 It depends on how financial inclusion, SMBC, State Bank of India, nobody can tell me you are the biggest bank. You are the heartless bank. Heartless business. Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have with us Mr. Thomas Franco, the former General Secretary of the All India Bank of Easties Corporation. We will discuss with him about the recent irate on the public sector banks by the Finance Minister on two meetings held in Delhi and Guwahati. Welcome, sir. Namaste. Sir, in a recent meeting held in Guwahati, the Finance Minister lashed out at the chairman of State Bank of India, calling the bank as heartless and accusing himself, him and the bank for various allegations. What signal does she send to the banks on this each? First of all, a Finance Minister of a country should not talk like this. This big chairman is one of the senior most offices with 40 years of experience in banking and she was almost ridiculing him, saying the bank is heartless, you have become inefficient. Come and meet me in Delhi. She traveled with him to Guwahati for this meeting alone. To a Sati request of Finance Ministry, this outreach program was arranged where other bank officials were there, very junior officials, government officials were there, state ministers of Assam were there, where she is making such a scathing attack to prove that she is so powerful, the manner in which she is speaking, the face she is showing, it shows that she is so arrogant. And what is the reason? The reason was that in the state of Assam, in the states, tea estate workers did not get their salary because their accounts were not KYC compliant. That is as per the instructions of the Reserve Bank of India, which had said that you give notice and then if they don't provide the KYC, then you will have to freeze the account. That's what was done. That was known to the state government. Now the state government has come with an idea that, yes, their KYC is not okay. Adar and Vodakar does not match. Reshankar does not match. So we will give a certificate by our own revenue officials to show that they are citizens of that place and they are residing there. Using that you make it KYC compliant. This should have been done by the government much earlier. So instead of doing that, accusing the bank as a whole and banking industry and rebuking the state bank chairman is not at all warranted, she should rather apologize for the kind of policy she is following. The economy is not reviving at all. For that I think she should resign. But for this issue, I demand that she should apologize to the banking industry. So do you think that her failure as a finance minister in reviving the economy, is she trying to pass the bug to the bankers, which is not at all acceptable because the finance minister has to guide when the bankers has to implement. Is she trying to make it vice versa? Is that she is trying to do and making the customers feel that the banks are working against them? Just one day before the Gowati meeting, she addressed to bankers in a meeting arranged by Indian Banks Association where all bankers were there in which she is showing her arrogance. Where she is saying that the banks have become inefficient, you are disconnected from the people. Your people at the grassroots, they don't know what are the government schemes. You are following only credit rating. You don't have connect with the customer while giving loan. You just depend on the credit rating agencies. I am accessible to you, but you are not accessible to the public, the customers. Now, to some extent there is a disconnect, I agree. For which the government alone is responsible. Now what she is trying is that there is so much of failure of the governments which started with demonetization. They are not able to revive the economy. They are giving more and more concession to the corporates which is not helping the economy. Instead of reorienting the policies, they are still defending their policies. So they want a scapegoat. So she has found here the bankers as a scapegoat. Unfortunately, the finance minister is trying to turn the customers against the bankers, which is not at all correct. If the bankers, 10 lakhs of them who are in this country, if they decide that they will go slow on the loans, that will further deteriorate the economy. There are 101 reasons for which you can turn the loan that this is not eligible. But they are not doing it because they are more patriotic. They are more concerned about the bank. They are more concerned about the citizens of the country. But what she is attempting to do is to put the entire blame on the banking industry for whatever failure the government has done. I say one by one. Now she says there is disconnect. I quote you some examples. Who opened 31 crore jandan accounts for which the government got credit, the prime minister got credit that he entered the Guinness Book of Records. Is it the finance ministry? It is the grassroots level bankers. Only 3% of the accounts were opened by the private sector banks. The rest was all by the public sector banks. Who is giving the Mudra loans? Again the majority of the loans are given by the public sector banks. Who took care of demonetization? The brunt of the attack of people was only on the staff. The government was not questioned. But the public was coming and standing in the queue and abusing the bankers. There has been 16 deaths during demonetization. Employees dying. More than 100 deaths of public. The government has not done anything. It has not even paid the compensation for that period. In spite of that the bankers are working hard, reaching all the government schemes. How can she say that you have disconnect? I said there is some disconnect. That is