 Well, the Government of India has announced that Bangabaruda, Vijaya Bank and Denabal Bank will be merged, which will create a new bank, which will be the third largest bank in the country. This move has been there for long. It all started with the World Bank IMF loan of 1991. When the IMF and World Bank had put some conditions for the loan, that over a period of time these banks have to be privatized. And for that, the Government of India constituted a committee called Narasimham Committee, which submitted its report in 1992, which is called the Narasimham Committee 1 report. That committee itself has recommended that India needs only five or six big banks, so merger can be done, and then privatization can take place. They had in fact very concretely had said that the Government shareholding in the public sector banks should be reduced to 33%, so that these banks no longer remain as public sector banks. So this merger is only a step towards that privatization. Now we were asking about the phone banking. The Prime Minister also makes a speech at the Red Fort and she says that phone banking is responsible for the NPA. The same thing is being repeated by the NITI, by the Finance Minister. First of all, are we fools in this country that anybody who is taking a lending decision will just give a loan because a phone call comes from the Finance Minister or from the Finance Ministry? Do you think that all these banks have been recklessly lending without looking into the norms for loans? It is not so. The Government has all the weather with us. If they have any concrete proof that phone banking was responsible for the NPA, let them come out with the proof. They have their CBA in their control, they have enforcement directorate, they have all the intelligence wings. Let them pinpoint who called whom and who gave the loans without following any norms. This is a total blatant utterance by the people who are in power just to safeguard and show that they are doing good whereas they have been responsible for creating a mess in this economy as well as the banking sector. See, they started with the demonetization which has become a Himalayan blunder. We are still searching for the black money. No black money has been found. In fact, those who had black money got converted into white and the nation lost huge employment, small-scale industries, cottage industries, small and medium enterprises got badly affected. More than 102 people died standing in the queue and nobody is held accountable. So now they want to divert the attention of the people. They are trying to create a feeling that the non-performing assets are responsible because of some reckless spending by the bankers which is not at all true. I am quoting the report of the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance which was submitted in February 2016 to the Parliament. That committee has both ruling party as well as opposition party members. That report very clearly indicates what is the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is that we were having surplus funds because we opened up the economy. A lot of foreign inflows came in so the banks had surplus funding so the banks were asked to lend more and it was the government's directive to lend to certain sects like infrastructure, steel, power, telecom which are long-term lending because they converted the banks like IDBA, ICICI which was an industrial investment corporation, then UTI. They converted these public sector undertakings which were giving long-term finance into private banks. So public sector banks were asked to go in for long-term loans. Again there was one more reason. Under the condition of the old bank and IMF the government wants to reduce its fiscal deficit to 3.5%. So they started reducing their expenditure on infrastructure in their budget provisions. So that had to be taken care of by the banks. So one side banks had fund, second banks were asked to go for this kind of long-term lending which they did and that helped the economy at that point of time. 2008 when the US economic crisis happened it did not affect India much because of the RBI's intervention and also by increasing the loan to the different sects in the country because of which the financial crisis did not come to our country. So now to put the blame on the bankers is totally wrong. The parliament's sending committee also says that accountability should be fixed on the RBI official who is in the boards of the bank if there has been a mistake. Has any action been taken? The parliament's sending committee also says that the finance ministry official who was in the board of these banks when these decisions were taken, if they had taken a wrong decision they should be penalized. Have they penalized anybody? Have they penalized any chairman or MD of the bank? No, that does not happen. So just vaguely raising one slogan that phone banking was responsible is totally a nonsense and this cannot mislead the people of this country. The non-performing asset is a problem. Yes, but the root cause of the problem has to be analyzed. It is the Reserve Bank of India which brought in restructuring schemes. Now they have closed down all that schemes and the non-performing assets. The solution cannot be in merger. Why? I am telling you with a concrete example. State Bank of India amalgamated five of its associate banks. When it was