Bank employees and officers are going strike on August 5 against Government policies and various other reasons.

The Government will hardly feel the impact of such one-day strikes, which will be largely ignored, and the losers will be the public, the bank staff and officers.

Nowadays, the Government only considers indefinite hunger strikes, such as the recent ones initiated by the likes of Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, etc. as proper agitations.

The only ones to get a benefit out of this proposed strike is the banks' managements, which may enjoy a whopping profit of more than Rs 1,500 crores by cutting one day's salaries of the employees.

Times have changed, and it would be fitting for the bank employees' unions and the officers' associations should think of innovative ideas which will get the Government's and the people's attention, without affecting the public and the employees.

Deepak Prasanna R

Practical measures

Measures recommended in “For dual pricing of money” ( Business Line, July 30), to stem the tide of inflation, are practical. Different rates of interest for money meant for current expenditure and that intended for capital investment are a variation of ‘selective', ‘qualitative' credit control measures in fiscal policy, whereby different standards for aid / loans are applied for different sectors of the economy.

The author also suggests that ‘increase in income', on top of income-tax, may be diverted for societal benefits. There is already a provision for this in the ‘taxation' rules in the form of exemptions. These can be suitably expanded and modified to achieve the desired results.

K. Gopalan

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