“If the bane of corruption has to wiped out in today’s context, we have to move from punitive and preventive vigilance to pro-active, predictive and above all participative vigilance"

--- Ex-Vigilance Commissioner, R Srikumar  

Vigilance may be defined as “Keeping a watchful eye on the activities of employees to ensure integrity of personnel in their official transactions.”  Vigilance is to ensure clean and prompt administrative action towards achieving efficiency and effectiveness of the employee in particular and the organization in general. 

The purpose of vigilance is not to wait for lapses to be committed and then try to conduct a post mortem. Thus Participative Vigilance comes into picture which is nothing but a euphemism for transparency which is the need of the hour in today’s context. 

Whenever the word vigilance comes across, most of the field functionaries take it in a negative connotation and understand that the top management has laid down the policy to harass them. 

Nevertheless, it will not be wrong to say that several associated risks cannot be mitigated by a single person in an organization. There must be cumulative and participative efforts. In a banking parlance, we must be vigilant and must communicate our colleagues mutually through which more quality output comes out of our work. This will never be possible without teamwork; a participative effort. A participative effort is required as many people have different skills, knowledge and experience over the period. A participative effort provides a lot of brilliant ideas through which a big task can be achieved in a time-bound manner. 

Common lapses found in organization and important from Vigilance angle: 

• Gross or wilful negligence; 
• Blatant violations of systems and procedures;  
• Recklessness in decision making;
• Exercise of discretion in excess, where no ostensible / public interest is evident,
• Failure to report to competent authorities in time 

As far as banking environment is concerned, there are three ways of vigilance: 

• Preventive vigilance 
• Detective vigilance 
• Punitive (Corrective) Vigilance
  
  

57 Preventive vigilance points are required to comply by the branch. If we observe each point, it is never possible for a single person to comply with all of them. To name a few points like : stitching the vouchers, preservation of records, credit and deposit related matters, vigilant over high value transactions, vigilant over computer frauds and checking of books of accounts etc. Moreover, these compliances are required to be checked during inspection and visits of higher authorities. Thus vigilance must be a participative effort and in a TEAM spirit where T stands for technology and transparency, E for efficiency and empowerment, A for audit trail and accountability and M for metrics measurement and mutual cooperation. 

Job rotation is another way to involve more and more people under vigilance angle. It is understood that a person sitting on a particular seat is more experienced and carries his duty in a better way. However, in a broader sense it has become fatal to the organization when either the person retires or goes on leaves. A vacuum is created in his absence and the day-to-day activity is hampered. Sometimes, it is also found that gross negligence has occurred and it has led to financial and reputation risk to the organization. 

Thus Participative Vigilance suggests involvement of all stakeholders in effecting system improvements and laying down transparent policies in all areas of the organization and effectively implementing them. 

In conclusion, lack of Participative vigilance leads to financial, operational and reputational risks to the organization.