Mumbai: The All India Bank Employees Federation, Maharashtra State Bank Employees Federation (MSBEF) and other unions in the banking industry along with unions in the insurance industry have threatened to “unleash a serious struggle to stop the wholesale privatisation and the reversal of nationalisation of banks and the insurance industry.” They will hold a meeting on July 19, bank nationalisation day, to discuss the way forward in their protests. Banks were nationalised on this day in 1969.
In a statement Vishwas Utagi, general secretary, MSBEF and Vice-President, AIBEA said that the financial sector unions “shall repulse the attack of private capital to highjack banking and insurance sector as reflected in central budget”. The statement said that the Union Budget particularly on banking and insurance and defence “will bring good days for foreign and domestic corporate investors and bad days for all the section of society who have developed Indian and public sector banking and insurance industry in last five decades.”
The Unions have certainly been spooked by the opening up of insurance and defence to 49 per cent foreign direct investment against the earlier cap of 26 per cent. They claim that banks have deposits of Rs 80 lakh crore and there is no shortage of funds. The Basle norms, said Mr Utagi are not relevant to India. They also fear that on the basis of the P.J. Nayak Committee and the Justice Sri Krishna committee recommendations, banks will be privatised as the Nayak Committee has actually asked for the scrapping of the Bank Nationalisation Act which has outlived its purpose.
Mr Utagi said Mr Jaitley is just continuing what his predecessor Mr P. Chidambaram had started. He is not convinced by Mr Jaitley’s reiteration that the government’s share in nationalised banks will never go lower than 51 per cent. He said in the last 40 years, 40 private sector banks have collapsed. Of the 12 new generation banks that were given licences, only seven have survived.
Mr Utagi who admits that the nationalised bank is plagued with ills and those officers in the higher echelon are in cahoots with the corporate said that the bank chiefs are not committed to nationalisation. For instance, he points out that since 1991 banks had discontinued celebrating Bank Nationalisation Day because they have no conviction about the advantages of nationalisation.
The Unions have so far been fighting a losing battle though they claim it is only because of their protests that banks have not been privatised completely. Mr Utagi said their unions had three negotiations on the introduction of technology and while they saved workers from being retrenched there has been little fresh employment. From1991 till date the bank workforce members has dwindled from 13 lakh to 7 lakh, said Mr Utagi.
The bank unions are in a bind as they are totally bankrupt of any positive ideas. They are torn between the mismanagement in the banking sector under their watch over the years and what they think is their sacred duty to protect bank nationalistion. They understand all the ills and mismanagement that are fighting to protect!
Like the left parties to which most of them are affiliated they are unable to do genuine and serious analysis on what really is wrong with the banking sector and why they have not progressed. Nor do they have any suggestions of how the ills of the system can be remedied. One of the suggestions Mr Utagi has is to scrap the Banking Secrecy Laws as that would bring in transparency in the working of the banks.
But for the most part their demands are irrational like on one occasion the AIBEA general secretary asked for all private sector banks to be nationalised. Can anything be more irrational? This is one reason why despite getting lakhs of unsuspecting bank workers on to the streets for their signature morchas they don’t’ achieve much.
