 What I plan to do is really to say a couple of things about my association with with iBalk with bank unions including the Bank Employees Association and Befi and with With a couple of things and I am going to take along which I've learned in the process of this association Well, really nearly because that's my profession at a certain point of time. I started life Working in industrial economics and soon you begin to look at the problems of financing Capital intensive industrialization and then I began to look at finance and I got quite Interested and began teaching courses on finance and and so on and at that point of time that was also an interesting period because starting from the 1991 but in fact earlier starting from that after the 1981 IMF loan which India took because we took one loan well before the 1991 loan When things were not so bad other than for the fact that there was an oil crisis prior to that that at that point of time There was this this fundamental transformation which was beginning to occur in in the financial realm in All sorts of underdeveloped countries of course it had started in the southern countries in Latin America much earlier But one could see it happening and you know, this was not Just financial liberalization in the sense that you were removing removing controls for the entry of foreign direct investment Foreign portfolio investment the entry of foreign banks foreign insurance companies, etc Which was happening in in other countries not in India at that point of time, but that That was actually transforming the financial structure so that structures of the kind which were used by the development countries during the period when they were trying to industrialize and grow were being undermined in these countries and It was exactly the same wherever you went you went to Nepal and looked at a poverty reduction strategy paper And they recommended the same thing as they would recommend to India or Brazil or Thailand or Chile So there was something happening and I would go to some NGO meets you know one gets called because Every now and then NGOs need a little bit of an input from an academic You know and so you get called and I would keep telling them that listen It the problem is not only the IMF in the World Bank It is true the IMF in the World Bank are problems But the world is changing the IMF in the World Bank is going to become far less important It's actually the transformation of financial structures, which is going to determine what's going to happen to the kind of capitalism you have And in fact, that's turned out to be true. Of course. We everybody knew it was going to be true I mean the bank really doesn't matter the IMF comes in only when there's a balance of payments crisis The real problem is that international finance in the sense of private international financial capital Networked of course with other kinds of capital has come to dominate these countries So there was this effort to try and get the NGO community to go beyond You know making appeals to the IMF to the World Bank having people's What do you call not parliament what do you call the people's courts to To look at the kind of policies they were imposing on third world countries and so on to try and get them to then move on at least some of them whom I was associated with to move on to looking at Financial problems of the transformation of financial structures and the implications of that Well, I wasn't successful and then but then suddenly at one point of time One found that the real people opposing financial liberalization and this transformation of financial structures where those within the bank within the financial system itself Of course, this was not true only of India. I mean, you know, it was true in many other parts of the world But in India, this was particularly strong because of the strong public banking tradition that got built up after 1969 and therefore Actually the effort to try and get some support of people who actually matter as opposed to a bunch of academics sitting in academic institutions Really seemed to bear fruit when one began to associate with you know employees and and and and offices in in the bank in the banking sector And of course the insurance sector as well because in the insurance sector also we have a movement which has actually stood up quite significantly against liberalization in various forms So as a result of that association, one of the things which happened was I think it was 2006 Some of us were approached by Ibok the then Ibok. I didn't know Franco really the never I think I've run into him as part of the people signs network, but not really as part of the of the of the of the of the confederation and And I We were approached. In fact, they approached some Shukla Saab and they wanted to bring in Pravapatna, Ekomi Obakchi I was not all that young then but definitely much younger than I was today and You know, they needed somebody to do the work. So they said, yeah, of course They said, well, we contacted Chandrasekhar also then they said, oh, then we'll be part of it And this committee was formed and we actually produced this report At that time the experience with Ibok was very different because it was true Ibok has a strand of radicalism, but it is a complex organization one felt at that point of time And you know, it was a very different thing because we also went from city to city Trying to actually get evidence as part of trying to prepare this report And the way it would be organized and the the kind of people they want us to meet, etc Very depend given this this complex structure Well, that was done and then much later a few years down the line This relationship continued. One has gone and addressed Ibok, Befi, AIBA In different locations in different places, etc. And suddenly we get this gentleman taking over Ibok And then it it all seemed very different. Firstly, I mean, they didn't call me comrade You know, they just would call me from Chandrasekhar And then suddenly I have this gentleman, you know, ringing me up and saying comrade I need to, you know, talk to you. I need to come and meet you. I'll be landing in the airport Will you be in the office or will you be at home, etc, etc. And willy-nilly he not only got us to do, which came much later Us to do another report or another study for on which was an extension Or an update on the kind of study which we had done in 2006 But he would constantly get one to look at issues that maybe one would have got to look at But maybe a little later, maybe one would have missed it But he would say that, oh, there's this thing coming up, there's this bill, that change in policy This is what the RBI circular says, etc, etc. And you know, one ended up then looking at it and because you looked at it, you wrote about it And in some sense, I think I learned a lot because of the fact that we were pushed in And subsequently also by Xiaomi, we were pushed into looking at things Which maybe some of it we would have looked at, but maybe a lot of it we wouldn't have looked at Because you know, you're doing many things, you know, this is not the only area of research, etc So it was a learning experience, not only for what we did for iBalk in the form of these reports But it was also because of the fact that iBalk pushed us To conclude, you know, what if one, I was just thinking If one was to think of one kind of sort of, let's say, perspective Which has come out of this interaction as opposed to maybe one's own efforts To try and understand these complex changes in the world of finance I really think, you know, when this interaction began, you