KAHIHI

One of the key areas in the banking sector, where banks have to give proper attention, is the human resource. As banking becomes more sophisticated, there is a need to improve the skill set of the bank employees.
The Government has set up a committee to look into the HR issues of state-owned banks with a view to improve HR policies.
Getting people with adequate skill and knowledge is the need of the hour.
The Indian Banks' Association has finalised a scheme for common recruitment of personnel for nationalised banks.
With the cooperation of Indian Banks' Association the Government had launched a Central Electronic Registry earlier this year for recording mortgages. It would help check frauds of multiple borrowing against the same property and help in the growth of the market and the banking industry.
These are some of the versions published in different newspapers of the speech given by the finance minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee recently.
But Baba I’ll miss my bus, I said to my father while he was withdrawing cash from a big branch of a big bank. A big counter divided the customers and the bankers. I couldn’t see anything beyond the counter.
Don’t worry. I’ll get the cash before your bus arrives or else as your school is nearby from here, I’ll reach you to the school.
He had a Lambretta scooter then.
A handsome man was working on the ledgers standing behind the ledger keepers making entries of debits and credits in red cover heavy ledgers, triple the size of laptops in width and double of height. I could see when my father lifted me to show how the work goes on.
Don’t worry young girl. You’ll get your school bus. A noise came from behind the ledger keepers. He was the branch manager. The branch was heavily loaded with customers, proving the popularity of the branch.
What do you like to have as a fun maker chew?
Peppermints. (Cadburys and Amuls had not been the craze then)
What flavour?
Orange, I answered.
Go into the cabin and collect as many as you want. They are on the table. It’s my table. Don’t worry.
The watchman loaded with gun having more-stiff-than British upper lip and hardnosed, though looking fearsome smiled and opened the cabin door with a fractional smile before the movie-hero like manager threw a look at him.
I looked at my father. He was smiling approvingly. They knew each other.
I collected three peppermints from a saucer on his table and came out chewing one.
This amazing man was handling how many things at a time!
He may prove to be a good father too, my father whispered to me when we were out of the premises after collecting the cash.
This is the story of around bank nationalization days i.e. 1969.
After 42 years and 10 months I recollected the incident after watching and reading the captioned quotes of the finance minister at a banking function in Mumbai.
Indira Gandhi nationalized the banks and brought them to the doors of the common man, a necessity then; thereby elevating the standard of the citizens at the lower strata, especially many of the engineers and engineering diploma holders who spent their parents’ already insufficient means and were about to face unemployment. They could own their initially small scale and then medium scale industries.
The credit undeniably goes to Indira Gandhi.
Globalisation trend knocked the door after that. Computerization became the necessity and as if to countermand it, bankers started behaving like babus in the government.
On the flashback of the above incidence a current topic:
Though not so as big as the one I quoted earlier, I now have an account in an air conditioned branch.
The bank now has its own rules along with a few permitted by government under a ticket of autonomy. The officer concerned was not even able to manage four or five customers he was facing, he struggled. As the counter dividing the customer and banker was removed and a simple table took its place, one has to face the eyes of the barking fellow. He didn’t know the fixed deposit interest rates that kept changing twice a month. Difficult, agreed. But neither was he having paper sheets handy nor was he able to save the chart on the screen. He was shuffling the papers and then getting up from his chair to whisper into his colleagues’ ears and coming back, for what reasons nobody could surmise.
(I remembered at this moment the Tony Curtis slapstick comedy of 1965, Boeing Boeing, hoodwinking with three air hostesses of three different airlines acting to be loving each of them to the extent of making them feel that they are at home but fumbling when state-of the-art aircrafts are put in the services thereby bringing all of them at the same time in Paris. And then Jerry Lewis carrying the burden taking his position!)
Fed up watching his shuffling with the FDRs, after half an hour I went to manager’s cabin. There wasn’t anybody else. Even so he looked uneasy. I told him my difficulty and to look into the matter. The man was deputed to London for five years and just back.
Lo and behold, the man didn’t know how to operate computer. That was the secret behind his getting uneasy. He needed a clerk to help him.
At least this office is ditto a replica of a government office where babus are provided with a platoon of helpers.
And this man according to their new pay revision is drawing about fifty thousand rupees a month plus, plus a clerk of say twenty five thousand.
So Mr. Mukherjee these people too have got their contribution to the profit and loss figures and NPAs you mentioned. The young generation may be efficient. Now root out this age old parasites that would be sucking the profit for a few more years of the banking tree.
Cosmetic changes like renaming a Human Resources Development (HRD) to a Human Resources Management (HRM) won’t improve things. Politicians are in the habit of presenting old schemes in new packing.
The bank heads are waiting for your orders obediently, Sir.

