Everyone likes to save little money. The rich, the poor, the
average earner and even the lavish spender likes have a little nest of savings.
Banks are the biggest mediums today to enable investment and savings
transactions. It is no wonder then; we
need banks for a good economic system and an ideal way of life. Where we can
save some cash and also go for any needs of loans. They make good business too.
You save your money at 4 or 6 percent and your friend gets a loan from the bank
at 10 percent plus.
When the British left India, they left behind a fairly good
banking system with a nice number of banks in select corners of the country.
All we needed to do was use that system polish it well and spread it thick and
deep. What instead Indians did was use it as a milking cow, ruining these
institutions instead of using them for positive gains.
In the 1970’s Indira Gandhi led the nationalization of the
banks. The secret was out in the open. Politicians controlled the banks and not
bankers or professionals. They now had loads of powers over the banks, which
were trustees of sorts of the public money. The people of India loved the idea.
They even loved the idea of Vajpayee who years later, started selling shares of
these banks as IPOs or FPOs in the open market. So, first you nationalize a
bank, and then you make money selling its share. We Indians have done our
socialist, communist and capitalist dharma in a matter of decades. All this
time, did we ever stop to think, which way do we want our banks to go?
To spice up things, co-operative banking was launched in
India. Now, most of these banks are going nowhere, with tight political control
and awry finances. But then we had an
economist Prime Minister. He is the great Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was earlier
the finance minister of India and also a former governor of the Reserve Bank of
India. You would think, banking system could be saved or put on a right track
under his rule. And yes, he and his
cronies in the government did allow a lot of great banking reforms in India. He
made sure that all hard working politicians of his party, the Indian National
Congress be accommodated as much as possible as the directors of various public
sector banks.
The list of hard working Congress workers, who were
appointed as directors of various banks include – Indu Singh Panwar (Central
Bank of India), Ram Chandra Khuntia (Andhra Bank), Sooraj Prakash Khatri
(Indian Overseas Bank), Maulin A Vaishnav (Bank of Baroda), A Ali Azizi (Bank
of Maharashtra), Romesh Sabharwal (Central Bank of India), Masarrat Shahid
(Bank of Baroda), Nafisa Ali Sodhi ( Indian Bank), Pankaj Gopalji Thakkar
(Canara Bank), Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy (Indian Bank), Satya Behn (Central Bank
of India), Prabha K Taviad ( Bank of India), Maj (retd) Ved Prakash (Central
Bank of India) etc. The list is quite long.A similar report on rediff you can read here.
Now, today the media, while branding the corporate and
business class as villains of the latest banking mess that is brewing in India,
they won’t tell you how the government of India being the legitimate
representatives of people of India, played around favorites while running the
banks. A recent report of the RBI shadows doubts on quality of board governance
in the public sector banks. Is it possible that the policy of accommodating a number of
working members of the party in the financial institutions backfired?
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