Holidays and the common man
K S S Pillai
According to Wikipedia, a holiday is a day set aside by custom or law on which ordinary business is suspended or reduced in commemoration of some event or honour of some person.
In our country, with several events of national importance, dead persons worth honouring, and people belonging to different religions, there is no dearth of holidays. As some parts of the country will always be in election mode, the state and central governments do not want to antagonize any section of society and the list of holidays becomes longer.
Alarmed by a large number of holidays, someone suggested that the working days of government offices could increase substantially if a few steps were taken without depriving the staff of their number of holidays. States that have few people belonging to a particular religion and yet declare holidays on their festivals could give them the option to remain absent on those days while keeping the offices open with the vast majority of the staff. An employee will be happy if he is given a fixed number of holidays, leaving it to him to decide when he wants to avail of them.
Some months have a vast number of holidays. Our offices then have thin attendance of staff on the few working days as they will get a mini-vacation if they take leave on those days. Hotels in tourist spots, transport services and airlines eagerly wait for such periods to hike their charges.
It is a fact that after taking into account Sundays, the second and fourth Saturdays, other holidays declared by governments, and different types of leaves including leave without pay a government servant is entitled to, the total number of days he attends his office is surprisingly few.
The main reason why parents send their children to schools and colleges seems to be getting a suitable job, preferably a government one. Since starting a business would entail hard work and many other factors play a part in its success, even engineering graduates prefer a government job.
Well-to-do people give a wide berth to government schools and government hospitals but would be happy to have a son-in-law working in a government office. The logic is a sound one. Once a guy gets a government job, he is assured of a secure life. He and his dependents can get leave travel concession, cheap quarters to live in, and free medical care.
Even after his retirement, he and his wife after his death, can get a lifelong pension and some other benefits. Some governments have more retired employees than the serving ones, forcing them to think of taking away some of their freebies in the face of fierce opposition from the beneficiaries.
A job in the private sector is generally not preferred, as the benefits there are limited, and one has to earn his salary by working. Their offices remain open even while those in the public sector are closed. Nor do they offer any blanket job security to the employees. In some offices, they are given targets to be achieved, and their performance is evaluated at intervals, requiring them to sweat it out even outside office hours.
When a month has several holidays, newspapers start warning their readers to get their work done in time. Though modern technology has made visits to a bank unnecessary for cash transactions, many opt not to have even ATM cards, fearing their misuse by those close to them.
In many outlets like petrol pumps and grocery shops, one can swap his debit or credit card instead of paying in hard cash. There are also facilities like online banking that allows banking activities from the comforts of one’s home. On the negative side, technology has become handy for cybercrimes too. Banks often send warning messages to their customers not to disclose details of their accounts to others. If one is not careful, his entire bank balance may disappear in a second.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to ‘The Kashmir Vision’, his articles and short stories have been published by various national and international publications)
