 First of all I would like to congratulate CFA for doing a major campaign on bank charges after which the Reserve Bank of India which had been saying that we have no role, now they have intervened and said that at least when ATMs are not paying cash because of unavailability of cash or something that should not be counted as transaction, they have started intervening in that area. Secondly, CFA has quickly brought out their finance matters in which they have brought out a beautiful statement on this merger as well as a nice article also has been published. They are already published on the 50th year of nationalization that book Economic Earthquake. So their contribution to this banking sector, the economy of this country has been great and I am thankful to again Dr. J. D. Kosh and Dr. C. P. Chandraseghar who have brought out for IBOC a booklet on the challenges for the banking industry and the directions for future. The future roadmap had been laid by them but we have a government which is not bothered to listen to anybody. They have a think tank and they don't even listen to their own economists, they don't listen to their own bureaucrats but they have a small think tank of RSS people who prefer the roadmap and that is what is implemented and today Reserve Bank of India is Guru Murti's bank, it is not anymore even Shashi Gandadas has been picked up by him because he is an ex-man. Now on the transfer of this fund from Reserve Bank of India to the government of India, already a lot has been talked about. As a trade unionist I had not also been propagating that RBI should be independent. I had been always propagating that there should be an autonomy for Reserve Bank of India. Certain we know that in a government which is going to decide who is the RBI governor, if you look at the history of this governance all the last six governors have either worked in IMF or full bank that is the basic qualification without which you cannot become a governor of Reserve Bank of India. I have read the writing of two RBI governors, one state bank chairman and one was this RBI governor Subwarao. Subwarao says that I was expecting that Rakesh Mohan, my friend is going to be the next governor but one day Chidambaram called me, he had a talk with me for half an hour and he said I am making you the governor and I got the order. This is how RBI governors are picked up. Same thing D. N. Ghosh has spoken about in his book No Regrets when he was chosen as the chairman of State Bank of India. So but the autonomy is important like S. S. Tarapur was one of the deputy governors of RBI had stated that unless you give some autonomy to the Reserve Bank of India it will not be in a position to streamline the economy when there is a crisis and that is what now Vairal Acharya also talks about. He gave a lecture in which he was talking about but Vairal Acharya everybody knows that he was picked up by this government because he was a pro-private sector economist who had been always writing and writing books on privatization of banks but even he could not tolerate this kind of interference in this RBI's functioning after Mr. Guru Murthy came into the board as board of director. Now what for this money is going to be used is something important and that Mrs. Nirmala Sitaraman herself says that she does not know yet what is going to be done. My question is when there is a crisis on the economy especially in the banking sector when we look at the figures of 2008 US financial crisis and the European financial crisis the US central bank had flowed in 4. trillion dollars of money to save the banking sector and the economy. Similarly the European Development Fund had transferred 2.7 trillion euros to save the banks and also the economy and we are heading towards a crisis in spite of people saying that there is enough liquidity. The chairman of State Bank of India says that today I have in my hand 1 lakh crores of money I can lend to anybody but then why you are not lending he says that nobody is wanting to borrow billions of people in this country are not getting credit and he says that there is nobody to borrow. So there is a dichotomy and today the Reserve Bank of India if it is not going to have a free hand in dealing with economy to a certain extent as Dr. Jayati Ghosh was saying you restrict your fiscal deficit so you then though they have powers to print money they will not be allowed to print money how will they save the economy is going to be a billion dollar costing. Secondly from where is this money coming and how did they get this money? The pro-government economists, debaters with some of whom I participate in the debates in the TV also they keep saying that see it is only after this government came so much of money is available with Reserve Bank of India. Reserve Bank of India always had been transferring only a small amount now they have got so much of money because this government has made the economy strong so the RBI has got so much of surplus they are asking to transfer. Now if you look at the figures how it is done as Dr. Jayati was saying it was just making a projection. One first of all they did an accounting procedural change in valuing the dollar which they were using in the market increasing the value the profit has been increased certain amount of which is transferred to the contingency reserve. Now instead of 6.8% which they were holding Vimal Janan committee is recommending that you can keep up to from 5.5 to 6.5 and they have taken 5.5 so you suddenly get some surplus it is all accounting and even if you are keeping 6.5% I don't know whether it is going to