ATM Closed for Lunch – Back After Upgradation

Imphal is currently witnessing a curious spectacle — the near-simultaneous disappearance of dozens of State Bank of India ATM booths in the name of upgradation. Social media posts claim the number stands at 72, though not confirmed, the lived reality of citizens running from one shuttered booth to another is all too real. Because apparently, inconvenience is the new efficiency.
For a full week now, the city’s residents have been reduced to cash-hunting nomads, scurrying from one locked booth to the next, as though engaged in some elaborate scavenger hunt designed by the bank itself. One wonders, was there a grand strategy meeting where someone declared, “Why trouble ourselves with phased work when we can shut down every ATM and watch the public dance to our tune?” Efficiency, after all, is overrated; chaos builds character.
Surely, it is too much to expect India’s largest bank to consider a phased manner of operation. Why not allow half the machines to remain open while upgrading the other half, when shutting down all of them can offer citizens a crash course in the virtues of patience, endurance, and improvisational bartering? After all, who needs money when one can jog from ATM to ATM, burning calories and time simultaneously? A public health initiative, perhaps?
What makes this drama even more delightful is the pace of the so-called upgradation. A week has already passed, and yet the newly promised machines remain as mythical as unicorns. The people were told the city would receive “better service.” Ironically, better service at the moment seems to mean no service at all.
The real question is not whether the ATMs will be upgraded, but whether citizens will survive the ordeal with their sanity intact. The next time we hear lofty claims about “improved customer service,” perhaps we should remember Imphal’s locked ATM booths — monuments to planning so poor, it borders on parody.
In the end, maybe the joke is on us. After all, if inconvenience was the goal, then SBI has not only succeeded — it has excelled. And if the delay seems endless, well, perhaps the entire city of Imphal is simply expected to wait — much like the classic SBI customer during lunch hour.