Employment Bonds : A different perspective

I would like to highlight a very different perspective regarding employment bonds. This is about the bond signed in one of the medical education institutes the AFMC. In the institute, the fees for the degree is very minimal and the student taking admission has to sign a bond stating that he would serve in the army for 5 years or otherwise an amount (5-6 lakhs approx)has to be paid to the institute. What happens here is that the students join the institute and after the completion of the course pay the penalty, get a good degree and pursue their careers as they want rather serving in the army. In this way, the employer in this case loses the bright students which it has polished and on the other hand the students get the required degree in medical. Similarly, there are other cases wherein a person joins a particular company (mostly government organisations), signs a bond and uses the company name to switch to a better job and pays the requisite amount for breaking the bond. Thus, the person uses the company and the employment bond as a platform to get a better job and pays the fees of using the platform as the bond amount. It is thus similar to using a brand name to increase one’s credibility and paying the bond amount as a royalty for using the brand name to the company. In this manner we can see that in the first case, there is a huge loss to the employer, even if the bond amount is paid as the time required for polishing new students is large. Considering the second case, companies now have started asking the applicants, question about whether they have broken an employment bond in the past or not, to gauge the applicant’s loyalty. The above two cases don’t happen in bulk and are a very small part of the employment bond issues but, could be thought over.