A month full of Sundays
Mr. Dev Kumar, superintendent of Central Excise sent us this.
Ugadi has truly heralded a very happy new year for Central government servants. They are enjoying three day weekends with an occasional Tuesday thrown in for a good measure.
Having lazed through third fourth and fifth April one had really to drag oneself to work on the sixth. Seventh was Mahavir Jayanti . Again a closed holiday when almost everybody works and Central Government employees enjoy life. Fine. But believe me folks, I was really disappointed when I had to go to work on the 9 th . Except for a small procession on the road, there was no official recognition for Hanuman Jayanti. Temples were overflowing with people though. So it's only a matter of time before this festival gets added to the list of closed holidays. Ambedkar Jayanti falling on 14.04.09 has just been declared a holiday. And there will be holiday on election day also for sure. Holiday list, already long, goes on lengthening. Diwali used to be a working day till early eighties. But somewhere down the line it became a closed holiday. It is an evening festival and no religious sentiment will be hurt if offices remain open on that day.
A time may come when central Government may declare holiday for Kunwar Singh Jayanti, birthday of Alluri Sitarama Raju and so on. Possibilities are endless.
If things are allowed to go unchecked, a day may come when Government finds it easier to notify a few working days like sessions of Parliament and the rest will be treated as holidays.
To remedy this situation, we can draw a leaf from RBI. Whenever banking system is disrupted RBI directs the Commercial Banks to work for extended hours and/or work on weekend to make up for the time lost. Similarly if there are too many holidays in a month, Sundays should be declared as working days for those months. This will help put up a semblance of sanity on an already chaotic system and also ease the pressure on the govt. for declaring newer and newer holidays.
As India hopes to be an economic superpower in not a too distant a future, it is imperative that we adopt international best practices and cut down wasteful expenditure of time and money wherever possible. Doing away with a surfeit of holidays would be one such step in that direction.