Why Should the Bankers be made to work this Sunday?

 

I have not blogged for long now and this occurred to me this day last week. I tried logging in then and realised the blog was still alive. It was a pleasant surprise and decided I must resume blogging now. A provocation came in the past couple of days with endless text messages on my mobile and whatsapp that the bank will remain open this Sunday, September 27, 2026 to save us from the inconvenience caused by the bankers decision to go on a three day strike beginning Monday, September 28, 2026. In an age when only a few old men go to the bank branch to transact business and pulling out cash from the ATMs too has become old-fashioned with the smart phone also serving as a wallet, I am at a loss as to how the hell a few days strike by the bankers are going to inconvenience most people who have business with banks.

            Speaking for myself, I will, in the event, draw money for expenses a few days before the strike and consequent closure of banks while many others unlike me will not care whether the banks are open or closed. All of whom a strike and the closure of bank branches matters to are business-men who carry out transaction by cheques and I am not too sure if there are too many in our midst who do this. So, the texts and the whatsapp messages expressing concern for my inconvenience made no sense to me. It was just the irritation of receiving so many of those through the day and day after day and having to delete those since they will occupy all the space in my inbox and leave no space for messages that serve a purpose to me that bothered me. Things changed yesterday.

            A text message, early afternoon, showing credit of my salary for the month of September made me think. The salary for September this year ought to be credited, as the law ordains, on or before the last working day of the month: This is Wednesday, September 30, 2026. It is true that there is nothing in the law prohibiting early disbursal. But it has never happened in the past decade and half since I work in a quasi-government organization where the rule about the last working day matters. I mean never has it been that the salary was credited five days before it was due. And it certainly was an act of benevolence on the part of the Drawing and Disbursing Officer of my institution to have done his bit in easing my life and saving me of the inconvenience that the bankers were going to cause.

            A line about what is meant by the Drawing and Disbursing Officer here will be in order. This is a designated officer in a government or autonomous organization, who has the authority to draw money out of the Consolidated Funds of the Government of India within the limits of the budget allocated to the department or organization and the specific heads such as salary, travel claims, money due to vendors, contractual obligations from the organization, etc., and disburse those accordingly. The Finance Officer, a statutory position, happens to be the DDO (in short for the Drawing and Disbursing Officer) of my organization.  

            Myself as well as my DDO (my Drawing and Disbursing Officer) and all those who work in the salary section in my organization have been working only five days a week. This had been in vogue from long before I entered into service fifteen years ago. It has been the rule for a little more than four decades now: Since June 3, 1985 to be precise when the Government ordered it that way from that date. This shortening of the working week entailed working for one more hour than earlier between Mondays and Fridays and the decision was also meant to ensure saving of electricity costs in the office buildings, saving fuel on vehicles the employees used to commute and also on maintenance of the facilities in the buildings.

            Even while I do not find any data to establish the quantum of savings achieved by this, I do not dispute that it did achieve saving. Elementary Watson, as Holmes would say. Let me depend on common sense and say my DDO as well as anyone in my establishment or any government organization working today had not experienced what it means to work six days a week. We all entered our organization when it was five days a week. If this is so, why then should the bankers even have to go on strike now because the strike is to press their demand for a five day week to them too. Or is it that my DDO and many others like him had orders from their bosses to disburse the salary five days before it is due and to gather our support against the bankers?

And if only we see the demand reasonable, which I do without doubt, a small hardship, if any, should have been our own way to express our solidarity with the demand. In other words, my DDO, who too is an employee and knows what it means to have a two-day week-end instead of one, could have disbursed the salary for September 2026 in the normal course. He could have done this on that day since transactions are done electronically and we all could have, as is the normal thing we do, done our own transactions on October 1, 2026. There was hardly any hardship that was due to the strike. Instead, the banks created one scare and the employers played ball. I am only wondering if whether we will not go on strike some day and what if someone there creates this scare of a hardship then. In any case, there is merit in the point that a five day week for the bankers will help save electricity and fuel as it is in case of we the employees under the Central Government and Autonomous Organisations.

College and University teachers, after all, have been on strike in the past and secured a lot of the rights and privileges we enjoy now. And there is no way, even in the future, to preserve the rights and privileges and secure more. This is a thought that goes in my mind now and a good enough provocation to revive this blog, I suppose.