Stay home on bandhs, make up on weekends

KOLKATA: If you see a few more office-goers over the next few weekends, take it in your stride. IT''s the city fighting the bandhwagon in the only way it knows: sacrificing weekends.
In one of the finest displays of a spirit that can only be described as unputdownable, thousands of consulting and IT professionals will troop to their workplaces on a normal holiday in the near future to make up for the loss suffered because of Monday''s bandh.
The good thing is no one seems to have a problem with this arrangement; not the software-developer who''s starting out or the high-profile CEO. "It doesn''t need to be forced down the throats of our employees. They will all be there on Saturday to make up for the day lost (because of the bandh)," PwC Ltd chairman Rathin Datta said.
"It is incorrect to presume that people here don''t like to work. Their commitment is simply fantastic," he added. Cognizant Technology Solutions vice-president Siddhartha Mukherjee also said employees who could not make it to work on Monday would work an additional day this week to compensate.
"It is the usual practice we follow," Mukherjee said. Cognizant reported an attendance of 50 per cent at its Salt Lake facility on bandh-day.
NIIT general manager Amit Chakravarty said the firm had rescheduled operations on account of the bandh. "We discussed the issue with clients as well and will be working on Saturday as we couldn''t do so on Monday," Chakravarty said. Subhronil Bhattacharya of TCS said there was no resistance to working on Saturdays.
"The business can''t be allowed to suffer because of bandhs. There''s no heartburn in having to work on a Saturday," he said.
Incidentally, many TCS employees here worked last Saturday itself to make up for their absence on Monday. Employees of many of Kolkata''s leading blue-chips, however, will not need to make the additional trip on Saturday as a result of the latest bandh. The reason: it was business as usual at premier firms like ITC, Exide and Mitsubishi Chemicals on Monday.
"We cannot afford the luxury of staying at home because of the bandh. The business would not allow it," Exide vice-president Barun Das said.