Recently, I came across an outwardly fragile and ill man, an aam aadmi, with inherent mental guts.

Weather being comfortably cold, it is a touring time in south peninsula. Highways are jammed with thousands of public, private buses and vehicles – a good sign of financial progress the ruling party is boasting about.

It was a lavish seven-seater on highway number 17. Little after crossing Panvel, a dhaba appeared. It was 8.30 p.m. The vehicle driver got down for his dinner. He was atypical. Unlike other drivers, generally with an expected look of having it from the hirers of the vehicle, this driver took his seemingly usual corner. His confidence while marching towards the table made it apparent.

He ordered his pint and started his evening session with an added confidence.

Our aam aadmi who had hired the vehicle didn’t approve the act. What we do at such times? Keep quiet? Discard the behavior?

This bold aam aadmi took out the visiting card of the two-car-fleet owner and rang the office from his cell phone. He narrated the story and asked to order the overconfident and apparently victorious highway sarathi of the vehicle for a retreat. The Information Technology & Telecom revolution benefit.

The sarathi with his unyielding face was initially reluctant to accept the defeat. However, he finally succumbed to his master’s orders.

Further story in a nutshell is common. The liberalization has liberalized few people in strategic positions more than others. They earn money in excess and finding difficult to cope, invest in such adventures without thinking whether it’s worthwhile or not.

Such kind of miniscule transport business with no worries for the returns or carelessness about expansion is always leading to loss as one has to hand it over to the other man who can’t be under anyone’s control and vigil. There are several possibilities of parting your money by under filling of petrol, repairing costs, thefts, imaginary bribery amounts and toll. Forget the death toll in case of drunken driving. Highway laws are different than the written ones, one has to experience himself.

The tour operators of this kind may have sought all the permissions necessary. But how can one assure the behaviour of the driver on the highway? And who is responsible of the mishaps in such cases?

Or whether we have to spend this life like the kind of deers in the jungle scared of the tigers and lions every moment on these shoddy highways that our rulers have constructed?

This man has shown the courage. Everybody can’t do that. And why everybody should do it?

Such kind of careless behaviour has led to accidents causing deaths a few times of the worshippers visiting religious places with a faith in their minds that the deity would provide them a happy life ahead!

This is an irony.

Initially I was not much enthusiastic of the taxi services of two new fleets, Meru and Easy Cab, as being carried away by the above kind of impression. But recently they have changed my opinion. The taxis are present in your porch dot at time. Their preconditions are well defined. The drivers are well behaved and in between the fleet owners’ representatives keep on enquiring about the status of the travel and finally your feedback specifically about behaviour of the drivers and the time schedule.

I hope they keep up the spirit and their upcoming small followers also do the same, liberalizing us from that Stone Age fear of the deers.

Sunk into the scams the ruling party is patting itself for the financial achievements constantly; their two leaders’, party and executive, mouths shut and paralysed during the session time though! It’s the time they take a lesson or two from the of aam aadmi of the above kind and behave with firmness when the scam scum is visible everywhere else.

At such a time a little care and concern shown for common people if exhibited by the rulers may appease us like that of the fleet.