N. Raghuraman’s column – Knowledge and determination are the other forms of Maa Shakti! | एन. रघुरामन का कॉलम: ज्ञान और दृढ़ता मां शक्ति का दूसरा रूप ही तो है!

N. Raghuraman, Management Guru

If someone cleverly cheats you of Rs 187, what will you do? Will you move ahead in life because this is a small amount or will you teach them a lesson? Rama Gupta, 64, and her elderly husband, residents of Koparkhairane, Navi Mumbai, chose the second option and got their Rs 187 back, that too from none other than the bank, which is expected to conduct its business honestly. All these incidents happened with him.

On January 15, 2024, the elderly couple opened a fixed deposit account in Bandhan Bank, where they already had a savings account. The bank gave the receipt on 16 January 2024. However, according to RBI rules, the bank has to pay interest from the date of FD issue.

The elderly couple along with their son Anuj Kumar visited the bank several times to resolve the issue. Since no positive response was received from their side, the Gupta family lodged an official complaint with the bank.

The bank’s reply was that as per internal rules, the last transaction time of the day is 11.10 pm and since the FD was processed at 11.12 pm, the couple was not eligible for interest for that day. The bank further said that if you are not satisfied with this reply, you can contact the Banking Ombudsman located at RBI.

The family took this advice seriously and complained to the RBI. The Ombudsman office verified all the documents and asked to pay Rs 187 as interest not included in the FD, which was credited to the account on March 15, 2024. Apart from this, an order was also given to give Rs 20 thousand as compensation for the mental trauma suffered by those senior citizens, which will come into the account on 19 September 2024.

This case largely talks about knowledge, while on September 30, 2024, a historic verdict by the Karnataka High Court on ‘Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013’ (POSH Act) comes under the scanner for the determination of the complainant. Tells.

The case is of August 23, 2018, when the complainant woman booked Ola Tax to go to the office, a few kilometers away from her house in Yelahanka, Bengaluru. He is its regular user. During the journey he noticed that the driver was staring at him uncomfortably from the rear view mirror. She was shocked and scared to see that he was watching porn videos on the phone and doing immoral things.

He asked several times to stop the vehicle, but the driver refused and insisted on dropping him at the destination. Somehow she got out of the taxi near her office. After reaching the office, he lodged a complaint and received a reply from Ola that the driver concerned has been blacklisted and will be sent for further counseling and training.

Dissatisfied with the reply, the woman demanded punitive action. Instead of taking him seriously, Ola tried to convince him to close the complaint by claiming that they had no jurisdiction to take further action against the driver as they did not have an employer-employee relationship and the actual culprit was a He was a fraudster who was not even authorized to drive.

Rejecting the company’s argument, the court ordered Ola to pay Rs 5 lakh to the complainant woman and an additional Rs 50,000 as compensation for the amount spent on legal procedures. The court imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on the Karnataka State Transport Authority for willful inaction and negligence in discharging its statutory obligations.

The bottom line is that Having abundant knowledge and the will to persevere is actually another form of mother power. May this Navratri fill us with both these qualities.