Advance reservation period

 

The move of the railways to cut the advance reservation period (ARP) is an ill advised one, I feel. This move will only increase the pressure on the reservation system of railways, making it slower to add to the frustration of thise who plans the journey in advance. This could be clear to the railways from the present difficulties faced by those who want to book tickets under Tatkal scheme,  for which there is only a small time window of 24 hours! The ARP was limited to 60 days in the manual Era considering the difficulty in maintaining large number of manual registers, but subsequent to full computerization the period was increased to the present level, much to the relief of travelling public. It is not.clear why such a sudden move inconveniencing those who plan their journey well in advance has been made by the railways. Any new decision taken by a utility services like railways should be to the advantage of the ultimate user and not otherwise.  Hence I urge upon the railways to immediately withdraw the instructions and restore the facilities, especially considering the fact that a 365 days window is made available to the foreign tourists!

Hoax security threats

 It is a matter of concern that hoax callers are taking the airlines for a ride in the past few days, disrupting the airlines services as well as some train services. However, I wonder why the security personnel are not bold enough to call the bluff of the callers and give clearance to operate the schedules without disruptio, given the type of security checks undertaken at the airports! (It is another matter that they cannot take that risk in the case of trains). The air passengers and luggage are put through severe checks, including body frisks and also making the passengers to separately screen the mobile chargers, mobile phones, wallets and even asking to remove belts worn, that the security personnel should be confident to declare the flight safe for travel, I feel. In spite of such severe screening inconveniencing passengers, on receipt of a mail or phone call, they immediately put the flight on hold again inconveniencing the passengers! I feel this amounts to harassment of poor passengers.

Work pressure

 In a short span of a week, reports have come in about the death/suicide of.employees due to 'work pressure'. While the first one was the death of an employee of consultancy firm EY due to heart failure, the other.two.were cases of suicide, one of.an.executive of private sector bank and the other of a manager of a public sector bank in Mumbai. It is in the interest of everyone to find out the root cause of such happenings. While many including the human rights.commission have taken cognisance of the death of EY employee and condemned the 'inhuman' work culture prevailing in the firms, not much have been talked about the other two.

I am a retired senior executive of a major public sector bank in the country with more than 33.years of service experience and I would say the pressure of work has always been there, but we were able to face it and handle it and never thought of ending the life. But in the current generation, the ability to absorb pressure appears to be minimum, may be because of the surroundings in which they grew up! I am not advocating that the present work atmosphere in all walks of life is conducive to the well being of the employee. But in the rat race, there are others who are willing to accept the pressure in the interest of their career progression and hence everyone is forced to accept the scenario. But each individual should take a call about what is the threshold which he/she can go to and decide whether to continue or quit instead of paying by their life.

The HR department everywhere has become merely recruitment and promotion departments and nothing much is done by them to maintain the 'health' of Human Resources, I am afraid.

It is high time the employers and employees really understood and practiced the concept of Work Life balance to save the situation