it will slow down as the icon fades. Ramalinga Raju's crime goes beyond business; he's bombed a city that was just taking off.
Dev Chandrasekhar
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www.ubiquus.com
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