My Mesho (Mausaji in Hindi) retired from Ordinance Factory Jabalpur a few years ago. Today he spends his retirement at Durgapur West Bengal in his own flat along with his family. My Mesho has always been a fidgety and an alarmist of a person as I have known him, but pardon me, I don’t wish to judge him.
I spent a few hours with them this month on an overnight trip to Durgapur. We got talking and he started with his take on the social scenario in the country today. This blog is dedicated purely to his thoughts for the simple reason that I wish to put forth the views of a senior citizen living in a far flung place in an undeveloped parts of this country.
“Bobby, privatization is only making the rich richer and the poor are not getting anywhere. During our days the public sector had a lot of strength, but today the government is liberalizing the private sector and then pitching the public sector to compete against them. This is not fair. The public sector pays good wages to their employees and has work ethics. How can they be competitive against the private sector which has no scruples?”
“Bobby, the public sector hires from all sections of society. The government hires on quota basis in the public sector. Therefore even the poor find jobs even though they may not have good education and training and may not be very skillful. This way society has been benefited. But look at the private sector. The quota system does not apply to them. They only hire the best few and pay them.”
“Bobby, my daughter is working in Axis Bank a private sector bank where she has a time to go to work but there is no reasonable time to leave office. She has to complete all her tasks and only then leave. She has so much work pressure. They won’t hire more persons and make each of their employees to do the work of four persons while paying for two persons. So now she earns more then what I earned at the time of my retirement but she hates to go to her office.”
“Bobby, look at the public sector banks, the bank employees do not work efficiently and they come to office just to chit chat and read their newspapers. Nobody in the management is bothered about service to customers. I had to run from pillar to post initially to get my pension through from the central government.”
“Bobby, look at the corruption in the private sector. The more there is liberalization the more these private sector companies think that they can get away with anything. Such things don’t happen in the public sector. Look at Ramalinga Raju, look at Lalit Modi. See how they have twisted the system.”
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