Life skills lacuna lesson
Life skills education — specifically the lack of it — is a blind spot of post-independence India’s know-all education planners. Good manners, care and civility are neither demanded nor taught within the overwhelming majority of the nation’s schools or colleges, with the result that they are conspicuously absent in the workplace, especially in public sector companies and utilities where customers are seldom regarded as more than a nuisance.
This is particularly true of the country’s 28 nationalised banks led by the biggest daddy of them all — the State Bank of India which has over 13,000 branches countrywide and a massive workforce of 198,774 employees — all innocent of their basic obligation to provide service with a smile. Within this in-bred organisation, petty clerks rise to the top and bring their bad manners and resentments into the office of chairman and chief executive, from whence they are eventually cast out with nary a word of regret or appreciation.
A case in point is A.K. Purwar, who recently demitted office as chairman and managing director of SBI after serving a term of four years. During his tenure Purwar earned a notorious reputation for rudeness, a characteristic which permeated through the bank. Despite being the country’s largest people’s bank, its officials have a particularly bad reputation for customer service. This allegation was tested by EducationWorld over the two years past. Over a dozen letters, phone calls, faxes relating to business matters addressed to Purwar, haven’t provoked a single response from him or any of the 198,774 employees of the bank.
Unfortunately for Purwar, he’s discovering that what goes around comes around. Despite hectic lobbying, his term as chairman was not extended. Nor was his choice of successor accepted by the Union finance ministry. Instead a relatively junior manager, O.P. Bhatt, has been appointed chairman of SBI. And the most unkindest cut is that immediately on taking charge, Bhatt announced a reversal of two of Purwar’s major policy initiatives — SBI’s expansion abroad and massive computerisation of banking operations.
Following his unceremonious exit from SBI, where he is already a distant memory, Purwar has reportedly signed up with a B-school in Mumbai to teach business management. On the basis of his experience, he would do well to stress the importance of life skills learning to nexgen managers.
Premchand pathos
July 31, 2005 was the 125th birth anniversary of the great Hindi litterateur and writer Munshi Premchand who (inevitably) died in penury but whose evocative novels with their deep social insight are still widely read in the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to this day. To mark the occasion, Uttar Pradesh’s teacher-turned chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav decreed the state’s grandest year-long literary celebration with a budget of Rs.2 crore.
Included in the chief minister’s literary celebration agenda was the commissioning of a series of illustrated story books and theatre adaptations of Premchand’s works. But as usual between the plan and its implementation, there was the long shadow of the state’s infamously indolent bureaucracy. Work on producing the illustrated books commenced only in June this year — and that too only after the officials entrusted with the task were threatened with suspension if the job wasn’t done by the July 31, 2006 deadline.
The consequence of the state bureaucracy going into belated over-drive is shoddily produced commemorative volumes, replete with spelling and grammatical errors. And against the production target of 10,000 only 2,000 volumes have been printed, with more than half gifted away to politicians. Government school and public libraries have been completely by-passed.
Officials at the UP Hindi Sansthan, the agency charged with the task, aren’t willing to accept any blame. According to them the budgeted funds were received only in May 2006. Now following widespread criticism of the quality of the memorial volume, the Sansthan has shelved plans to meet the 10,000 target. The fate of the 1,000 initial editions in stock hangs in the balance. The government has no plans to sell or market them as the volumes on sale at Hindi Sansthan counters are being spurned by children and parents for poor type and illustrations.
Meanwhile ironically, the village of Lamhi in Varanasi district where Premchand was born, doesn’t yet have a school or panchayat library. It’s a poignant tale that could be straight out of a Premchand anthology.