Overnight Obama

Though the title may sound funny enough, I came across an article this morning which I found quite interesting and is inline with the title of this post. What would you do if you find tomorrow morning that your bank account has been credited about 9.8 billion dollars OR about 49,000 crores. Yes, you read it is correctly, it is FORTY NINE THOUSAND CRORES ONLY.

I know some of you might get giddiness/dizziness/vertigo or what ever in that reeling sensation on seeing such a 12 digit figure. But if you are Mr.Honesty - "Parijath Saha" from Calcutta, you would have directly called up his bank, SBI, to report such a typo error of the bank. Sounds too much, to believe it? Here is the real incident and how it got unfolded with this gentle man - Parijath Saha:

Parijath Saha is a teacher from a local school of Calcutta and Saha's monthly salary as a school teacher in the eastern state of West Bengal is Rs 35,000.

On 18th January 2012,he made his casual visit to his bank, State Bank of India, Calcutta, to check his account balance. Instead of seeing his initial expectation of about slightly more than 10,000 Rupees in his account balance, he got shock of his life to find his account balance to be, INR. 49,570,08,17,538. Yes, about 49,000 crores.

"On Sunday evening, when I was checking my savings account balance on the internet, I was expecting an amount of a little more than 10,000 rupees," The BBC quoted Saha, who lives in the town of Balurghat in South Dinajpur district, as saying.

To give you an order of the magnitude of such a figure, it is very closer to India's Annual Education budget of $11.9 billion dollar i.e., about 54,000 crores and next closer to India's Annual Railway budget of about 58,000 crores.

When asked to the red-faced bank officials, it appeared the bank officials refused to comment immediately though categorically stated that Parijath Saha could NOT have withdrawn any money as it is in "uncleared" state.

The bank's regional headquarters in Calcutta and national headquarters in Mumbai have been alerted and officials are trying to figure out what went wrong, sources in the bank say

More irony is that a government run bank of such stature has its motto as "Safe Banking with SBI". 

Immediate question that came to my mind is "whose safe money got deposited into Parijath's account" and how a cheque of such magnitude could get into such clearance though it was uncleared.

A costliest typo..indeed!!