Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken a step in the right direction when it stopped big private banks from the payment of bonus to their respective chiefs questioning logic of such annual payment in tunes of crores of rupees annually to each individual. India with vast diversification in incomes where, on one hand farmers commit suicide because of poverty, few privileged ones are more than adequately paid by bodies considering themselves to be private. Private banks are minting money out of their malpractices dominating commoners through hidden charges and unethical ways to grab hard-earned money of their customers. Only on the matter involving a very prominent private-sector bank having reached to the Central Information Commission through regulatory authority- RBI; the bank had to return hundreds of crores of rupees to account-holders which were earlier grabbed by it in its suspense account simply because clearing cheques deposited by its customers had spellings of names other than those mentioned in account-opening forms. It is noteworthy that the concerned bank preferred shifting big amounts to its suspense account without even informing the affected customers. The Bank should have returned the cheques without being cashed, in case it could not transfer proceeds to accounts of concerned customers. Evidently the Bank had a motive to grab money of account-holders without informing them. Unfortunately, CEOs of such looting private banks are honoured even through national awards simply because of their highly innovative minds to harm customers for profiteering of the banks.
It is time that Prime Minister who himself has reached to the top from a very poor background should take some steps whereby even private players or public-bodies may be restricted from paying more than some specified payment annually to an individual. Only recently Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) took a wrong decision to hike annual salaries of even ultra-rich cricketers to rupees 5, 3 and 1 crores which is apart from heavy match-fees and award-money again running into crores of rupees.
MADHU AGRAWAL
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
