ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED BY

“This country can never change”

“The system is corrupt and rotten to the core”

“No good can come to this country, after engineering I’ll do an MBA and get settled abroad”

And many such reprimands define a common Indian’s daily life. Any encounter with a public sector/ government office will lead someone into believing that the way things are run in this country require a radical change.

Despite doing BE (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from one of the most prestigious colleges in India, I moved on from a mediocre Analytical job in Bengaluru to becoming a part of ‘the System’. Well, I am going to be brutally honest here, I wanted job stability and get settled some place near my hometown ie. Jodhpur (Rajasthan, India) as well – even if it meant taking a haircut in my pay slip. It wasn’t truly just patriotism that got me into the public sector.

It was back in the beginning of the year 2019 when my mother recommended me to take advantage of the amazing aptitude skills that I have got and make it into the esteemed approximately 200-year-old State Bank of India that promises a bright and fast-track future. By fast-track future I mean a future where promotions are fast-tracked, and indeed the best career growth in any of the government departments. And by the end of this year, I was inducted into the esteemed State Bank of India (SBI), I had become ‘the Banker to every Indian’.

I was posted to a village named Anandpur Kalu, Tehsil Jaitaran, Pali District in Rajasthan. This was a 40-year-old branch with moist walls with peeled plaster and dirty desks along with other creaking furniture. The counters were crowded with angry customers praying, requesting, intimidating, pestering, yelling and even blackmailing for their work to be done otherwise their accounts be closed. If accounts could not be closed, then the branch be closed. Non-cooperative customers and unsurmountable workload made Kalu Anandpur branch a really tough workplace.

However, with the help of my supervisors and seniors I survived and made it my mission to thrive and lift this under-staffed branch up to as far up as I could on my young, na?ve shoulders. Gravity took its toll but as this was my first experience in handling customers, I decided to get this through rather than thinking of going back to where I had come from. Giving up was so not an option. Working smartly and diligently, I managed to earn the trust of the above-mentioned angry customers and had within a few months built a positive reputation. By implementing a zero-pendency approach, our customer footfall decreased to almost half, because the ones who were repetitively visiting the branch for the same piece of work had disappeared. A year down the lane – and this year 2020 was a bitch of a year all thanks to the COVID 19 pandemic – and I was the public hero! I was the only bank guy whose work was ‘pucca’. It felt awesome and I was growing in confidence!!

But like I said, ‘Gravity’ had taken its toll and by the end of 2020, I had decided to move on to other avenues in my career rather than stick to Banking. The biggest problem with Indian banking sector, and especially with the retail banking in rural areas, is that people do not want to adopt digital (alternate) channels of banking. They are also reluctant to adopt technology because they do not trust technology and rather trust bankers more. As if the latter are more accurate and genuine in posting transactions!

So I started preparing for Staff Selection Commission (SSC)’s Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Examination which is conducted to recruit officers and assistants for various departments of the Central Government of India. I studied during nights and during days I kept rocking Kalu Anandpur branch of SBI, because in another two years I had opened more than 500 saving accounts and single handedly managed to keep the customer complaints at level zero. I even had customers residing 45 kms away visiting our branch because they knew their accounts would be opened here without any hassle whatsoever. From a place where customers were threatening to close their accounts to a place where people wanted to open their accounts with us, I can say with conviction that my work at Anandpur Kalu was done and I had stood up to my own expectations.

On the fateful day of 28 Oct 2021, I lost my mother right in front of my eyes. She was too young to go. Aged 52 at the time of her death, I was the last thing she smiled at. I was her favorite and she wanted to see me getting married. My mother, for the wonderful optimist she was, also happened to believe that if I could not do something well then no one could do it. She also often complained about me not calling her every day. And I feel awful that I never even apologized for it. It is probably why life took her away from me so that I could regret my whole life not having talked to her enough. The loss of her bothers me to date. I wish she waits for me in the afterlife so that someday I might get a chance to ask for her forgiveness.

Nevertheless, I decided to punch life back in the face and not be too disheartened by her demise. It was a setback for our family but for the cheerful optimist she was, she would have surely asked me to carry on the show with the same zeal and pursue my ambitions. The only things she had prohibited were thinking negatively and getting afraid.

?So after a year long wait and hard work and upside downs, I managed to obtain All-India-Rank (AIR) 850 in the SSC CGL 2020 examination. The ones who do not believe I am so intelligent, should definitely check out the official website notification dated 30-Nov-2022 and then get a brain-check! I am kidding about a brain-check, that won’t be necessary, please feel free to think I’m dumb and crazy. You see, after 3 years of serving customers in Kalu Anandpur, I have become more ‘patient’ and less ‘self-centered’.

I quit State Bank of India in Jan 2023 and will now move on ‘to a road that is a bit more congested’. Walking alone needs a lot of strength. It is not for the weak, but the way human beings are built is that they become sick and weak, with age of course. And in spite of how determined and strong-headed we think we are, there are always things we cannot control and things (that includes residents of Anandpur Kalu) that do not want to be changed. Therefore, it is better to not be fixated at changing things and instead keep doing the good work without worrying about the consequences.

Thank God I found my way out of SBI! It made a lot of those SBI folks jealous because apparently they had wanted to the same but could not! And that’s no surprise, SBI does have its own set of challenges and not just at Anandpur Kalu.

I am happy I could in some way participate in making a public office a better workplace. Shouldn't we all?