- How many Nationalized Banks have gone bankrupt in last 30yrs? NONE!
About 19 cooperative banks went bankrupt during 2008 recession. Nationalized banks don't go bankrupt because govt has been injecting money into them despite poor performance Even recently, few thousand crore has been injected govt is supposed to inject 2.1 lac crore more. Note that This money is also technically ours (tax money). But with this bill, the govt wants to shift the burden on to banks themselves and make them self reliant at the expense of depositors funds. Banks like SBI are already irresponsible in their day to day operations. Look at the amount of bad loans they are stacking up. Adani group was recently issued a $1 billion loan for their $16.4 billion mining operation in Australia (which is supposed to have been obtained through large scale corruption) against which there is a lot of public outcry there. What happens if the govt there is forced to give in to the people's demands and stop the operations at some point? Even if nothing like that happens, what are the chances that such loans issued on dubious and controversial projects (maybe under political pressure too) would be recovered back?
I don't trust businesses where making profit does not matter as much as it should. They don't run well and the state of these banks is proof of that. SBI associate banks for instance incurred a loss of 6000 crore through 2017 before getting merged with SBI.
Recently, about 100 crore meant for mid day meal program deposited by govt in SBI was routed to the account of some private builder. SBI did not even catch such a gross irregularity for more than a month till somebody followed up. By that time, the private party had diverted most of the funds to other bank accounts and used it. They recovered only part of the amount and filed cases against the builder.That is negligence to a severe degree.
Now imagine giving such irresponsible entities the authority to use their depositors money without first even trying to bring in some control and accountability.
- Are Our concerns totally far from real? I sense the usual fear mongering that preys on people's ignorance. How people here qualified to properly interpret the bill ? also NONE!
Yes, they are well founded. You don't need a doctoral degree in law or economics to understand the bill. Only thing required is high school level basics and good grasp of English. Read the text. Everything that you understand just from interpreting the language used would be valid. It does not matter what the govt originally meant to do or how unlikely is a provision to be used or not based on common sense. Once the bill is passed, anything that can be interpreted from the written text would be valid. All legal loopholes are just "in letter" interpretation of the language used when writing a law. Common sense and logic is irrelevant here. Letter of the law prevails. Once you make a provision for such a thing, it is there to be used or abused
Further if govt had no intent for such a provision to be used in reality, common sense dictates that the bill shouldn't have included such provisions.
Also regarding the "this is just a draft bill" argument, draft bills change when objections are voiced. If nobody objects, there is no debate and the bill can be passed in its original form. Politicians by themselves (even if its the opposition) have no objections to such provisions.They don't keep their black money in banks. It is the common people whose money is usually in banks and it is they who should raise the objections.
- What's the Government Stake Holding in various Nationalized banks? What Does bankruptcy for Nationalized banks mean? also valid
Their survival (especially the big ones like SBI) is important to the economy of the country. This is the reason for funding these banks indefinitely. But these are also the banks that politicians can influence and get favors done for their friends. Don't forget that most often than not, the bad loans are all usually result of banks due diligence being road rolled with political pressure. If want a home loan or a business loan from SBI, see how many hoops you have to go though in the name of due diligence. On the other hand, how does Adani group which supposed had 72,000 crore worth of bad loans in 8 different banks (written off) get an additional $1 billion loan (~6400 crore) so easily?
The politicians are the ones ruining the banks, but the banks like SBI have to stand for the sake of the economy which is why tax money has to be used to keep them floating. using tax money like this has its limits. So, there is nothing better than offsetting this burden or part of it to the people.