State Bank of India - for the employees.

Two countries, thousand of miles apart, had similar incidents in last few days. It was victory of the masses and the short sightedness which permeates it. In Europe, it was the French President Mr Jacques Chirac to bow down and repeal the labour reform law put by Prime Minister De Villepin. The other example was India, where central government capitulated before the shameless employees of the largest state run bank, the 'State Bank of India'.

I have talked a lot about France in my blog so for a change I would like to develop upon the indefinite strike by the employees of State Bank of India.

This bank is the informal extension of central bank, the Reserve bank of India. It has exclusive mandate for doing certain government related financial transaction. It is also a major player in the forex market and Indian government uses it to control the exchange rate. It boasts of having 9000 branches across country and 200,000 employees. It is this 200,000 employees who now have the infamous distinction of stopping the country’s financial transaction for a week. Their demand was to increase their pension.

For a week the common citizens, the customers of State Bank, had a harrowing time. They could not conduct any financial transaction. Since it was also paycheck time, they could not withdraw their own salary. Most of the government and other public sector undertaking, disburses their salary through this bank. Had no money to buy groceries, medicines or pay for the school fees of their children. The ATMs quickly went dry and account holders had to borrow money from their friends and other sources for their daily needs. The plight of customers was shown in television footages, but it had no effect on the employees or the management.

After a week, government intervened, accepted their demand of increasing pensions and strike was called off. Government was happy, management was happy and employees were happy but no one gave a damn for the hapless customer. Let alone compensation, not a single note of apology was released by the employees or the management for giving hard time to its very own customers.

State bank of India boasts of its figures, the number of branches, the number of employees and its huge deposit base. But why does it not publish the productivity per employee or profit per employee which is way below those of smaller private run banks. There has been lot of reports about the changing face and the growth of this bank. But could this bank become this huge without government policy of protection and conducting few transactions exclusively with this bank? Could it be the same if it other banks had the level playing field? The behaviour and attitude of State bank employees may have changed in big cities where private banks have presence. But it is same colonial attitude in other cities where private banks have no footprint.. So much for liberalization of economy.

Government has some serious explanation to do in this regard. It should explain why it took a week for them to accept the demands whey finally it had to accept them? It should also explain to citizens of India that how come it allowed one bank to acquire such proportion as to hold the whole country to ransom?

I don’t think there would be any answer, for no one ever answers to common citizens of India.