Sharad Pawar in action on Co-operative banks, wrote four page letter to PM

National Congress party(NCP) president Sharad Pawar after strengthening the sugar co-operatives, once again took a strong stand for co-operative banks. Sharad Pawar has written a four page letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi , highlighting the importance of co-operative banks. He also mentioned, the perspectives of the Reserve Bank and Central Government towards  the cooperative banks is wrong and invalid. He demanded that cooperative banks need stability and long existence to exist.

Mr. Pawar has given a brief history of co-operative banks and detailed accounts of its importance in Indian economy. He also wrote the statistics related to the performance of banks. Further in the letter he explained, just like Jhan Dhan Yojana, cooperative banks are the most valuable instrument to reach out to every corner of India.  He criticized the RBI and Central government approach towards banks that are of untouchables behaviour. The government  is only considering the net profits that to be earned from the banks but missing out the larger perspectives of what co-operative banks can do.

Like Madhavpura Co-operative Bank, after the PMC Bank scam was exposed, the government introduced a bill to bring the co-operative banks under control. However no discussions were done due to time constraints and direct ordinance was passed. There is no disagreement on Pawar’s side when it comes to regulating banks but privatisation of all co-operative banks won’t help you to curb frauds and embezzlement.  To support his arguments, pawar has attached a few financial scams documents. According to this document, maximum scams are exposed in government banks only with losses over 65 thousand crore. Next on this list come private banks, foreign banks and financial institutions. The co-operative banks are last on the news. So, to assume that all the scams are done in co-operative banks is the wrong assumption.

Sharad Pawar also cleared that Co-operative banks are less profitable is a wrong  assumption. He supported the argument with NPA statistics. So it is not necessary that all the problems will get solved once the privatisation is done is just a mirage. Instead of doing this, it is essential to create financial and economic awareness among people.  Co-operative banks have survived on their own in such adverse situations. Therefore, we should pay attention to the issue and give justice to this field which has a heritage of more than 100 years,a request made by Pawar.