Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Bureaucracy and rules versus reasonableness and operational constraints

My mother gets a family pension. The pension amount, as it was two years ago, is transferred to a joint account by standing instructions. So far so good.

The pension has increased as per per the defined pension policies (ridiculously generous for the officials by the officials). I wanted to get the standing instructions for the amount transferred increased. I tried to convince the bank to apply reasonableness as I am the nominee of the pension account anyway. However, the bank officials do not know what to do as there is no way for them to communicate with my mother and get a confirmation that she wants the standing instructions to be modified in her present state of health.

The additional monthly income hardly matters to me but I decided to pursue as there will be people for whom this would make a major difference.

In the process, I found that to contact RBI, I needed to use IE! Submitting the form on Linux/Firefox failed. I have a vm of windows xp for such exigencies.

I have also communicated with Central Pension Accounting Office. Let me see if I get any response of any use.

While I sympathize with the bank officials' constraints, I also see news like  Wilful bank loan default crosses Rs.70,000 cr. Oh, well. I suppose rules were followed in those cases. I also wonder what is the source of the money for elections, no matter who out-funds whom :(

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