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‘Disasters
never come singly but in bundles’. This seems to be the position of PSBs in
this country at the moment. They are already in the melting pot of nearly Rs.
6lakh crores. Loan melas seem to have come back with a bang – the Mudra Loan
melas. It was mid 1970s that Pujari the then Congress Minister started with the
loan melas having seen that this is the greatest opportunity to get crowds at
no expense of either the party or the government.
It
all started when one of the then enthusiastic regional managers of a public
sector bank organized such mela at Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. The Minister
was given an elephant ride with the buglers financed under the DRI scheme walking
in front to reach the big maidan for distributing agricultural loans, if I
recall right in the year 1979. He could see huge crowds in the ground waiting
for his honour to arrive. He was amazed for he knew what it meant: loans and
votes without the party having to spend for a single vote. Having tasted the
meat would the tiger leave it? He ordered such melas throughout the country. After the banking sector reforms such melas
became history. Several of us thought that those dark days would not revisit
the financial sector.