know, I could, personally I could sense a difference, you know, because if you're coming at it as an academic If you're going to write about it, if you're going to lecture about it If you go to classrooms and tell students about it, etc You're always looking for a clear logic You're always looking for a mechanism You're always looking at being nuanced And you don't want to say that, listen, I think there's a conspiracy out here, you know But the fact of the matter is capitalism is the biggest con game in town There is a deep conspiracy which goes on for all of these things And in some sense, the questions, the way the question would be posed If the push would come, would make one think And I was just thinking, and I'll conclude with that Supposing we just look at what has happened just over the last three years Maybe four years since the sort of end of term of Raghuram Rajan You know, okay, everybody talks about NPAs One is talking about resolution, one is talking about bankruptcy code One is talking about FRDA, I build, etc But this kind of panic about it really was a phenomenon Which began when Raghuram Rajan decided That listen, let's stop all this thing which was going on for a long period of time Starting with creating the CDC, the corporate debt restructuring cell That is, you were actually saying that these are huge loans we've given to these corporates We can't declare them as being defaulted debt We can't provide for them because we'll go insolvent That was the game, it was very clear, you can't afford to do it So what you needed to do is to find ways to postpone it And you know, CEDC 5x25, you kept, you know, you kept discovering mechanisms By which you can keep this debt going even though it was not a debt Which actually is going to be so easily resolved Finally, you had to take taxpayers' money as the United States And England and Europe had to do at the end of the 2007-2008 crisis And clear the books, you just had to clear the books with taxpayers' money If not today's taxpayers' money, taxpayers' money over the coming 5-10 years But then suddenly this Raghuram Rajan says that, listen, you can't hide all this You have to put it on the books because, you know, what kind of a game is this And, you know, he makes these statements which, you know, all of us are surprised by You know, that there are these people who think that they can take bank money and, you know Et cetera, et cetera, don't use to make these statements No, listen, Raghuram Rajan, I mean, he's smart but he's also a sharp cookie He wasn't doing it because he believed that, you know, capitalism is a game In which we should be fair, transparent and so on It isn't a game like that So, obviously, there was some reason why he was doing it And I think the reason was the fact that the public banking system In the years of liberalization, starting from the 90s But particularly during the early 2000s, was used as a mechanism To actually finance a strategy in which you are facilitating the expansion of private capital It was part, it was used as an instrument in what was one of the most intense efforts To redistribute income in favor of the top 1% or top 2% or top 3% And the banking system, the public banking system was used as an instrument in this And if it was being used as an instrument, obviously, you're going to accumulate all of this And what was the implicit understanding was that every now and then The state would come in and in doses, it would recapitalize these banks Which essentially meant that at some point, you wrote off this debt It was a technical write-off And then if you look at what happens up post-technical write-off, nothing really happens You don't get much, very much money back So we might say that, listen, we're getting, you know, 60% and 20% from Bush and Steele and Bush and Steele and Paar and so on and so forth But if you look at those numbers, we were getting peanuts We were getting, you know, I mean, the public banking system Was getting maybe 5%, 3%, 7%, in some cases 0 You just wrote off the whole thing So that was the understanding that there would be a continuous process Of recapitalization to finance this process of the redistribution Of the engineered redistribution of income in favor of the top few percent Now, obviously, once you unleashed this game, things had gone so far That if you were simultaneously saying that, listen, I've got a fiscal deficit Which I'm not going to let go more than 3% And you're sitting with all of these, you know, corporates Having had this ball game for so many years There's a fundamental contradiction, you can't keep capitalizing So you begin to think of what you want to do But at that point of time, I do think the reason why the guidelines On discovering NPAs was changed was because big finance Not just the Ambalis, but international finance as well Saw in this an opportunity to in some sense capture the public banking system Because what is, you know, what would you say People say, listen, why are you getting 60% or 70% they claim for Bush and Paar Why is JHW willing to pay whatever it's going to pay, 19,000 crores or something like that Because of the fact says today's paper Because they think that, you know, setting up green field projects Just doesn't work in the steel industry So the much better thing to do is to try and buy steel capacity cheap In which case you can expand and get away with it If you try and set up green field capacities, you're not going to make profits So that's the reason you do it The same is true of banking When you have a banking sector which because of nationalization has spread itself And established a presence so deep and widespread in this country To try and come and actually create a new green field bank And compete with the public banking system is a no no It's a game that just won't work So the only thing you can do is to capture a pre-existing system To take over, I don't know why they call it that You make a brown field investment You basically take over something which already exists And I think the push to actually come clean on NPAs Such that you will be in a position where you'll have a very short period of resolution Which you cannot do on the basis of taxpayers' money Is what set this off And after that the game just goes on Every day there's either when we're constantly having these Some Indra, Dhanush, then what's that? Sashat You just find all these words and it's all the same thing you try And we had ARCs before We tried to set, there was been talk of bad banks We're now basically saying that we had IBC Now we won't take everything to IBC We'll only take some to IBC, some will resolve directly But that's what we were trying to do earlier So essentially you're not able to complete this game You're not able to complete this game of keeping on recapitalizing But on the other hand, since still we have IBOC We have Franco, we have Soumya, we have all of you We have the insurance workers, we have Befi, we have AIBEA And of course some fellow travellers and side hangers on Like all of us sitting here There's a fight back And when there's a fight back And you have something as important as the public banking system It's not so easy to allow private capture Of this huge public empire which has been built over a period of time They're being a little more successful I think in insurance But even they're not in life And this whole thing therefore is I'm convinced now one big conspiracy Maybe five years back I wouldn't have been willing to consider it But having been converted into a comrade by Franco I'm willing to consider that this is one big conspiracy Thank you