Inflation-induced Prosperity:My Unfolding Voyage 52

What if one gets Rs. 815 for one's service contracted for Rs 754? This is exactly what happened when I received the first full month salary credit to my bank account on the last day of January 1971 at the United Bank of India, the one that was nationalized along with 13 others in July 1969. The reason for the increase was inflation: dearness allowance, a componet of the salary, was inflation -indexed and with a few points rise in the consumer price index, my compensation had increased. Since then I always wished inflation to continue and make me richer more frequently in a year. That was the first lesson that my voyage through working life unfolded. In just 72 months that I worked, thanks to high inflation (remember the first oilshock induced price rise in the early nineteen seventies) together with two promotions made be 100% richer - though in per capita terms ( a souse and two kids - counted as one), I was 33.4% poorer in those five years. Something else would come to protect me.

I had begaun the first few days in office wearing a newly stiched light blue stiped suit: the winter days passed off well before I could understand that a suit was not really necessary in the warm Kolkata weather despite the air-conditioning of the office in an organization manned dominantly by Bengali middle-class Bhadrolok ( gentlemen) many of whom still smarted white dhoti and punjabi. I adopted white shirts and black/ blue/ off-white trousers as the regular official dress. The headquarters of the United Bank of India was then located in a huge three-storied colonial type office building on the Clive Ghat Street a dew minutes walk from the Dalhousie Square, now called BBD Bagh (named after Binoy, Bdal and Dinesh - three freedom fighters of Bengal's armed revolutionary group who fought the British Rulers through sudden terrorist attacks on highly placed British civil servants), where the British fought the first war to set up its rule in India with Calcutta (or Kolkata) as the Capital of the British Empire, a status that Calcutta enjoyed untill 1911 when the British felt it prudent to shift the capital to Delhi as Bengal became too infested with armed struggle by freedom fighters. From my residence near Calcutta Airport, it used to take about 40-45 minutes by bus to reach Dalhousie Squate those days but soon the distance measured by travel time would progressively increase by 50% - 70%. That was the beginning of the seconf unfolging lesson: the distance between office and residence in metro-cities increases in terms of  both travel time and/or travelling cost notwithstanding all the efforts of the city planners.  A significant part of the unfolding working life would be taken up by the time spent on travel between home and office: a sheer wastage of productive man-hours of the nation and deterirating quality of life (leisure time and pleasure forgone).

I was recruited as an economist, though not designates as such, and deployed in the Department of Economic Studies, headed by Economist of the Bank, Mr. T. R. Shah, a B.Sc (Economics) from London, UK - the only Gujarati in a Bengali Executive Management. I was the sixth officer under the command of Mr.Shah in the Department dealing with what was soon to be called Management Information Services, besides Publicity, publication of an Economic Newsletter as also managing the Bank's Library.  All the  other officers were senior to me in age by 8-15 years: two were senior even in grade and only one  junior in grade who was looking after mostly administrative jobs. All the colleagues were very affectionate to this young new entrant fresh from the University. Two of them held Masters degrees in Economics and had earlier worked as professors, one was a brilliant academic career ending with a Masters in Statistics and another a professional librarian. Soon however, Mr. Shah got a promotion and became an Assistannt General Manager (those days, the Chairmen of most commercial bank was assisted by a single General Manager, about 3 or 4 Deputy General Managers. Then there were a number of Assistant General Managers folloed by Staff officers in Grade I and Grade II and officers in Grades 1, 2 and 3. Most bank branch offices were headed by oficers in grade 2 and 3 (those days head of the branch offices were called Agents and his deputy as the Accountant who would report also directly to the Bank's Chief Accountant in the rank of Deputy General Manager. while only a few of the big branches were headed by officers in grade 1 or staff officer grade 2. But being in the Headquarter of the Bank, even an officer in Grade 2 was at that time a priviledged occupation. Mr. Shah became in charge of a new Department called the Planning and Development Department with four divions withing the Department: Research & Planning Division (RPD), Agricultural Finance Division, Small Scale Industries  Finance Division and Branch Expansion Devision. RPD was nothing but the former Department of Economics with various sections like Statistics, Research & Planning, Library and Publicity and Public Relations. The functions of all these divisions and the sections within the divisions were evolving fast over time and  there was close interaction among the sections and divisions under the Department headed by Mr.Shah. His department was the key change agent to transform the culture and operational focus of the Bank in accordance with the objectives of ban nationalization in India: promotion of hitherto unbanked economic activities of agriculture, small scale industries, tiny and cottage industries, small transport operators, artisans, etc.

There was an air of economic development orientation to the nationalized banks in almost every aspect of bank functiong from raising deposits, lending, investing, branch opening, human resource development. It was new challange with great thrill and entusiasm for  being relevant to the society among the bank officers during that time: the number of new recruits - both officers and assistants jumped many fold every year. My Division, headed by an Assistant Economist (staff officer grade 2) saw the number of officers  increase from 6 to 18 in less than two years with brilliant post graduates in Economics and Statistics- all in officer Gade 2 except one who joined in officer Grade1. Our work expanded dramatically. But all these enthusiam was for the new recruit officeers and stypists, stenographers and assistants. Bulk of the unionised assistants of both clerical and lower category were more concerned with their benefits and overtime pay rather than office productivity. One sector in India which the unionised employees enjoyed working with low productivity per manhour, no transfers and high and increasing compensation per employee was the banking sector, thanks to the leftist trade unionism. Bank customers suffered for long, since 1951 till about 2001. When I had joined the Bank, I was enthuasistic and felt that my intelligence and smartness was better than the attending assistants. Soon after I had joined the Bank in 1970, I was given the task to organise 15 0r 20 copies of a 6 page Note to be arranged in an hour's time or less. The Final version of the note was typed on cyclostyled paper and tewnty copies were taken (those days, we did not have PCs or computer printers). We had 15 minutes left to complete making sets and staple them and deliver. I started arranging them myself and complete the task because I though the step by step scientific approach to the same work by a Daftary and a Peon would take a longer time. The Daftary and the peopn watched me complete the task in my own short cut process. After the task was over, the elderly Daftary told me with lot of affection, " Mr. Sen, please do not do things this way again. Arranging sets and stapling are not the work of officers but ours."  I replied to him that since this was a small scale task which I could complete more quickly than two of them following their normal peocess of using a wide long table, spreading out first the copies of different pages into different sets and then stapling them while I just divided the task between three of us as the Peon and myself making one set each and giving over to the Daftary for stapling. He said that was all fine. But the officers, as per the work allocation contract between the management and the employees union, could not involve themselves in any way in the task od arranging paper, making sets of notes and stappling them. I had violated the provisions of this understanding. And, if I and other officers did this again and again on the plea of urgency, there would be gfewer vacancies arising for employment of Daftaries and peons, besides cutting down the overtime pay for them. The incident helped me prepare for the unfolding voyage in dealing with office assistants, stenographers, peons and daftaries in the future years.