The Hindu Business Line : `e' or no `e'.

When I was a kid, my father used to drag me to the bank to teach me banking and how to fill up forms. We lived in a small town called Srirangam and my father seemed to know almost everyone in the bank by name. There were forms for everything, right from deposits to money transfers. I found depositing money a bore as I had to fill the form twice - the counterfoil and the main form. Withdrawal was easy. I had to fill only a small form, and that only once.

Once when I had to deposit money, I refused to fill up the counterfoil and asked the bank staff at the counter to do it. He started yelling at me and said all kids were lazy. As he knew my father, he took me into a room and showed me shelves and shelves of various forms and explained that if customers and bank officials did not fill up forms properly, the bank's operations would come to a standstill. I was astounded seeing the huge piles of papers, and wondered where they would all go when the shelves got full.

Now, my salary comes directly to my bank. I have a debit card that I use for withdrawals and purchases. Opening a new recurring deposit account or sending money to others can be done online without paper. All I have to do is to click a few buttons, type in the amount and press submit. I also make landline and mobile bill payments online.

Apart from convenience, e-banking also helps the environment by saving paper. My office saves thousands of cheque leaves every month. Which means we don't have to deposit salary cheques, which again means we save more paper by not using thousands of pay-in slips. I also keep urging my friends and relatives to use online banking, debit cards and subscribe to statements by e-mail to save paper.

Last week, I went to a bank to help a friend open an account. There, a customer sought my help to fill up a pay-in slip. I was seeing a deposit slip after almost a decade! His small son stood beside him and watched. "See how uncle is filling up the slip. You keep refusing to fill it up every time and I have to depend on others. When are you going to learn?" I smiled, and started to fill the slip - in duplicate.

`e' or no `e', some things never change.

R. Dinakaran

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