THE CASE OF THE MISSING BONDS
It was 6.00 pm and Ujjwala, the newly recruited probationary officer, was just winding up
the work after a long and tiring day at the treasury branch of a large bank. She rechecked
the number of bonds and interest warrants. Drat! One warrant was missing. She called out
to Walawarkar.
“Walawarkar one warrant for the 9.5% State loan is missing. Just see if all the clerks have
returned the correct numbers will you?” After some search the recalcitrant warrant was also
found and Ujjwala closed the door of the strong room with relief. For once she would reach
home on time. Just then the peon from the Regional Office walked in with an office order.
As she reached for the note she groaned mentally “not now, just let me head home.” One
look at the note, however and all thoughts of a quiet evening with her husband vanished
from her mind. She had been designated the head of the bond repayment team in the
branch (Annexure)
The lunch time gossip at the office cafeteria had all been about the fact that 10,000 bonds
of Apna Bank had fallen due for payment today. The staff was animatedly discussing how
about a hundred of the 10,000 bond holders had appeared at the doorstep of the branch
and created pandemonium. If the news leaked out to the press all 10,000 of them would
gherao the office next morning. Many of the employees were indignant and angry at the
mess the whole thing was in.
Instead of going home Ujjwala walked into the bond repayment department so as to take a
quiet look at things before all hell broke loose the next morning. The state of the strong
room left her aghast. Some of the bond issue registers were missing but she counted the
numbers till 20, which meant that the branch had to redeem at least 20,000 bonds in all.
The first register showed that the office grapevine, though exaggerated, was on mark. One
thousand bonds had been due for redemption on day one. Of these she found that 500
bonds had already been tendered for repayment, some through the post and some across
the counter. Only 20 had actually been processed for repayment. The procedure for both
issue and redemption of these bank bonds was quite complex with a lot of legal nitty-gritty.
The work process was tedious and had to follow the guidelines of both the Securities and
Exchange Board of India and the Reserve Bank of India. But the basic requirement for
assessing the genuineness of an instrument lay in comparing the issue details of the bond
against the issue register and tallying the signature of the of the first owner against the
original bond application form and those of all the subsequent owners against the
applications for the transfer of the bond. The biggest problem was to sort the original
applications as per some order.
Ujjwala knew what she was up against when she walked into office the next morning half an
hour before the public counters opened. She met a seething team of 2 officers and 10
clerks, which had been cobbled together the previous evening without any consultation or
buy-in. Ujjwala was new to the branch and did not know any of them. She expected that the
team would be mix of a couple of outstanding performers, a large chunk of average
performers and a few absolute dead weights. She had also heard that each clerk was
running a side business after hours, typically tutorials for school children and that the school
examination season was approaching. The clerks would not only slip away an hour early in
the evenings there would also be large scale leave taking without any advance notice when
school exams actually began a month later.
“Hi folks!” smiled Ujjwala, “I know the situation is quite messy and we’re here to clean it
up!” There were a few reluctant smiles but for the most part she was met with a volley of
comments about the impossibility of finding any old record in the book room which was a
jumble of 20,000 old application forms from which the signatures and other details had to
be matched before the bonds could be paid out. In addition to that some of the bond issue
registers were also torn and untraceable.
“Yes”, said Ujjwala, “I too had ascertained as much last evening. Which of you have been
working in this department for sometime?”
Libi and Rawat indicated that they were the two of the old hands in the department. “There
must be a way out if the original application form is untraceable...?” Ujjwala left the
sentence trailing on a question mark.
“Yes”, a reluctant Rawat acknowledged, “we ask the bond holder to get his signature
attested by his banker, but some of them refuse to do so accusing us of red tapism and
deliberate obstruction.”
“If the issue register itself is missing it gets that much more difficult to establish the
genuineness of the instrument” added Libi glumly.
