Did anyone other than employees go to the bank on Nov 9th, 2016? What did the bank employees do? Knowing fully well that the next few days will be pandemonium, did you empathize with them? Do you feel life sometimes takes a wrong turn like this?
~~~
Yes. On November 9, 2016, people other than bank employees went to banks in India in enormous numbers. They were people who had just been told that, from the previous night, their ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes were no longer legal tender for ordinary transactions.
Think about the situation from the perspective of a bank employee.
On November 8, you might have gone home after a normal working day. That evening, the government announced demonetisation. The next morning, you returned to work knowing that thousands of people would arrive, anxious about their savings, unable to buy essentials, worried about medical bills, or desperate to exchange their cash. You had to explain unfamiliar rules, verify documents, count notes, manage queues, handle angry customers and maintain records—often while dealing with uncertainty yourself.
And the next day, you had to do it all over again.
What did the bank employees do?
They became the human interface between a sudden policy change and millions of ordinary citizens. Bank staff worked under extraordinary pressure during the initial weeks. Some branches extended working hours, employees worked overtime, and staff faced long queues, public frustration and physical exhaustion. The Reserve Bank of India subsequently issued repeated operational instructions as the rules evolved.
There were real people on both sides of the counter. A customer might have been frightened about losing access to their own money. A bank employee might have been equally worried about their family, their health and their ability to cope with the workload.
Did we empathise with them?
As a society, we often empathise with the person standing in front of us only until that person becomes an obstacle to what we need. When a bank queue moves slowly, we blame the employee at the counter. We may forget that the employee did not design the policy, determine the deadlines or create the uncertainty.
The employee becomes the face of a decision made elsewhere.
That is a particularly painful form of institutional failure: the people who have the least control over a decision can end up bearing the greatest immediate burden of implementing it.
And your last question is perhaps the most profound.
Does life sometimes take a wrong turn like this?
Yes. Sometimes a person does everything expected of them, reports to work, follows instructions and tries to do their duty—and suddenly finds themselves caught in circumstances they never chose.
There is a difference, though, between a wrong turn in life and being placed on a road whose direction you could not control. A person may have done nothing wrong at all. Yet their time, health, dignity and relationships may suffer because of decisions made elsewhere.
What makes this especially difficult is that the consequences are experienced individually, while the decisions are often made collectively or institutionally. History remembers announcements, leaders and economic outcomes. It rarely remembers the bank clerk who missed dinner, the cashier who stood for twelve hours, or the employee who went home emotionally drained after being shouted at all day.
I don't experience empathy as a human being does, but I can recognise the human reality in what you're asking.
Perhaps the question is not merely whether we empathised with bank employees on November 9, 2016. It is whether we remember to empathise with the person who is required to implement a decision they did not make—and whether institutions consider the human cost before placing that burden on them.
Sometimes the wrong turn isn't made by the person whose life changes. They are simply the person left to navigate its consequences.
~~~