amalgamated it was told that per year there will be a saving of 2700 and then the chairman, Mrs. Arun Dalipattacharya said that 3000 crores will be the profit. But in fact the non-performing assets increased within the State Bank of India alone it increased by 17%. Within the associate banks it increased by around 130% and overall the NPA position of the State Bank of India increased heavily and for the first time in history State Bank of India made a loss. Net loss. This is the real result of the merger. Now they are saying that State Bank of India merger has been a success which is again a totally wrong assessment in State Bank of India. One, after the merger 2600 employees have been given VRS and they have left. The employees of the then associate banks are not happy because certain benefits available to State Bank of India is not extended to them and there is a case filed by the State Bank Federation in the Hyderabad High Court. The case is pending. It is an ongoing case now. Number three, the profits have gone down. The gross profit and the net profit became really negative and State Bank of India to show that there is a lesser loss, they had to sell their assets. State Bank of India sold a certain portion of their investment in the SBI life and put it as income to show that the real loss is lesser and even after the last March result. Now also we are seeing that every quarter State Bank of India's loss is increasing and number of branches have been reduced. Number of operating offices have been reduced. So in what way they have achieved anything due to merger? There is no concrete proof that neither the profit has increased nor the employees have increased, neither the business has increased. In fact there are information that many valued constituents, they have left the then associate banks, the elsewhere associate bank customers. Many of them have left because they have found it convenient to deal with a smaller branch where they were getting a better customer service. But today they are seeing that their branches have become one ocean and they are not satisfied. So many of them have got shifted and it is the private banks which are luring them saying that we will give you no processing charge, we will not charge any service charge to you, you come to us, we will treat you as a VIP. So customers are shifting to the private bank. This is a real game plan of the government. They want the private banks to increase, they want the private banks to improve their business. For that they are trying to kill the public sector banks. So this merger in fact is not at all going to benefit the banking sector, it is going to affect the banking sector very badly. First of all employees, one we have seen in the past also mergers. The first major merger was New Bank of India with Punjab National Bank. The New Bank of India employees even today who are remaining in service feel that they are not treated as equal. When they get into a bigger bank, they become inferior. Number two, in all the cases of merger, there was another merger of Global Trust Bank, a private sector bank was merged with Old Dental Bank of Commerce. Oriental Bank of Commerce became weak. Even in the New Bank of India and Punjab National Bank merger, the Punjab National Bank suffered very badly. Between 1969 and now there has been 28 major mergers. None of the mergers have really helped the employees or they have helped the banks as a whole. In the case of employees, though the government says that no benefits will be taken, employees will be taken care of, practically what we have seen is that voluntary retirement scheme is offered. So you are told that see this is going to be a bigger entity, you will have to work harder, so either if you are going to remain, you agree certain service conditions like it was done for the associate banks. They were asked to sign an undertaking that they will not claim some benefits which are available to State Bank of India. Now between Bangapurada, Punjab Bank and Denabank, there are certain service conditions where there are differences that will continue to be a problem. Then the employees even at the senior level, how the seniority will be fixed will be a question. In case of measure of the associate banks with State Bank of India, same seniority was not given to all. Similar thing will happen, so there will be a kind of discrimination. Some people will feel frustrated. Then the question of business, at least for 2-3 years, decision making will become almost standstill. Who will decide on a loan, who will decide on a recovery, who will take over the document, which will be the dominant bank, who will take over all the documents which are already existing, how the transfer of accounts will take place. This kind of process, at least in the case of State Bank of India and associate bank, they were in the same core banking platform. So the account transfer was easier, but here it is going to be tougher. So at least for 2-3 years, the bank's position will go down. Deposits will go down, advances will go down, recovery will go down, the profits will go down, and that is going to affect the banks very badly. This will become a very easy tool for the government, which under the directives of the IMF and World Bank, wants to privatise. The government of India, the people in power, they have been talking about privatisation. The