Punjab
National Bank (PNB) was at the centre of
a $1.8 billion fraud - one of the largest to be detected across the Indian
banking sector. The statement that it had detected some “fraudulent and
unauthorised transactions (messages)”, might sound
innocuous – but the quantum is disclosed to be several crores. We have heard of many
scams, speak, debate on them, till next one gets unearthed and slowly forget
them………. How many of us still remember Bofors, and Fairfax…. !! ~ one has lost track and wonders how many
cases have been taken to logical end and how many got convicted ? Perhaps, in the present regime, we have not
heard of any such scams ~ though there have been so many during the dynasty
rule !!
For those
of you born later, here are some, which you may not have heard of !! ~ in 1948
there was the ‘Jeep scandal’ the then
Indian high commissioner to Britain, ignored protocols and signed a Rs 80 lakh
contract for the purchase of army jeeps with a foreign firm. A decade and half later, came the Mundhra
scandal that exposed the nexus between the Bureaucracy, stock market
speculators and small rogue businessmen. It also brought to light rifts between
the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his son-in-law Feroze Gandhi, and
also led to the resignation of India's then finance minister T. T.
Krishnamachari. In 1971 it was ‘Nagarwala
scandal’ in which a person convinced a banker withdrawal of 60 lakhs from the
branch of the State Bank of India. Nagarwala called Malhotra at the State Bank
of India, imitating voice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stating that he immediately needed Rs 60 lakhs reportedly for
a secret mission for Bangladesh. ~ all those are buried and forgotten !!
Anniyan [literally
Stranger] had a great theme – conceptually it was the guilty being punished…
through the character of an innocent and honest lawyer. One powerful dialogue penned by the Great
Sujatha became an instant hit – but remembered more of a comedy… it was - “Anju paisa thiruduna thappaa? (Is stealing of
five paise is wrong)” ~ it is not that 5 paise but the act of stealing and the
impact is not that of that single act – but that of attitude – when lakhs of
people all steal 5 paise – the effect is manifold and corruption is the biggest
disease that afflicts the Nation.
So does
‘triviality’ matter indeed ?? ~
the noun would mean something that is not important: the state of not being important. It would also mean : lack of seriousness or
importance; insignificance; an insignificant detail; a trifle.
"an
over-concentration on trivialities" – was reported in Civil Appeal no.
18799/2017 in Union of India &Ors. Vs. Amit Singh before the Apex Court of
India. The respondent was terminated
from service on the basis of information gathered, on verification of the
antecedents. Though it was done after three years of entering service, it was
found that the respondent had been involved in a criminal case. According to the learned counsel for the
respondent, it was a trivial issue between the friends in a cricket match and
hence the same was compounded by the learned Magistrate. The contention was that information given to
the employer by a candidate as to conviction, acquittal or arrest, or pendency
of a criminal case, whether before or after entering into service must be true
and there should be no suppression or false mention of required information.
Parkinson's
law of triviality contends that members
of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. The example cited was that of a fictional committee whose job was to
approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time
on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what
materials to use for the staff bike shed, while neglecting the proposed design
of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and
complex task. The law has been applied to software development and other
activities. The term bike-shed effect or bike-shedding was coined as a metaphor
to illuminate the law of triviality.
Now read
this newsitem that appeared in Times of India – Chennai edition - Departmental action was initiated against a government bus conductor
in Chennai after a checking squad found a difference of ₹1
between the value of tickets sold by him and the amount collected. K Siva, a
conductor from Aynavaram depot, said he had mistakenly given a new ₹2
coin instead of ₹1to a passenger in
a crowded MTC bus.
Siva on that evening,
was issuing tickets to passengers on a bus to Pudur from Villivakkam, when a
ticket checking squad boarded the vehicle near Madhanakuppam. The team found a
woman passenger travelling without ticket worth ₹7.
When asked, she told the checking inspectors she had handed over the fare to
Siva, but he did not issue her the ticket. Inspectors checked the Traffic
Record (TR), which carries details about the number of tickets sold and
collection made. “If their claims were right, the amount collected through sale
of tickets should have exceed the value of tickets sold. But it fell short by
just one rupee,” said Siva. “I gave a two rupee coin to one of the passengers
instead of one rupee coin by mistake. It is difficult to differentiate it by
size in a crowded bus in which a conductor is expected to issue tickets within
a few seconds,” he added.
Authorities,
however, handed him a memo for not
issuing a ticket to a passenger and for the collection falling short. The
conductor was instructed not to report to work until the inquiry was over. In a
separate incident, a MTC driver from Kundrathur depot was suspended for using
mobile phone while driving based on a passenger’s complaint.
Does that
sound too trivial or a right and justified action ?
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
19th Mar
2018
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