On Wednesday, it was the second bank strike within a span of one week. When the former strike was officers’ one, this one was that of bank employees.
One of the reasons for the strike was related to banks’ merger. Another reason was the protest against the failure to collect defaulted loans. The irony is that the first and second reasons have nothing to do with crores of people who do transactions with the banks.

The liability to get back loan debts is vested in only banks. No one has entrusted people with the duty to collect debts. As that is the case, the bank employees’ strikes are lacking the logic.

Banks issue loans only after getting the loan buyer’s property mortgaged. If the beneficiary fails to pay back the loan with interest, strict penalty is imposed. This often happens in the case of commoners and bank almost turns Nelson’s eye in the case of bigwigs and corporates. The Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Securities Interest Act, 2002 (also known as the SARFAESI Act) is usually applied only it the case of ordinary people. The law allows banks and other financial institution to auction residential or commercial properties (of Defaulter) to recover loans.

Ninety per cent of defaulters are big corporates and highly rich men of the country. Meanwhile, banks also write off about 50 lakh cases of loans worth crores of rupees every year.

In the case of rich, banks usually play hide and seek. Those who are supposed to take action also feel the pressure from the top, not to act soon.’’’
They can act only with the special permission of the bank director board. But in most cases, this permission get hindered as most boards are influenced by political parties as well.

Those who make noise inside and outside the Parliament over Rafale deal have kept mum on defaulted loans. They also give instructions to write off agricultural loans, eying vote bank.

When there was a proposal to publish the list of loan defaulters during the Manmohan Singh’s regime, the then Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s argument was that the government was not willing to humiliate the loan beneficiaries. It shows that any government is more interested in safeguarding the reputation of defaulting affluent loan payers.

A recent report shows that in the last year, all banks together squeezed about one and a half lakh crore money out of customers under several pretexts. But all that money was used to hide the loss due to defaulted loan repayments.

A few days ago, a report had come that banks’ loss due to non-repayment of loans had risen to seven or eight lakh crore.
Out of that, the banks were able to get back Rs 62000 crore, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the government also has to spend lakhs of rupees to bring back money frauds like Vijay Mallya and Neerav Modi to India.
Now what is ridiculous is that those banking employees who are supposed to collect money from defaulters had gone on strike, inconveniencing the people further.