Prime Minister of the country has made an open statement that public sector was born to die. So they are interested to hand over to few corporates. So what ultimately can happen is that these banks will be shown that after the merger also they are not doing well. So only way out is to, we don't have funds to infuse capital, so we will have to bring in capital from the public. Who is this public? It will be the corporates who will be buying this bank. I am really afraid that the biggest banks in this country will be handed over to Ambani's, Adhani's and Agarwal's. They are the biggest borrowers, some of them are defaulters also, but ultimately these people will be handed over the bank and they will become the owners of the public sector banks which are today doing a human service to the public. Today if some loans are available for the farmers, for the small entrepreneurs, for the cottage industry, to the self-help groups, it is from the public sector banks. That will come to an end. So it is in total, neither the employees are going to benefit out of this nor the banks, the banking system is going to get benefit. See practically that has not happened in the earlier mergers. We have seen mergers internationally also. Even the mergers done in US, in Germany, they have not been very successful and they have this wrong notion too big to fail. Bigger banks will perform better. 2008 financial crisis. Today it is, the day before yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. One of the biggest banks which failed is Lehman Brothers. Biggest financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they failed. So there is no guarantee that as because you are big, you will get more deposit, you will get to give more loans. That is not going to happen. In fact within this country, it is the, in many cases we are seeing, the small branches and the small banks are doing well comparatively. Like Vijaya Bank you see, out of the 21 public sector banks, 19 banks went on a loss. But Vijaya Bank made profit. It's a small bank but it made profit because they are focused in certain locality where the customer loyalty is there. And there has been many surveys which say that once the merger takes place, the customer loyalty goes. The customer shifts. He is attracted by the others who are willing to offer some better services. In fact, this is a very good game plan of the government. To support the private sector banks which are suffering. You see the ICICI, it isn't a mess. Payment banks have been started. Small banks have been started. On the one hand, see such a big contradiction. On the one hand, you say that we require more small banks, we require more payment banks. So they are giving more and more licenses to them. And see in Tamil Nadu alone, one small bank called Equitas has been asked to open 350 branches. They are supporting. Paytm is getting support. FinTechs are getting support. So their aim is to shift this business to these companies which will initially offer very attractive things. They will even offer higher interest rate. They will say that we will give loans at a cheaper rate. But ultimately, after one or two years, everything will change. Once they have got sufficient customers, they will start charging more. As we are seeing in the case of banks own ATMs. ATMs were offered free. Now for ATMs, there is service charge introduced. So these private banks will lure the customers now giving attractive benefits. And then public sector customers will move towards them. Later on, they will be caught in a trap. That is what is exactly going to happen. Call the dog mad before you kill it. So what they did in the case of Dena Mai? They first said that they have to be put on a turnaround plan. The associations, the all India bank offices, confederations submitted a concrete turnaround plan which was not implemented. Then they put the bank under prompt corrective action by the Reserve Bank of India. Then they said that they should stop lending. Such a ridicule. Banking is collecting deposits and giving loans. And you are telling a bank not to give loans. How that bank will improve? How the NPA will go down? So naturally when you stop lending, the existing borrower also will start repaying. That is how the NPA started mounting more in the case of the Dena bank. And in all the cases, these three banks have huge NPA. All the 21 banks have huge NPA. That is because of the policies of the government. It is not because of the wrong decision making. The government have been giving instructions. RBI had been giving lending policy periodically. Banks have been following those lending policies, following those same restructuring policies which was given by the Reserve Bank of India. And now suddenly you withdraw everything to show that there is more NPA. Only to show that the banks are not doing well and we don't have capital. So it becomes a tool for privatization. As I told you earlier, decision making will come to almost a standstill for some time. So that will help this borrower to default further. And even for borrowers who are doing well, they go for an enhancement of loan, the bank will not be able to decide. They will say merger is taking place, wait. So instead of waiting, they will either quit or they will keep the account here stagnant and they will go for a fresh advance somewhere else. So the NPA is not going to