Long wait, no money: Pensioners hit worst

AJANTA CHAKRABORTY & DEBASHIS KONAR | TNN | Dec 2, 2016,KOLKATA: The sight of frail elderly people waiting in serpentine queues outside banks on the first day of the month for their pension brought back memories of TV images of the 2015 Greek financial crisis in which pensioners were hit particularly hard, forcing thousands of them to jostle under the blazing sun so that they could withdraw their weekly allowances.

Demonetization seems to have penalized retired residents much more than the salaried residents. Eighty-three-year-old Chittaranjan Das was flummoxed as he walked out of the Salt Lake's PNB branch of HDFC Bank on Thursday afternoon, clutching onto his bag, stashed with wads of Rs-10 and Rs-20 notes. This is how the bank paid him his pension. "They initially offered to pay me Rs 10,000 in Rs-10 coins. When I protested how would I walk home, carrying all those coins, they gave me one Rs 2,000 note and the rest in Rs 10 and Rs 20 notes. Now I don't know what to do with the Rs 10 and Rs 20 notes," the retired headmaster of Kankurgachhi Vivekananda Vidyapith told TOI. "When the historic decision was aired on television on the night of November 8, I was glad to be alive and be part of it. I didn't realise Modi was pulling off a major political and publicity coup, and people like me would have to pay the price for it," Das said, recalling the "ill-treatment" at the local Syndicate Bank branch where he visited before dropping in at HDFC.

Things were as bad for another octogenarian, Santosh Chanda, whose pension was credited to his account (UBI, CIT Road branch) on Monday. "After lunch, I took my wife, who's five years younger, to draw my pension. After waiting in the queue for four hours, we were told the bank did not have cash any more," the retired ministry of defence employee said. "People are calling it Modi's masterstroke to curb corruption in India, some are calling it a 'surgical strike'. For the old, demonetization is a bolt from the blue."

But pleading helplessness, the manager of a UBI branch in Garia said the supply of notes was terribly low. "We started paying Rs 6,000 to pensioners, but when we realized we had to serve a lot of people, we started giving out Rs 2,000 per person."

Moving on to New Alipore to the house of retired SBI officer Anathjiban Guha, who recently celebrated his 96th birthday, the scene is no better as the post office has refused to pay his pension. "At this age, I can't keep going out, looking for money. My son, Arindam, take me out once, but now I don't feel up to it. Where will the money come from?" the K Block resident said.

The pensioners' plight was best portrayed by 70-year-old S K Barua, who in spite of suffering a heart attack three months ago, still had to queue up at SBI's Monoharpukur Road branch. "There is no seating arrangement, no drinking water, and not much ventilation in the bank. My children don't live with us. Last month, my son gave me 500 and 1,000 notes for house expenses and medicines. I am diabetic and hypertensive," Barua said. Some, like Arabinda Basak, a retired Food Corporation of India employees, even questioned the lack of special rules for pensioners.