Is ICAI really a partner in nation building or a conspiracy against the laity?

During the last 3yrs or so, ICAI has been spinning the message that it is a partner in national building. Noises have been made about helping in training(tax department officers, Government accounting), improving compliance(via audits/reviews), plugging tax loopholes(via prebudget memorandums) and generally ensuring proper flow of verified information. While all these sound good on paper, they are all win-win for ICAI since they come with the additional caveat of more professional assignments, carving out more exclusive niches, mandating tighter rules for SMEs. So is this a self serving stand, or does the improvement in public good offset the private gain?

Adam Smith had termed trade unions/associations as a conspiracy against the laity(''people') as he felt that no good could emerge from a trade meeting behind closed doors. And centuries later, the existence of cartels, industry lobbies and the trade union behaviour has proved him write,  in country after country. And this is true even for professional services associations like ICAI, where the information asymmetry and difficult to understand professional services, ensures  that scrutiny is not much. Few people understand the issues, and fewer bother to raise them in public forums. Hence, under the guise of ensuring better quality services, they get away with practices like severely restrictive entry norms in licensing, widely drafted professional service standards to reduce liability etc-all in a view to maximize the welfare of its members.

Now, if the services(audit, certifications..) were achieving their purpose, then one could be content that the larger public interest in served. But even in the mainstay(statutory financial audit and tax audits) work where decades of experience and well drafted standard exist, the end user satisfaction is on the downtrend. Few investors trust the audited accounts anymore, and even the taxman is resorting to mass online surveilance systems etc to detect cases of tax evasion. And contrary to the Hippocratic oath of not doing any harm, scam exposes have repeatedly revealed the active help and commission by omission of CAs who have been middlemen for bribes, helped launder money abroad, suggested sharp practices in tax, not been critical enough etc.And with LLPs fast gaining traction, the corporatization of the profession will be complete with the 20partner/firm limit being dropped.

So what is the way out? Let the profession not claim to have public interest as primacy, as the hard reality is that it IS becoming a business. Spin off the regulatory function to a independent regulator, and have ICAI as the first line Self Regulatory body. This post seems a rant but I just had to get it away from my system! And unless pro-bono work is done like the BCAS Charitable Institutions Accounts and Audit clinic, the claim of working in the public interest should be viewed with skeptism.