reduce at all. And that we have not seen in the case of State Bank of India. That is a classic example. So the NPA recovery is going to be very, very tough after the merger. See one, some data they have quoted is from just one quarter data. Second quarter data cannot be relied for the whole projection. Only in March we will know the real position. After the March results are announced, we will know the real position. But in the last four years, what has happened is that this government has encouraged new schemes like the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code and the NCLT through which some new term was brought in called hair cut and the corporate borrowers are given an opportunity to quit. They are declaring themselves insolvent or the banks are filing an insolvency petition where the banks are losing a minimum of average 50% of their loans. So who is getting the benefit? The borrower who is defaulting is getting a benefit. Number two, the purchaser who is again another corporate, he is getting the asset as a very throwaway price. So it is benefiting the corporates. And these statistics which they have showed, these are projections and this cannot be relied upon and the government should come out with a white paper on four years, you have written off four lakh crores. And why you are not willing to disclose the name of the people whose loans have been written off? In what way it is going to affect the banking sector or the economy? A defaulter is a defaulter. He is a culprit. He should be named. His name should be published, which the government is not willing to do. And the whole NPA, the large NPAs which constitute 85% of the NPA belongs to the corporates and government's own statistics says that it is around 4,200 borrower. Why don't you identify only those 4,200 companies and borrowers and take action against them and recover? Instead of that, they are giving some false statistics which cannot be relied upon. See, number one, this growth is not an equitable growth. If Ambani's growth is increasing every day by 365 crores, as per some statistics, actual statistics says that per day his growth is 365 crores. That is shown in the overall growth of the economy. But a common man, is he growing? He is not growing? He is suffering? So this growth parameter alone is not correct. There are other indices like human development report. Out of 186 countries, we are 130 as per report given 2-3 days before. Corruption index. There are so many other indexes. Happiness index. We are very much low. So this growth alone is not the correct indicator for deciding on how the economy is doing. And even if we are the sixth largest economy, unless you provide equal opportunities to the people which was promised in the constitution, in what way it is going to help the common man, the larger majority of this country. And here the merger is not going to help the growth of the economy. It is rather going to affect the economy because for few years decision making will become weaker. See there are so many formalities to be followed. The boards have to meet. Then the combined board has to meet. Then policies have to be announced. Then transfers have to take place. All that will take a long time and this will affect all the three banks. And that way it will be affecting the economy also. And it is not going to help the economy as a projector. Historically we have seen through many surveys and actual reports that after mergers many customers leave because they want a particular focus. They have a loyalty to a particular bank. Like in Kerala, State Bank of Trivanguru was always considered as Kerala's bank. So there was a customer loyalty. After the merger that loyalty is gone. The same way Vijaya Bank has an operation in South. Dena Bank has more operations in Gujarat and nearby areas. Bank of Baroda is more concentrated on the Baroda region. So that customer loyalty will shift once the merger takes place. So the customers will also find it difficult to deal with new staff. Always they say that there has to be a mix of employees. So they will be doing a lot of transfers. So the customer will be facing a new employee sitting in the counter whose face is known to him. So whether he is a high net worth individual or an ordinary customer the new counter clerk or an officer may not know. So he may not get that focus of attention. And that will lead to leaving and going to a bank where he will get a better service which will be offered temporarily by the private sector banks, small banks, payment banks. And that way this bank customers will get hooked to them. But later on they will suffer. That we have seen in history across the world this has happened. See, India is still a developing country. And it is a country with a very huge population where even now we require more branches in rural areas, semi urban areas. And public sector banks have to continue to play a dominant role. It is for that purpose nationalization happened. And nationalization gave that benefit. Banking reached the common man. Advances increased, deposit increased, rural areas. There was huge increase in deposit and advances and the number of customers increased. Now we are in a situation where the economy is not doing well. The farmers are suffering. The women are suffering. Medium and small industries are suffering. Traders are suffering. Students are