Company secretary course and prospects

A Company Secretary is a professional like a Doctor, Engineer or Chartered Accountant.The major role of a Company Secretary is to ensure that whether the Company complies with all applicable laws and endeavours. A  Company Secretary is also required to give expert advice to companies  on matters of Company Law, FEMA, Corporate Tax and issue of shares. For that reason a Company Secretary  is having a high esteem within and outside the organizations.

As per the Companies Act , a company with minimum paid up capital of  Rs. 5 crores or more is required to appoint  a whole time Company Secretary . The Company Secretary so appointed will be a noteable personnel in the company. The Company Secretary plays a vital role in announcing meetings of the board of directors and share holders and implementing decisions made in the meetings. Moreover , the Company Secretary acts as  a vital link between the board of directors , shareholders and government and the general public.

In modern age, Company Secretary means a person having superior authority and act as a link in coordinating all the factors in an organization.  Being a professional , all the members in an organization keeps an eye watch on him for his advices and suggestions .

Institute of Company Secretary

The Institute of Company Secretaries of India was established in the year 1980 under an act of Parliament. Before the Act, the institute was an organization established under Section 25 of the Companies Act . With the implementation of the Company Secretaries Act , 1960, the  Institute became the ultimate authority to develop and regulate the profession. The Institute is headquartered in New Delhi with four regional offices in  Delhi , Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai.

The Institute also has more than 70 chapters in different cities . In Kerala, the chapter offices are at Trivandrum , Ernakulam, Trissur, Palakkad and Kozhikode. This institute conducts the company secretary exams in 3 stages – Foundation, Executive and Professional. The membership in the Institute (ACS) can be gained after passing the examination and completing the requisite practical training . The course can be pursued by non-graduates, employees, women and those who are pursuing other courses.

The content of the course

The examination conducted by the Institute should be passed to become a Company Secretary . A smart candidate can pass the examination within three years. The exams are conducted in three stages: (1) Foundation (2) Executive (3) Professional. A candidate with Plus Two or equal qualification can join the foundation course at any time. The candidates registered before March 31 can write the exams in December and those registering before September 30 can write the exams in June next year. Plus Two candidates can pursue the course by applying for temporary registration. But the exams should be passed within 6 months from the date of registration and the evidence should be provided to the Institute.The subjects are Business Law, Management, Accountancy and Economics. In order to pass the exam 40% marks in each subject and 50% aggregate should be obtained.

After completing the Foundation, the second stage ie; Executive Programme can be pursued. Graduates, non graduates and those who have completed the final of Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant can register as a student at any time without writing foundation exam and minimum mark stipulations. But non Commerce graduates and post graduates will have to successfully complete the Foundation course subjects by oral or postal tuition. Candidates registered before 31st August 2010 and can write all the subjects of Executive Programme in June 2011. The subjects in this stage are General laws, Taxation, Accountancy, Company law, Economic Law and Labour law. After passing these exams, the candidate can pursue Professional programme. The requisite practical training insisted by the Institute should be completed along with this.

Job Opportunities

The question as to which is the professional course where the job opportunities are high. The answer is Company Secretary course. The Company Secretaries are in demand even during recession. The reason for this is the ever expanding companies and shortage of Company Secretaries. In India , there are about 10 lakh companies but the company secretaries are below 20000. This itself shows the job opportunity for company secretaries. Big corporates are offering lakhs of  rupees as salary for candidates who have passed the course and completed requisite practical training .
 
The job opportunities for company secretaries are still very high . The company secretaries are considered in various superior designations in the central government. The Indian Bankers Association motivates the candidates who have passed the Company Secretaryship by promoting to office cadre in addition to increment. Moreover various central government and state government organizations are appointing company secretaries. Universities and educational institutions appoint company secretaries as professors and directors. In addition to the position as a Company Secretary, he also acts as a member of Director Board , Vice President or CEO in some companies.

Area of Practice

Candidates who have passed company secretary course can practise independently by obtaining certificate of practice from the institute . As per the Companies Act , a company with paid up capital of 10 lakhs to 5 crores is compulsorily required to conduct compliance audit  every year by a practicing Company Secretary. Through this audit, the Company Secretary has to verify whether the company complies with all legal provisions or not. The documents to be filed by a company to the central government as per law are to be certified by a practising professional . Moreover a Company Secretary is considered as an expert in Foreign Exchange Laws, SEBI Laws, Labour laws, Pollution Control Laws, Banking, Insurance, International Laws, Corporate Taxation etc.

The practising area of the company secretaries will further strengthen with the passing of the Companies bill which is under consideration of the Parliament.

Other matters

The prospectus with detailed information and application form is available at the Chapter office of the Institute. The fees for Foundation is Rs 3600, for Executive Programme Rs 6500 and for Professional Programme Rs 7500. The course fees should be sent with the application form in the form of Demand Draft favouring the “The Institute of Company Secretaries of India” payable at New Delhi. The candidates handing over the application form and demand draft at the Institute’s office or Chapter can obtain temporary registration and study materials immediately. 50% discount in fees is available for SC/ST and physically handicapped candidates. In Kerala the examination centres are at Trivandrum , Kochi and Kozhikode .

