Recently the public sector banks (PSB) were on a 2-day strike but counting the second Saturday and Sunday it was 4 days of bank closure. The strike was for several reasons and one pertains to the proposal by the central government to privatise four nationalized banks. More than 5 decades back private banks were nationalised and now it is vice-versa! India has moved a full circle! Two of the genuine concerns of the employees are that if profit-making PSB are handed on a platter to corporates than there could be a creation of more non-performing assets (NPA). This is a strong possibility because the corporate owner could dip his/her fingers into the bank’s till whenever the fingers itch but would not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics to recover NPA from their customers. The other issue is that after privatisation, non-performing and excess staff could be retrenched. Hence, instead of such token strikes that put the public to hardships, it would be prudent for the unions to find some ways forward. Firstly, the unions could negotiate with the government and ask for a year or two to recover at least 75% of the NPA of the banks that are lined up for privatisation. This would help repose faith in them by the government. Secondly, the PSB need to shed the excess staff. Thirdly, the staff needs to avail their loans at prevailing and not at highly discounted rates and sacrifice some of the perks for 2 years. Fourthly and most importantly, be a little more courteous to the public for after all a part of the staff’s salary is from their depositors!
