Public versus private banks: The case made for both in an RBI paper

Far from arguing against privatisation, the RBI paper attracting Opposition ire presents the pros and cons of both ownership structures

A paper by Snehal S Herwadkar, Sonali Goel and Rishuka Bansal of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on “Privatisation of Public Sector Banks: An Alternate Perspective” is being seen for what it never claimed to be. The authors’ stance has been erroneously interpreted by the Opposition (and parts of the media) as being reflective of the banking regulator’s opposition to the privatisation of these banks. This approximates “mitempfindung”, basically a condition in which stimulus applied to one region of the body registers in another part. In this case, what was meant to stimulate a conversation around the subject has