Appeal to CGMs & OICs

 Chief General Managers/OICs

 NABARD

 HO/RO....

Dear Sir,

NBOA’s point of view on Recent Selection policy

We understand that Chairman Sir intends to take your feed-back and/or discuss the new Selection policy with you. As CGMs and OICs, we are sure that you may have assessed the pros and cons of the new policy and you may be well aware with the resentment it has created in the minds and souls of your officers. We take this opportunity to summarise below the major factors which have led to this disenchantment of the officers’ community with the proposed policy. We urge upon you to use your good offices to provide true and fair feedback to the Chairman. It will be in the largest interest of the organisation and we are sure that the Hon’ble chairman would definitely value your feedback and suggestions and we will come out of this impasse.

Thanking You.

Yours Sincerely

NBOA

Why officers are resenting the Selection process

a)    Seniority-cum-Merit: All organisations always give due weight age to Seniority and Experience while charting out the career prospects for its officer. The same has been completely done away with in the present case. The very fact that ‘Promotion Policy’ has been now referred to as ‘Selection Policy’ tells the intent, and that is reflected in spirit of the new policy document-make as many as officers ineligible for selection to higher grades. It is going to choke all avenues of career progression right from grade ‘A’ to grade’ F+’. The disaster of CMD-DMD approach is well now within our eyes.

b)   The bank has itself, in the past, considered all the officers getting 75% or above marks in PAR as A+ rated officers- Now from retrospective date the cut-off for being even eligible to participate in the selection process has been put at 86% ??? the officers were not even divulged/notified their respective marks in the past , so neither they had a chance to introspect or to improve upon their ratings , leave aside contesting them. To be fair to the reporting officers , even they were not aware that providing 85% marks to the appraise officer will render him/her ineligible for even the selection/promotion process...leave aside the chance of getting promoted at all. More so, if the sanctity of 86% is so great than why our PAR formats are having a specific comment on the ‘capability of the officer to shoulder higher responsibility now...’ that implies that though the reporting officer is sure that the appraise officer is capable of shouldering the higher responsibility still he will not be even considered for promotion just because arithmetically he has been rated below 86%.

c)    Promotion in grade ‘C’ to ‘D’ is having multiple discrimination-no weight age to seniority, cut-off marks for PAR , cut off marks for Written exams and then again cut-off marks for Interviews. Incidentally, except for written test the marking/rating towards PAR and Interview is highly subjective. There are hundreds of officers in Grade ‘C’ who have waited for more than a decade , just to get a chance to be considered for promotion and now suddenly the rules of the game have been changed retrospectively to make many of them ineligible. More so why to put officers having 8-12 years of services in an ignominy and stress of writing a test ?? that too probably with a set of officers who may have completed just 5-6 years of service in the cadre...is it justified by any ways ???  IT is highly discriminatory and meant to put at disadvantage those officers who have been first made to stagnate and rot in grade ‘C’ on account of faulty policies and adhocism in HR M.

d)    By not filling-up RDBS related vacancies in grades ‘A’ to ‘B’ and ‘B’ to ‘C’ for the panel year 2012 , in spite of our repeated requests , and at the same time by effecting the promotion in other services in grade ‘B’ to ‘C’ for the panel  year 2012 , the law of natural justice has been breached completely.  Furthermore, leaving just 40% vacancies to be filled-up by Seniority-cum-Merit channel in grade ‘A’ to ‘B’ (as 30% vacancies are proposed for fast/merit track and 30% for direct recruitment in grade ‘B’) will lead to a high level of demotivation at the base level and NABARD being an officers oriented organisation, it won’t augur well for its functioning in near future. Incidentally, we already have a large chunk of grade ‘A’ officers who have opted for SNTS and have already paved way for the aspiring and young grade ‘A’ officers to move ahead.

e)    In spite of repeated requests bank has never divulged the sanctioned strength under various categories/cadre of officers , now the bank has come up with a policy which says that Junior Management posts (grade ‘B’) can be interchanged with middle management posts (grade ‘C’) and similarly grade ‘D’ posts can be interchanged with grade ‘E’ posts , this again is a highly discriminatory and arbitrarily approach which can be exploited by any management to favour or disfavour  any particular or a group of a particular officers.

f)     The introduction of eligibility criterion towards spells of leaves (types of leaves have not been specified) in the last three years, again from retrospective dates, is highly discriminatory as no officer proceeds on leaves on mere whims & fancies. Ours being an pan India organisation, at times compelling circumstances, including illness-self and of dependents-which may force an officer to utilise his/her earned leaves. Rendering them ineligible for being considered foe promotion merely on this ground is highly unjustifiable. More so again as it comes from retrospective dates, the officers, who had otherwise planned their leaves in accordance to NABARD Staff Rules, 1982 provisions i.e. up to four spells (excluding Sick leaves) in the year of empanelment, too are left high and dry. Incidentally, the Staff Rules indicated postponement of promotion/confirmation on account of bad leave records and not exclusion from the process itself.

g)    The introduction of Residual service concept in the internal promotion system is again highly discriminatory as it tends to differentiate among the officers on the basis of age-profile and not seniority and/or merit. It is in fact, denial of basic constitutional right of equitable opportunities as guaranteed in the constitution. The concept of residual service is generally applied for ex-cadre postings. More so the laws of the land are that an employees is considered fit to perform his/her duties up to the age of 60 years, if otherwise not found suitable by the retirement review committee, which basically assess the potential of the officer based on the health records and also severe adverse entries in the PAR as also the leave record of the officer concerned.

h)    Merger of technical and economic services officers is again discriminatory in nature as it will provide undue advantage to a set of officers and in turn it would adversely affect the other set of officers. In any case it is not beneficial either to the organisation or to any of the officers (including the economic services and TSD officers) in long run.

i)     Doing away with PP concept and banding of marks and not providing any honourable exit to those officers who are willingly ready to make way for the younger lot of officers, are other important points of discontentment.

All in all, such a harsh, loosely knit and vaguely sketched policy, which is tilted highly towards ‘Rejection/ejection’ rather than selection has no parallel in the banking industry, civil services or even in any PSUs as also private sector. It varies in tone, tenor as well as inn operational ethics from that of RBI’s promotional policy too.

Finally it is highly de-motivating as more than 1000 officers will find themselves ineligible even to be considered for career progression and it is divisive in nature as the organisation will stand divided on the basis of Age profile , discriminations etc. The policy will breed chauvinism of highest order as in an organisation where quantifiable parameters are not in place to assess and rate an officer, the clamour of getting 86% and above will lead to all sort of unhealthy practices. A chaotic and divisive situation awaits NABARD if we allow this policy to be implemented in its current form and shape.

It also obliquely is an indicator towards down-sizing of NABARD (at the age of glorious 30 years, organisations generally tend to expand, but als its not being true for NABARD) and also a prelude to deny as parity with RBI in service conditions, including Pay & Allowances.