In all fairness, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been cautious in dealing with the situation arising out of the bank scams (“Jaitley hints at tightening of laws”, February 25). His approach, which has been to analyse the malady and go to the root of the problem, is appropriate. He has not indulged in political mudslinging. Nevertheless, it is clear that the in-built checks and balances in the banking system have not worked. The government has the responsibility to safeguard the trust reposed in public banks by depositors and honest borrowers. It is said that banks have advanced money to a few thousand individuals and institutions which accounts for about 80% of loans. This number is manageable and the government can ask banks to act on this. An out-of-box idea would be to ask all borrowers to deposit their passports with the respective banks as a precautionary measure. The passport issuing authority can ensure this.
K.C. Kalkura,
Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh
Regular duties such as checking, monitoring, supervising, detecting, auditing, reviewing, and watching, if performed with diligence at every layer, would more than suffice to avert any scam. There is no need to “tighten laws” or introduce new rules. The Minister’s regret that for any systemic failure, politicians are held responsible is indefensible. If the political class claims credit for achievements and accomplishments, then it also has to take ownership of failures too.
R. Sridharan,
Chennai
Mr. Jaitley has ruled out privatisation of public sector banks citing numerous challenges. However in the backdrop of the huge scam in the PNB that has taken its toll on other public sector banks, doubts about this persist among vast sections who still root for the public sector character of banks. It is pertinent to point out that the Chief Economic Adviser has favoured privatisation. The dichotomy on this is too glaring to be missed. ASSOCHAM has also declared its total support to privatisation while blissfully ignoring the monumental size of NPAs on account of the corporate sector which is at the root of the problem. It is disconcerting to note that the mass transfers of public bank employees now being resorted to goes against the spirit of time-tested transfer settlements, agreements and bipartite agreements with bank unions. This is to divert the issue and shift the blame to lower level cadre.
J. Anantha Padmanabhan,
Tiruchi