Many observations and perspectives accumulated through my professional accounting experience have served as the inspiration for this book. The first came from an internship I worked at in 1966 when I joined Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL) under R. Subrahmanyan, then commercial services manager. A brilliant man, a chartered and cost accountant, he was working on product cost accounting. That was the year when the Government of India (GoI) had introduced cost audit for essential commodities, including one of HLL’s major productions, vanaspati, a hydrogenated vegetable oil called Dalda. Every fortnightly Thursday, HLL would announce the price increase on the current cost of Dalda. The company factory at Sewri, Mumbai, would suspend dispatch until ...