Jobs at the Reserve Bank of India were highly coveted. Just before the Bank opened
it doors for business in April 1935, its Calcutta Office advertised fifty odd temporary
job vacancies. The response was overwhelming. There were reportedly over ten thousand
applications. The journal Indian Finance of March 1935 wrote this rather
dramatic report:
“It was not a rain, but a downpour of applicants. They came from all corners of
Calcutta - from most mofussil stations of Bengal. The building was chokeful of crowding
graduates. The overflow in the streets was so heavy that the traffic was held up;
and there was a traffic jam. The men who got into the building could not get out;
the crowd in the street, who were all the time pressing towards the entrance of
the building, were panting and perspiring; and some fainted in the crush, I understand.
The officials who were to make the selection, were nonplussed. Never did any advertisement
in Calcutta papers have such pulling power. In sheer desperation, the police were
rung up; and their assistance requisitioned to clear up the building and the streets…”
Unfortunately for job aspirants, new recruitments were few. Much of the staff for
the Bank’s establishment was transferred to it from the Imperial Bank and Government
of India. The Government staff were the erstwhile employees of the Office of the
Controller of the Currency from whom the Bank took over the function of Currency
Management and issuance of Public Debt.
In the late 1980s, a special cell was set up in the Department of Expenditure and
Budgetary Control (DEBC) to look into the accounts of the ‘Government Transferred
Pensioners’. While doing so one of the records that came to light was that of Abdool
Osman, a Duftary and resident of Sadinagar Villiage, Manikgunj, District of Dacca
then in undivided India. Shri Abdool had joined Government of India service on 4th
June, 1885 and retired from the Bank in March, 1939 at the age of 75 after a service
span of 51 years and 29 days with seven extensions of service to his credit. His
‘Last Pay Certificate’ indicated a salary of Rs 27 per month which he had been drawing
for over sixteen years without any annual increment. Apparently, Abdool Osman retired
a contented man with a pension of Rs 8 to look forward to every month!
Duftary - literally ‘office keeper’- was a term applied to ‘inferior staff,’
as they were then known. Their job was to store, retrieve and maintained office
files. While this job has been largely taken over by computers, the term is still
in vogue and the post still exists.
Source: History of the Reserve Bank of India, 1935-51, Reserve Bank of India,
Bombay, 1970 and the Bank’s house journal Without Reserve, October-December,
1990. Shri M. K. Joshi of DEBC brought the instance of Shri Osman to the notice
of Without Reserve.
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