Somewhat belatedly, new winds are blowing through the musty corridors of the countrys 27 public sector banks (PSBs). These days television news channels are flooded with over-the-top ad films portraying PSBs as customer-friendly. These corny ads would be funny, if only they didnt hurt so much.The plain truth, which every honest individual who has transacted business with PSBs would surely swear, is that PSBs — held hostage ab initio since they were nationalised in 1969, by militant employee unions who ensure that only risk-averse clerks from their own ranks rise to management positions — are notoriously customer unfriendly. If they have survived the great banks debacle of recent months, its only because they routinely reject all loan applications from small and medium enterprises unless they produce collateral which is several multiples of advances. All other borrowers, even if adequately collateralised, need to pay kickbacks of 10-15 percent which are de rigueur in PSBs.
Inevitably the big loans are advanced on the basis of all important midnight calls from heavyweight politicians and bureaucrats. And its a well-kept secret that the NPAs (non-performing assets or bad loans) of PSBs are substantial with most of them run up by some of the biggest names in Indian industry.
Its this backdrop of PSBs well-known contempt bordering on hostility for small borrowers and depositors, which makes their television ad films farcical. In a Bank of India short a bank official goes to the home of a customer to offer an education loan; a Bank of Baroda commercial shows foreigners abroad celebrating their service; an IDBI ad film depicts a baby elephant, symbolic of the small borrower, playing football with young boys. Give us a break!
The truth is that right across the country for over 40 years, over-paid and under-worked PSB employees have adamantly refused to help customers write bank deposit slips and cheques with the result that over almost 80 percent of the population, too ill-educated to complete unnecessarily complex bank transactions, is excluded from the banking system. Behind the warm, feel-good ads of PSBs, thats the real face of the countrys over-rated and over-hyped PSBs.