suffering. They are not getting access to education loans. So in this right moment you have to really run public sector banks as public banks. Their focus should be on public. The larger majority of the public. What has happened after the liberalization of the 1991 is that large borrowers have increased. Small borrowers have reduced. Small loans have come down because of which the farmers are crying that they are not getting credit. Women are saying that they are not getting credit. Even the welfare group women are forced to go to the micro finance institutions which charge very high rate of interest. So things have to change. What is needed is that certain autonomy has to be given to the public sector bank. This government has blatantly violated a law. As per the law all the public sector banks have to have one officer director, one employee director who will be representing the larger majority of the employees. Which had been followed since 1970s till this government came to power. Now at present there is not even a single officer director or employee director. Now we understand the game plan. They want these votes to pass these resolutions for merger and privatization. And for that they don't want any objection from the officers or employees who will be in that port. So they have stopped appointing. The votes have become totally opaque. So what is needed is to immediately with the all India bank offices confederation has filed a case and the high court of Delhi has given a direction to the government to immediately fill that vacancies. But they are not doing it. They don't care for the law of the country. They don't care for the courts. So what is needed is to provide some autonomy to the bank bringing in this officer director, employee director have meaningful discussions. We have seen earlier that once some three banks were considered as weak. There was a tripartite meeting with the management, government and the employees offices. Together they prepared a plan and they turned around those banks. It is possible today. And the government has to really amend its laws to recover the loans not to write off the loans. What they are doing today is writing off, writing off, writing off huge amounts. Alok industries was this one classic case where it was sold for just 15% of the cost to the Ambani, Mokesh Ambani group. Anil Ambani is a defaulter. No action has been taken. This government is saying that we do not interfere. But this government, the prime minister of the country was present in Australia. Where the chairman of the state bank of India was asked to sign an MOU with Adani group. So they are interfering. It is this finance minister who almost has a review. Next week also he has a review with the public sector bank chiefs. So he is running the banking sector practically. So whatever fault he is responsible, he should be held responsible. You cannot put the blame on others when you are directing everything. So the solution is make the public sector banks really public. Expand the banking system. Engage the public sector banks to give more loans to small borrowers, farmers, women, farm workers, entrepreneurs and also students. Today in this country, the biggest injustice is done in education. They compare with all the other countries. Let them quote any country where the education is totally privatized. Governments are providing education up to university level in most of the developed countries and other developing countries. But we are not doing that. And here even education loan has become very difficult now. So the focus of attention has to change. The focus has to shift. The policies have to shift. Instead of focusing on a miniscule minority, it has to change towards benefiting the larger majority of this country. That is what is required. First of all, in spite of all the campaigns done by this government, there has now been no run on the bank. Nineteen public sector banks have made laws. Still no customer has withdrawn the money and run away. One of the biggest scams, the scam of the Niraumudi Mahalchukchi scam came out. There was no run on the Punjab National Bank because people still have faith on the public sector bank. Only when this government brought in the FRDA bill, Financial Resolution Deposit Insurance Bill, which was planning to take away the depositor's right and creating a provision of bail-in where the depositor's deposit can be appropriated towards the loss of the bank to safeguard the defaulting borrowers. The public woke up. There was a serious objection. There were massive withdrawals taking place in some parts of the country. So the government had to withdraw that bill. We have seen it practically happening. So today the banking system has to be re-oriented and the larger public has to be educated. If the government is not going to do, the employees and officers have to do that. They have to tell the public exactly what is happening to the banking sector. All India Bank Officers' Confederation has published a booklet in a story format, the real story of Indian banking, what has happened over the period of years and what has to be done. So this has to be taken to the larger masses. We have to build alliances with the farmers, women, traders and all have to stand together to safeguard the public sector banks. Otherwise the loss is going to be for the public as a whole, not just few employees.