Banking operations in the entire country was hit due to strike called for consecutive two days by approximately around ten lakhs bank employee primarily from PSU Banks under the common banner of United forum.The strike also supported by unions of some old private sector banks and foreign banks .
The heat was endured by majority of citizens if the country since only 25% of meagre skeleton service was rendered by some new age private sector banks and of course the most helpful DIGITAL Banking. Although it is widely believed that only 5% of total population under the umbrella of banking industry is covered by digital banking service. Although government is trying hard to increase this percentage at all levels, but most of the public servants still depend on regular banking.
Interestingly, unions of banking industry intentionally choose these dates two trouble employees of all sectors whose salary as well as pensions of retired employees is credited to their respective account on last working day of the month.
To some extent they could succeed since a large chunk of senior citizens and people from lower strata, who find it more comfortable and friendly to withdraw cash from branch. People residing in remote rural areas are also part of this branch banking.But,the entire scenario has gradually taken a paradigm shift in semi-urban and all urban areas including metro cities. The change has come silently and not overnight rather it took year to step out from conventional arena to digital world.Of course the central government and its demonetisation in recent past has added roller coaster to the feet of this fast forward. But till that time most of the countrymen were already acquainted with ATM service of banking at least and that was the first leap towards Digital Banking,
Now, we will go for an emphasis on digital banking step by step and try to earmark that how it helped the population to go for carefree banking during last two days.
1) All bank ATM were functioning throughout the country more or less except West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar and Jharkhand states where militant union rolled down the shutter of ATM also. Cash was loaded in its fullest capacity in all ATM under strict instructions of management on the eve of first strike day.So,at least first day of the strike could not make much impact on transactions for ordinary citizens.Moreover., salary was not credited on 30th obviously amount of withdrawals were not very large.
2) Business class people were not effected much due to two reasons. Firstly, RTGS and NEFT centres under supervision of RBI functioned normally and fund clearance was done smoothly. Secondly e-banking platform is always open for customers 24 x 7 and most of business houses transacted their funds through e-banking platform without any hindrances.
3) Plenty of e-wallets are available in the monetary domain and people could make payments towards any type of purchase they did right from groceries and provisions to drink and dine with movie buffs did not require any cash at all.
4) All payment gateways of all major credit and debit cards rendered services to holders relentlessly for any type of purchase from alpine to elephant or payment of all all utility bills digitally even on the last date also.
These examples are illustrative and not exhaustive.
In this context I am afraid that employees of banking industry is slowly and gradually losing its ground for compelling Indian Banking Association (IBA) or Labour commissioner to move for their cause since the strike has lost much of impact towards paralysing the monetary system as well as central government for a day or two as they used to do in earlier days.
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