Rural Posting - Forced Service?

As per the recommendations of the A. K Khandelwal Committee that has been accepted by the government of India, new clerk recruits in public sector banks will have to serve three years mandatorily in rural and semi-urban areas. All banks have now been asked to prepare a human resource plan incorporating these recommendations and get them approved by their Boards of Directors latest by December 31, 2011.

How successful do you think this new ruling for government clerks would be? Success would be determined by not only the implementation timeline but also its real acceptances amongst the government clerks. Real acceptance signifies ‘engaged’ acceptance.

Now before you start thinking that I am a kind one who belongs to the anti-rural movement, that’s not correct. However the fact is that people shun rural postings in India. Not so long ago the doctors were up in arms against forced rural postings. Slogans like India still lives in villages, the real India is the rural India have only remained as utopic dreams. All these beautiful pictures and tableaus of Indian villages are only on ‘incredible India’ videos (the tourism promotional mouthpiece of the government). The truth is that our villages lack basic amenities and have people living in downright pathetic conditions. Our villages still lack in basic facilities like hospitable roads, clean drinking water, primary health care, good schools, hygiene and sanitation. Now who would like a posting and move happily with bag, baggage and family to rural areas. Will you? Then there are other aspects like the amount of money you make (the attractive city allowances vanish), professional growth chances (opportunities and exposure are vastly unequal when it comes to a comparison between cities and villages).

Our villages need development but such realties cannot ride on such philanthropic ideologies alone. Even if such policies are thrust by the arm of law and government acts, how ‘engaged’ the government clerks would be is a huge question. And then it is not only the question of clerks, this question is going to pop-up whenever doctors, engineers or any other professional is forced on a rural detour.

Solutions require deeper analysis and thinking. However as a pointer, I would like to quote from my book ‘Employee Engagement’ – “In an employee feedback and organizational health survey of the employees in remote locations by Aditya Birla Group, the company found that employees in remote locations – factory townships had long-standing needs that were similar to their colleagues in urban locations. Some of the issues that emerged were healthcare, entertainment, education and career for spouses. The findings were very interesting and showed how place or location may not change the way people wanted to live. They found, for instance, that today’s middle-class, young engineer finds a dissonance. He not only wants a great job and a good company, he also seeks a contemporary look and location. To ensure that such locational dissonance did not happen, the company came-up with a range of solutions. To start with it changed the exterior colour of the residential flats; it tied-up with an event management company to develop events that appeal to various constituencies like musical nights, devotional music programmes, concerts and so on. The company is also said to be discussing with PVR cinemas for setting-up multiplexes near the townships.”

If we can’t change our villages, we can atleast make the ‘rural-postings’ more rewarding both in terms of opportunities and living. May be the resultant ‘engagement’ shall then change the rural skyline!