save the economy is a question when there is a major crisis this resource may not be sufficient but this reserve you are transferring and in my assumption this is going to be used for helping the corporates after them why this merger is done in a hurry. Just two weeks back the same Nirmala Sitaraman calls all the MDs and chairmans of the public sector banks and tells them that you please do a review of 5 years of your banking what did you do why corporate loans have not picked up why NPA has risen as if they were not aware and they come with a solution to be given in advance itself 8 people were brought in and I'm not going into the detail the first person to speak was Uday Kotech MD of Kotech Mahendra Bank he talks and governs governance in public sector banks a small, short private bank comes and lexes to including chairman state bank of India saying what is to be done as governments in a public sector bank and his solution is very simple and he had been so nasty in using his words he says that now that you have implemented whatever you wanted on article 370 it is time you implement similar things in public sector banks the only solution is privatization and the first step I am telling you I am ready this public sector banks at least 25 26 percent of the share let them give it to the private sector we become partners and then this banks will become efficient then she was talking about the fintech companies the same thing is what Nandan Nilkani comes and gives a lecture that unless you go digital you don't have any future there is no need for brick and mortar bank everything has to be based on technology and without bothering 26 percent of the people cannot read and write totally illiterate only nine ten percent of the people are conversion in English whereas all your software internet banking mobile banking everything is in English to some extent some Hindi they are using but the larger majority is not going to benefit out of this he is not bothered then Aditya Puri htfc bank MD he comes and tells what is to be done and retail banking as if others they don't know how to give a housing loan or how to give a personal loan and he gives a lecture so this is the idea with which they are moving and finally their ultimate goal is only privatization how it is going to happen is what I would like to just list out first of all this merger is against the law of the country the banking acquisition act which is the national ice action the nationalization act provides that when you want to do a merger first of all you have to seek opinion of the boards of the banks the board the shareholders opinion has to be taken it is not even what they don't bother even they call now the boards are in such they are all filled with BJP people and the boards we saw in the case of the Banga Paroda we saw in the case of the state bank and associate bank merger the then chairman of state bank of India Arundhati Patacharya had made a statement just four months before the merger that we don't require merger it is absolutely not necessary after four months he says this is the uptime for merger and finally she's rewarded with directors post in reliance and she during her tenure itself made state bank of India to contribute 30% to the reliance payment bank which is the geo payment bank state bank of India has already joined as a junior partner in your payment bank which I'll come to later why I'm mentioning this now in the case of state bank of India merger with associate banks it was like the sacrificial goat the board was called in Tamil Nadu we have that practice before cutting the goat you pour some water on its head and it shakes it and they say that it has given its concern for cutting and they cut the same way they take this concern of these boards and they announced the merger and what happened in the case of associate bank merger for at least nine months there was no decision-making within the bank the associate bank credit of take was totally stopped nobody was knowing from how the merger is going to take place so they were worried how we are going to do the merger how the computerization will take place how branches will have to be rationalized how many branches have to be closed and by that time the access bank I see I see they went into the large customers who are considered as good porous and told them that why do you join this huge ocean you will be immersed in that we will give you the best service so you shift your accounts and they started shifting the account nobody's sharing that data that data is not available to me also but I could gather this information from my colleagues who have been working in the associate bank that large number of customers have left the bank and they have gone to the private sector now after this merger what happened the service charges were increased minimum balance charges charges for the ATM so many charges have been increased and there is a report that in three years 12,000 crore was the service charges collected from the ordinary customers so you once you become a big bank you cater to only the big people that is what is happening in this case of merger and now also Nirmala Sita Raman is saying that there is not going to be a single return fund what they did in the case of associate bank they did not retrench they gave a good voluntary retirement scheme so 3600 people left and that particular year of merger 13,000 retirements were there in state bank and that associates the next year not even 50% was recruited so there is ultimately no increase in the staff strength so there may not be a so-called retrenchment but people