NEED FOR GOOD PARENTING

Two recent  news reports pertaining to happenings in Kerala are the basis for this post. I am referring to both as I feel that lack of good parenting can be seen in both.

The first relates to the decision of the Supreme Court to hand over the "Fadia Case" to NIA for detailed investigation as it involved "Forced" conversion of a girl to Islam and the court believed that there was an organised racket behind this. While I do not question the wisdom of the Supreme Court and also firmly believe that if such an organised effort is there behind the conversion it has to be probed and checked. But from another point, even if it is part of an organised racket, nowhere it is reported that the girls were forced to convert as there is no complaint form any girls in the matter. So it appears that the girl fell in love with the members of the organisation, married her lover and subsequently converted. Can anybody find any fault in this? The girl being an adult has every right to marry the person she liked and also convert to another religion on her own will. If she complains that she was forced to convert, there is definitely a case. But the crux of the issue is that the parents were completely in the dark about the affairs of the girl. Does it talk well of the responsibility of the parents concerned? Is it that the responsibility of the parents is taking a hit now a days? Or is it that the parents are afraid to put any reasonable restriction on their wards lest it may boomerang? In the present day situation of "double income single kid" the child does not have anybody to talk openly with in the family as both the parents are busy in their profession/job/business. They only provide whatever is asked for by the kids, be it smart phone, laptop etc., but never oversee how it is being used. If the mother spared some time to talk to the daughter on a regular basis, and encouraged her to share all the personal issues/problems with mother, this could have been found at the initial stages itself, I am sure. 

The second report is regarding the suicide of two youths, which are afraid to be a result of the "blue whale " game. Here also after the untoward has happened the relatives (mother, sister etc) talk about the weird behavior of the youths and the game played by them in phone/laptop. Shouldn't they have checked these earlier, which could have prevented this untoward happening? Here too, one of the youths was only a plus one student and I wonder why a smart phone should be provided to him, which was used to access the game! Parents may argue that they did not want their ward to be behind his friends and since they could afford they provided whatever was asked for by him, which is fine as far as they ensured it was put to correct use only!

In the light of the above two reports I would only like to appeal to the parents to be more serious about their roles in the grooming of their wards, which does not end by providing whatever is asked for by them. Basically it is their responsibility to see what the wards do, with whom they mingle, what type of activities are they engaged in etc. Also they should create a confidence in the minds of their wards so that they do not hide anything from them or they would openly discuss the issues with them. I am afraid the communication channel between the parents and wards are broken now, which leads to such unfortunate incidents.

PROPOSED STRIKE BY BANK UNIONS

United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has served a notice to strike work on 22nd Aug nationwide in support of certain demands, which include, among others , the finalisation of the 11th bipartite settlement.

My comments on certain issues mentioned by them are furnished below:

One of the demands made by the unions is to stop write offs by banks! As serving employees/officers they should be aware that writing off is a permitted accounting practice for cleansing the balance sheet of the Banks and hence cannot be objected to. What they might have intended is loan waivers not write off. Write off is only a technical issue whereby banks set off the long outstanding bad debts against the provision held by them (which had been earmarked from profit and loss account of earlier years) without diluting their right to recourse to the defaulters for recovery of dues. The recovery process will continue till the final settlement and whenever recovery is effected in such accounts, it will be credited to the profit ad loss account of the year. Whereas in the case of loan waiver, the defaulters are freed of their repayment liability and hence banks will not go after them for recovery after waiver. In most such cases, where waiver is announced by the government, the defaulted amount wither in full or part will be received from government/RBI. By using the words write off in such notices, the unions are not doing good service to the organisations they serve, spreading a wrong message among the public. 

During the initial discussions on the settlement, IBA has come out with a suggestion that negotiations will be made in the case of  officers upto scale III only as they have been given mandate by the individual banks for this limited purpose only, which has been objected to by the UFBU. I think this is a deliberate attempt on the art of the government/IBA to weaken the trade union movement by dividing the officers into two groups! For some years State bank of India used to issue instructions on the eve of a declared strike to the effect that officers in Scale IV and above were not expected to be members of an association where officers of scale I to III are members and calling upon the officers in scale IV and above not to participate in the strike and also threatening them with disciplinary action if they participated in strike! I had been urging the association those days itself to object to issuance of such circulars as it was against the Officers' Service Rules, but the 'leaders' had not heeded to my suggestion! The present move of the IBA is a culmination of such non action on the part of the association, I believe. At least now I expect the associations to wake up to the situation and call the bluff of the management. If at all the management stands firm on this issue, the officers of scale IV and above should form another association and affiliate it to AIBOC and then go for the negotiations. It is high time the officers in scale IV and above thought about this in all seriousness to avoid any unpleasantness in future.

LOAN WAIVERS

Yet another populist measure from the LDF government in Kerala! The government has decided to pay the overdue education loans taken by those below poverty line entailing a total outflow of ₹900 crores from the exchequer! I fail to understand the logic behind this decision. The loans are offered to students to undertake professional studies, which ate to be repaid after they complete the studies and get employed. Without finding out the reason for non payment of these loans and by offering a general relief to all defaulters, the government is in a way supporting the loan defaulters which is detrimental to the interests of the banks! This will only increase the culture of loan defaults, i am afraid. As a retired bank officer i can vouch that in many such cases of defaults the beneficiaries have found a gainful employment and deliberately default on the repayment. Even in case of a person not landing a job, i believe it to be because of the irresponsibility of the student in not completing the course on time or successfully to land a gainful employment. Splurging public money on such persons will be a crime, I feel.

Change in Electoral Laws

The appointment of new chief ministers in three of the five states that went for election once again underlines the need for drastic electoral reforms. Three mps have been made chief ministers in these states, who will have to get elected to the house within six months. Their resignation from lok sabha will lead to bye election in these constituencies also!! Thus an additional cost on account of these forced bye elections has been imposed on the tax payer! Isnt it high time such farce provisions are removed from the law? It is a pity that the winning party was not able to find a suitable person from the winning candidates to become the chief minister.
Similarly the bjp managed to form the governments in goa and manipur with the support of parties against whom they had contested! Is it not a mockery of the common sense of the voter? I am of the opinion that no post election alliances should be approved for considering majority for forming the government.