As newly commissioned 2 Lts, we get our first pay slip (by way of which our wage will get credited to our banks underneath intimation to us) after three months. So how do you ‘exist’ for 3 months: how one can clear mess payments, how one can pay in your bicycle instalment, how one can purchase necessities and so forth. Right here comes the knight in shining armour, the Unit Bania who runs the Moist Canteen.
A Moist Canteen is part of each military unit, although there may be nothing moist about it! It’s a legacy a number of centuries outdated, when it was most popular that troops drink, typically beer, throughout the unit strains and amongst fellow troopers, reasonably than exit and imbibe spurious liquor. Often run by a contractor from the ‘bania’ caste, it’s principally often called unit bania or simply bania amongst all ranks.
As soon as Canteen Shops Division (CSD) retailers in each unit, known as Unit Run Canteen (URC), had been authorised after Independence, easy accessibility to high quality merchandise of every day use, at costs lower than market charges’ to troopers of all three providers was attainable. Subsequently, choose para-military models and civilian organisations too obtained themselves included. Liquor is simply one of many seven classes of such shops. With the arrival of liquor in CSD, the ‘Moist’ portion of the title ought to have gone. Nevertheless it didn’t. The prefix continues for the non-CSD canteen aka unit bania.
The bania in any unit is the ‘to go to’ man for any eventuality — whether or not you want to money a cheque; or purchase one thing on the bazaar which is often 15-20 KM in most Indian Cantonments/ Navy Stations; get a craftsman from civil market in your flat.
Most even advance loans to males with out curiosity however ensure they patronize his store, the place one can get something from tea and samosa to different costlier objects. By a unit order, he’s prevented from stocking or coping with objects which can be obtainable in URC; however a intelligent ‘bania’ that he’s, he will get to know which objects are in brief provide or exhausted; out pop these objects in his present window! Units do situation orders the restrict as much as which loans could also be superior by him as money or cashless purchases. All ranks need to receive a ‘No-dues’ clearance, earlier than happening go away, to coaching programs or posting — a measure to stop issues afterward.
In my first unit in 1962, Mannalal Jai Narain was the bania. I used to be pleasantly stunned to learn not too long ago that he’s the son of Jai Narain, a bania who was awarded the 1930-31 NWFP medal Clasp, as a camp-follower! Sure, our unit banias accompany us to operational areas even throughout wars. So don’t deride them because the grasping exploiting caricature of Hindi movies. Their providers typically keep hereditary in the identical unit; the third era Agarwal remains to be the bania in my first Regiment after 60 years!