For further details visit: www.icsi.edu or contact Chapter office.

Bioinformatics: A Gentle Overview

At one city in France the  great Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was studying how fermentation of alcohol was  linked to the existence of a specific microorganism. In another city in England, equally great Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was oiling his Analytical Engine in which Ada Lovelace, a mathematician who understood Babbage's vision, was trying to  calculate the Bernoulli numbers. These gentlemen are today hailed as father of biotechnology and father of computers respectively. Did Pasteur and Babbage ever meet ? They had about 25 years to do so, and were less than 1000 Km apart. We do not know if they ever met, but had they met, they possibly would not have talked to each other ! If I may be pardoned for a politically incorrect pun, remember that Pasteur was French and Babbage was British !. Anyway, what do they have in common to talk, other than the weather? What is there in common between the gear  wheels that were turning away in an attempt to crunch numbers and the microbes playing mysterious role in fermenting alcohol ?  

Is this true today ? Not a bit, not even as much as a bacteria. It seems imminent, if  not already true, that Biology and Computers are becoming close cousins which are mutually respecting, helping and influencing each other and synergistically merging,  more than ever. The flood of data from Biology, mainly in the form of DNA, RNA and  Protein sequences, is putting heavy demand on computers and computational  scientists. At the same time, it is demanding a transformation of basic ethos of  biological sciences. A common misconception is that bio-informatics is about  creating and managing bio-data bases. Nothing would be farther from the truth. Fine  analytical and engineering skills are in great demand in the area, as seen by vigorous  attempts of machine-learning on the protein folding and gene-finding problems. The great Donald Kunth, renowned Stanford computer science professor, is quoted  often for pointing out that biology has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. He feels that biology is "so digital, and incredibly complicated, but incredibly useful"(Computer Literacy Interview with Donald Knuth by Dan Doernberg, December  1993). However, there are still some spokes in the wheel for the grand union  between two great sciences and their offshoot technologies. Due to the  estrangement which existed for many decades, professionals from both the fields  have a lot to do in terms of fine tuning their communication. Skepticism from  puritans in both fields towards the claim of Bioinformatics as an independent field  also needs convincing answers.  

Many universities world over have started teaching and research in the area. Journals are plenty and so are conferences and professional meetings. As the disciplines of  bioinformatics and computational biology are gaining prominence day by day, an industry is also emerging fast on their shoulders, estimated at $1.82 billion in 2007.  Bioinformatics has taken on a new glitter by entering the field of drug discovery in a  big way. Bioinformatics has taken on a new glitter by entering the field of drug  discovery in a big way. This is one area that seems to be becoming the single largest. bioinformatics application, from an Industry view point. In India, it has a  special relevance in the context of the recent patent amendment that has brought in  product patents.  

There has been a green-shift in all prominent technology publications. IEEE, the world's biggest professional society of technologists,  has prominently adopted such a shift. I did a quick check. If you use the key word "biology" and search the IEEE Digital Library limiting the year of search, you get the following hits for the years indicated in brackets: 13 (1975), 40(1985), 3484 (1990),  9617 (1995), 16233 (2000) and 27526 (2006). I did this on 26 November 2006, among the 14,32,467 documents in the data base. About 2% documents have been greened! One of the latest additions to the prestigious IEEE Transactions series is  IEEE & ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. It may be  noted that biological motivation has a long history in the computer field, in the form  of artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, to the recent ant-colony optimization  techniques. Applications of computers in biology were mostly in the bio-medical field, in early days. One new facet that has emerged with Bioinformatics, is the focus  on sub-cellular and molecular levels of Biology. Systems biology promises great  growth in modeling cellular life, using conventional engineering approach, as already pointed to by projects such as e-Cell.  

I will attempt to give the  big picture of Bioinformatics by presenting  basic ideas in minimal technical vocabulary, aimed specifically at IT community. I do not have  anything against life scientists attempting to read this and I think it could be useful in patches to   them also. They are however likely to be uncomfortable with my bio-wisdom.  

Bioinformatics is the application of computer sciences and allied technologies to answer the questions of Biologists, about the mysteries of life. A mere application   of computers to solve any problem of a biologist would not merit a separate discipline. It looks as   if Bioinformatics is mainly concerned with problems involving data  emerging from within cells of living beings. It might be appropriate to say that Bioinformatics deal with application of computers in solving problems of molecular biology, in this context.   
 
What is difference between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ?   This is a bit tricky. Both are "Computers + Biology". Difference is subtle but important. Bioinformatics = Biology + Computers whereas Computational Biology = Computers + Biology. In other words, biologists who specialize in use of computational tools and systems to answer problems of biology are bioinformaticians. Computer scientists, Mathematicians, Statisticians, and Engineers who specialize in developing theories, algorithms and techniques for such tools and systems are computational biologists. Arguably, there will be overlaps, but one can also identify some clear demarcations. I am yet to find a biologist who is at absolute ease in understanding, let alone developing a hidden Markov model, which is a machine learning paradigm used extensively in Bioinformatics.