because it is this government which brought in agencies like Mackenzie, Boston Consultancy Group to reorient the banking system. It was Mackenzie's recommendation which said that you reduce the staff at the branch level. Let the processing of loans be done at a centralized processing center. So branch manager has become a postman. He just forwards the application. Actually there will be some disconnect. Then employment. The last 7 years the business of the bank's deposit advances has doubled. Whereas the staff strength has come down by 30,000. How will you have connect with the customers when your business is increasing? Number of customers are increasing. Number of loans are increasing. There will be definitely disconnect. And this disconnect was brought by the government. It pushed digitization so much and told the banks not to increase the sub strength. Now if she has really realized it, she should say that yes, it is our mistake. We accept the mistake. Let us have more number of branches. Let us have more number of staff. Let us not do merger. Let us not close down regional banks. Let us not close down rural branches. Then the banking sector will improve. The real connect which existed before will come again. Second thing is, it is the policies of Reserve Bank which releases lending policies. And she has accepted in that meeting. She is so frequently meeting the MDs and chairmen of the bank. Almost every month there is a review meeting. There they keep on saying do this, do that, do this, do that. So every month you change the goal. And according to that they have to jump. And now she is unhappy. She has quoted in another meeting that we had asked you to give KCC, Kisan credit card to all the PM Kisan beneficiaries which is 9.6 crores. This scheme itself was announced only in her budget. Then the bankers have acted quickly. Already 6.67 crore Kisan credit cards have been issued. 2.23 crore is yet to be issued on the dates she was talking to the press. She is so angry that why you have not completed that. For that she is saying that you do not know the government schemes. Totally wrong. Every government scheme is known to the employees. Bank has an excellent training system. They also have a system of frequently asked questions on every scheme posted in the computer itself. It's all online. Any doubt you can always refer and you can get it clarified. Then she says that your people don't know regional languages. She is totally wrong again. She does not even know that while recruiting staff it is mandatory for the clerical staff to know the local language. Without that they cannot appear for the written test or interview. Only offices are taken at the national level. But they are also asked to study the regional language of the state where they are posted. So they are learning. And in every rural branch you will find only the local people who are working. Clerical staff, subordinate staff. Maybe in some places the branch manager might be from outside the state. But he will know the language and there will be people to see the shows as if there is nobody available in the branch to talk in the regional language. So you have to go searching. Totally false. I don't know who gives this feedback to her. Then she says that you are depending only on credit rating agencies. Again that is wrong. Credit rating is used for the larger loans. Which was prescribed by the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India. And they only promoted these credit rating agencies. Many of them have come to existence. Only thing other than the rating agency is that we look at something called Sibyl. Sibyl has a score for every customer. Suppose you have taken a loan in the bank and you defaulted. That can be seen in the Sibyl. So the bank can find out that yes this person has already defaulted in another bank. Other than that there is a procedure of evaluating every loan. But you are not giving time to do the evaluation. Now in the case of KCC. KCC is Kisan credit card is for a crop loan. And the banker is supposed to go and verify whether there is an existing crop. You are asking to hold them to give the loan when the crops are not there. This is not the season where you can see the crops harvesting is over. So it is the policies which are responsible. Similarly she is also saying that your people in the grass root level. Let them go and talk to the customers. Let them know what is happening at the grass root. See it is this structure reorientation which has created some problem. Secondly there is a every month there is a review meeting. The branch managers review the staff. These branch managers are reviewed by the regional manager. All the regional managers are reviewed by the module head. Like that there is a system which meticulously does the review every month. Whereas she says that nothing is happening. So she is misinformed. So she should ask the bankers what is the truth. And she says that I am accessible but you are not accessible. The truth is that she is not accessible to us. Maybe for the MDs. Because she is calling them for review. There also I don't think that if the way she is talking you can understand. If they get up and say that no no this we do not accept you. We have a different opinion. She is not the type she is going to accept that. So they keep quiet and come. We as responsible associations. We had been asking her for an appointment for so long. She did not give that appointment. So association leaders themselves they go and meet only the minister of state. So that accessibility should come to the as if she wants to be a good finance minister. She should ask for feedback from the association and unions. Understand what is the difficulty. Then things will change.