As the fastest growing economy today, India is home to a fifth of the world's youth. It provides India with a unique demographic advantage. It provides us a great opportunity. The youth not only need employment but also work life balance. The experts says that a severely biased focus on your job can compromise your relationships, mental and physical wellbeing, so work life balance is important. Scientific studies on health have proved that 2 days weekend improves health as well as productivity. So to increase productivity we need five day week.

In our country all central government establishments, state government offices, RBI, forex department, parliament, state assemblies, treasury, and IT industries observe a 5-day week. Foreign banks in India also follow 5 day week. Therefore banking industry switching over to 5-day week will not make much difference to routine business, rather it will increase productivity, reduce expenditure and give employee satisfaction.

Advancement of technology: 

In the light of the revolutionary changes that have taken place as regards the technology initiative, such as Core Banking Solution, Tele banking, Internet banking, Kiosk Banking, Mobile banking, Cash Deposit Banking, any time anywhere banking and also the banking expansion through a large ATM network (221703 as on March 2019), Cash deposit machines, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, UPI, E WALLETS, 4.25 million Micro ATMs(POS), 50.3 million credit cards, 840.6 million debit cards, 627 million internet users and 6.2 billion mobile banking users there is no need for banks to work on Saturdays.

Following are the benefits of a 5 day work week for our country:

1 Reduced fuel costs.

2  Decreased absenteeism.

3  Increased productivity.

4  Improved job satisfaction and morale..

5  Reduced personnel turnover.

6  Reduced energy costs.

7  Improved work-life balance.

8  Reduced traffic congestion.

9  Promise of 10th Bipartite.

10  Better immunity.

11  More employments.

12  More spending.

The financial army deserves 5 days week. In spite of the lock down, the banks are open, employees commuting with great difficulty, hundreds have died, thousands affected by the virus, they get lesser insurance coverage, the direct benefit transfers are disbursed by them, they are giving all the loans under the Atma Nirbhar package, they have opened 40 crore Jan Dhan accounts, donated their salary to the PM CARES and serving the Nation with devotion.

So there is total justification for 5 day week to be introduced in the banking industry following the footsteps of RBI which has defined 8 hours’ work, five day week and flexible working hours.

IBA in its previous meetings agreed to five day week, but now they say that Prime Minister is not for five day week. Whether this demand reached our PM? Can the government discriminate bankers when RBI and government employees have five day work? Even after the latest MOU we get lesser salary than government, RBI and Insurance employees.

Healthy and Satisfied citizens are the greatest asset any country can have