will be sent out in some way or other because you don't require same number of branches already State Bank of India has reduced more than 1000 branches and controlling officers the same thing happened in the case of Bangapurada, Dena and Vijaya Bank merger where the results we will not know so quickly even without waiting for that now they have announced this 10 bank merger into four banks now how this all started and how the trade unions had played an important role in the straining so far the Narasimham committee 1 and 2 starting from the 1991 those days itself economists like Professor Patnaik had given alternatives that there is no need for borrowing spludging your gold and borrowing from the IMF and World Bank there were alternatives but they were not ready to listen announcing and Narasimha Rao were not bothered to listen to them but these committees I am seeing these committees are being appointed just to say what the government or the IMF or World Bank tells in all these enclaves or con claves which are taking place who is coming and sitting it is either Mackenzie or the VCG these kind of people who are trained by the IMF and World Bank they come and tell you what is to be done in that particular sector and the first Narasimham committee recommended that first time they said that banks are for profit they are not social for social cause so banking has to be changed even priority sector lending which is still remaining 40% to the priority sector though the norms have been changed and diluted but they have been saying that even 40% priority sector is an anomaly you should not have that and it is Narasimham committee 2 which started saying that we require only 5-6 big banks and you should step by step go ahead and finally privatize the public sector by this was followed by the other committee recommendations. Raghuram Ramajan himself was the chairman of one committee his recommendation has 100 small steps has privatization as the ultimate goal and then came the PJ Naik committee PJ Naik was MD of Axis Bank that committee had except Shupalakshmi Bonsai who was from a public sector bank the entire committee members were from the private sector including the present chief economic advisor who was a member of that committee that time he was in Indian School of Business and they recommended that step by step you go ahead everything has been implemented except total privatization. Form a bank boards bureau select people from the private sector and appoint them into the boards including MDs of public sector banks later on convert banking banks board bureau into a banking investment company which they have not done now they may not even need that then they said that slowly you reduce your shareholding now they have said that the cutoff date has been given now immediately no banks should have more than 75% shareholding from the government of India but ultimate PJ Naik has very clearly stated slowly reduce the shareholding in such a way that one fine day you reduce it below 50% so that you will still have control and you cannot say it is privatization but the private sector will have 51% of the share or more that is exactly what they want to do and they are not bothered about what other people are commenting and all and this they had been implementing in step by step starting with the Gyan Sangam 1 in January 2015 at Phune then Gyan Sangam 2 now they later on they changed the name into from Gyan Sangam to Vichar Mandan and all this reviews and recommendations step by step they are implementing now what is the argument now they are making that argument itself is so flawed they one is that biggest beautiful list of time you have seen in the US financial crisis some of the biggest banks like Lehman Brothers collapsed so biggest beautiful concept is not going to help second they are saying that you require globally competitive banks because Chinese banks are on top you now state bank of India after the merger with associate banks and Mahila bank now they are saying that is it is one among the hundred biggest banks in the country you see the size of the biggest three four banks of China which is on the top and compare the asset size we are a many school bank it's not going to make any difference and internationally public sector banks have been in the last three four years closing down branches as per the directives of the government as per the directives of the banks for Bureau and now I don't know what way they are going to become competitive globally and then they say that other hand they are supporting small banks payment banks and FinTechs company so ultimately their goal is that to create five six big banks which can be easily handed over to the private sector exactly how what is what they have been doing in BSNL one way BSNL at one point of time was having a cash surplus of 36,000 crores by changing in policies today it has been made into a loss making company look at the Air India they did a merger of Air India and in the airlines airlines one was making profit now both became loss making one point of time Air India was lauded for so much of achievements including the Gulf crisis in which they played an important role but now they say that we tried to privatize we asked people to buy there is no buyer so now we are writing off their loans already 26,000 crores have been written off so they can be handed over in a platter to a private sector exactly this is what is going to happen in the case of this public sector banks once they are becoming big I still remember Dr. Prabhat Patnaik in one of the his talks he was making a statement that two