“Well, now that we know what we are up against”, said Ujjwala, “this is what we do.” She
then proceeded to outline the plan of action she had formed. She would meet the regional
manager and ask for 4 more clerks to arrange the old applications in order. Meanwhile, she
exhorted the team to put aside all other considerations for a month till the number of bonds
for redemption came to a steady, manageable number and the documents in the book
room were brought into some kind of order. The bond holders, as they all knew, were high
net worth individuals with a very high visibility in society. The whole mess was like a ticking
time-bomb and the staff was aware that their life would not be much if some customer got
in touch with the CMD or even the PMO. She informed that each clerk and officer would
have a fixed quota of work to be covered during the day and another for the evening after
office and that overtime pay would be paid to all the staff provided both the day-time and
evening quotas were met. Earlier records had shown that at least half the staff worked only
during the overtime zone and slacked off during the day, thereby ensuring for themselves
continued flow of overtime salary.
The work flow in the department was like an assembly line, with each stage beginning after
the completion of the earlier stage. Even as she did her share of the work, Ujjwala kept an
eye on her staff. Within two-three days she had got an idea about the competence and
commitment levels of her staff. She did some re-shuffling and posted a self motivated
competent staff member at the beginning of each process who would exercise peer
pressure on the previous task owner to stick to the time line. Rawat had the crucial task of
monitoring the flow of securities through each stage, identifying the bottlenecks and also
ensuring that none of the securities went missing at any stage of the process. Apart from
Ujjwala, he was the one member of the team who knew the whole process flow and could
lay his hands on any document at any stage of the processing. He had indefatigable energy
and would pitch in anywhere he found a bottleneck.
The team rarely left office before 10.00 pm each evening tired but victorious as if after a
hard won battle on the field. However, Ujjwala assured them that they would not only be
paid the overtime hours due to them, but that she would personally fight for the highest
performing team of the year award for them, if they came through for her and the bank.
Meanwhile, Ujjwala also had another battle on her hands with the branch manager, Mr
Mangal, each day. Since she directly reported to the regional manager, Mangal saw this as
an erosion of his authority. He started pressurising Ujjwala to reduce the team strength as
soon as things settled down a bit. He would demand that she relieve one or the other
member of her staff to man the counters whenever someone in the branch was on leave.
He also seemed to favour some customers over others. In fact, as time went on Ujjwala was
becoming more and more convinced that he was involved in the issue or transfer of some
benami bonds. Every few days he would pressurise Ujjwala to pass some bond for payment
where the documentation was not in order. She became convinced of the fact when one
customer offered her a share of the ‘commission’, which she refused. Mangal had no direct
control over Ujjwala or her staff since the progress of the team was being monitored
directly by the regional manager.
One day Mangal called for Rawat, to find that he had stepped out of the branch for some
time. He immediately summoned Ujjwala to his cabin and started shouting at her. He called
her an incompetent administrator with no control over her staff who kept roaming around
the city during office hours just to ensure that the overtime schedule continued indefinitely.
Then changing his tone he told her that she was still young and raw and had no notion of
how to handle a bunch of good-for-nothing non-performers like Rawat. He told her that
Rawat was making money on the sly and was too clever to be caught.
A few days later Mangal again summoned Ujjwala to his cabin and showed her a website
access log pertaining to the PC assigned to Rawat. The log showed visits to the website of a
share trading house during office hours. “This is the man whose cause you have been
championing, Ujjwala!” He ordered her to issue a show cause notice to Rawat since, he said,
this was the only way to teach him a lesson. Ujjwala walked out with leaden steps. What
was she to do?
ANNEXURE
REGIONAL OFFICE
Office Note
It has been decided to create a special cell for the processing and repayment of the Apna
Bank bonds. The cell will be headed by Ms. Ujjwala, Deputy Manager. She will continue to
operate from the Treasury Branch where the bond documents are housed. However, she is
to report directly to the Regional Manager. Ms. Ujjwala may take charge of the cell with
immediate effect.
---sd---Regional Manager
Prepared by Smt. Vandana Khare, DGM/MoF