senators from US had returned to the government of India that as a token measure at least privatized state bank of India and showed to us that you are really keen on privatization so privatization is what is going to be done by this government and I will not I am now more confident earlier I was only suspicious now I am confident that one day state bank of India will be becoming reliance bank of India that is what exactly they are going moving towards and how they are going to do they are once again going to bring in a F RDA bill which we did a massive campaign and we could get it withdrawn from the parliament but the day it was withdrawn Pew School who was acting finance minister said that this is not the end of the bill we'll write wait for the right moment to once again bring back the bill and now they are already on the move so maybe in the next parliament session they will be introducing that bill once that bill is there you don't have to once again go to parliament or anybody now not that they care for the parliament anymore but a F RDA bill will create a resolution authority which can have absolute powers to merge banks privatized banks and this is a danger which people are not looking at unfortunately public have been alienated from the public sector public sector banks have been in a phased manner made to act against the public themselves service charges is one small credit is one major just quote statistics 1990 the RBI figures show that less than two lakhs were that time considered as two lakhs small loans 99 percent of the borrowers had taken less than two lakh loan 1990 but 9 2018 figures that percentage has gone down to 28 percent whereas small people just 14,000 I think it is 14,247 people have taken loans which is 38 percent of the total loans given by the banking sector and these loans are above 100 crores alone so this is the way the small borrowers have been alienated farmers could not get loans MSME could not get loan so they all feel that public sector banks are not being useful to us that's why there is no outcry that way that you are moving towards merger and privatization that outcry is not there but once this happens that is going to be a real crisis 10 percent of the people will be catered by the big banks but 90 percent of the people will be at the mercy of the non-banking financial companies fintechs and other kind of small banks and that danger is definitely going to come and how do we counter this unfortunately the banking sector trade unions should have organized this meeting today they are still in a dilemma what is to be done they are more worried about their wage distribution they have been fighting in the last after 1991 there has been a continuous campaign there had been continuous strikes at least one major strike against the so-called reforms because of which we could prevent the privatization effort and merger efforts but that totally got shattered when state bank of india merger with associate banks took place the association themselves i was i was president of the all india state bank federation my own colleagues from the associate banks were demanding and saying that we want merger and that time i cautioned them that you are doing a mistake and finally today they have filed a case in the hydrabot high court demanding some of the benefits available in state bank of india is not available but for that selfish reason that was allowed then later on these three bank mergers took place there was a strike there was a court case but we could not stop it and now it has come to this level so the one the banking sector trade unions have to come out understanding what is the larger goal and to prevent privatization they have to come to the roads come to the field and work and they have to work with the common man explaining to the common man what is going to happen it is not that only india has some public sector banks i was reading a book there are 693 public sector banks in the world and if we see the major country see there are still public sector banks playing a major role in the other countries also there are countries like germany where they have this each state has a state level savings fund which has a mandate to cater to their economy in kerala we are seeing the massive movement of the cooperative sector bank now this government of kerala wants to have a state level cooperative bank which will be a which will have an asset deposit more than one billion dollar but the rba is not giving license to them so there are ways in which we have to have movements create movements for banks which will really become public banks now public banks are not considered as supporting the public so they have to be really made to work for the larger majority of this country and we require movements like the yellow west movement or the one person versus 99 person movement maybe they have not been able to sustain because they did not have a larger plan we should come out with alternatives for the banking sector in india some of which has been already outlined in the books written by dr jetty and dr cpc and we have to go with that alternative to the people so that we can save this country as rightly pointed out by i'm red vk tomer now they want the entire public sector including public sector banks to be dismantled handed over to the private sector which is going to cater only to the small miniscule minority whereas want we want support for the larger majority of this country which can be played only by the public sector with a good government which has a clear cut policy for supporting the larger majority thank you very much