Indian public sector banks had 'worst phase' under Manmohan, Rajan: Sitharaman

Agencies
October 16, 2019

New York, Oct 16: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the Indian public sector banks had the "worst phase" under the combination of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan.

Delivering a lecture at the prestigious Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York on Tuesday, Sitharaman said that giving all the public sector banks a “lifeline” is today her primary duty.

"I'm taking a minute to respond … I do respect Raghuram Rajan as a great scholar who chose to be in the central bank in India at a time when the Indian economy was all buoyant,” Sitharaman said during the lecture organised by the Deepak and Neera Raj Centre on Indian Economic Policies of the Columbia University.

Asked about Rajan's comments during a recent lecture at Brown University in which he had apparently mentioned that in its first term, the Narendra Modi government had not done better on the economy because the government was extremely centralised and the leadership does not appear to have a consistent articulated vision on how to achieve economic growth, the minister said instead there were major issues with bank loans during Rajan's tenure as the central bank head.

"It was in Rajan's time as governor of the Reserve Bank that loans were given just based on phone calls from crony leaders and public sector banks in India till today are depending on the government's equity infusion to get out of that mire," she said.

"Dr Singh was the Prime Minister and I'm sure Dr Rajan will agree that Dr Singh would have had a ‘consistent articulated vision' for India,” she said amid laughter from the audience.

"With due respect, I'm not making fun of anybody but I certainly want to put this forward for a comment which has come like this. I have no reason to doubt that Rajan feels for every word of what he is saying. And I'm here today, giving him his due respect, but also placing the fact before you that Indian public sector banks did not have a worst phase than when the combination of Singh and Rajan, as the Prime Minister and the governor of Reserve Bank, had. At that time, none of us knew about it,” she said.

Sitharaman said while she is grateful that Rajan did an asset quality review, but people should know what makes the banks ailing today.

"I am grateful that Rajan did an asset quality review but I'm sorry, can all of us put together also think of asking what ails our banks today. Where has it been inherited from,” she said.

The event was also attended by former Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, professor and eminent economist Jagdish Bhagwati and India's Consul General in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty.

Sitharaman said: "While economists can take a view of what prevails today or prevailed years ago, but I will also want answers for the time when Rajan was in the Governor's post speaking about the Indian banks, for which today to give a lifeline is the primary duty of the finance minister of India. And the lifeline-kind of an emergency has not come overnight”.

Responding to the question, Sitharaman further pointed out that if there is a feeling that there's been a centralised leadership now, "I'd like to say that very democratised leadership led to a whole lot of corruption. Very democratised leadership. The Prime Minister, after all is the first among equals in any cabinet".

"You need to have a country as diverse as India with an effective leadership. A rather too democratic leadership, which probably will have the approval of quite a lot of liberals, I'm afraid, left behind such a nasty stink of corruption, which we are cleaning up even today," she said.

Comments

Haha....LOL

muslims are very very happy...god give them wisdom...Alhamdullilla

only you third rated people are in trouble....one day your child will spit on your face to choosing such a nalayak PM for futur india...

 

you will never come back from the business...you can sell your family to NAMO RSS orginazition..we all know what they do!!

 

so much poison in heart towards muslim will kill you one day like cancer...

 

look at all muslim country most are destroyed by america but still they live happly...

 

once muslim get world power we will treat all people equal and work for huminaty...

 

Dont take tension...LOL

 

 

 

 

Namo Again
 - 
Wednesday, 16 Oct 2019

Blaming other not a solution always. But still I support Modi ji. Mine business is in loss, but i am satisfied because muslims lost more .Because if I lost one eye, muslims will loss both eyes. 

Sandesh Shetty
 - 
Wednesday, 16 Oct 2019

Such a shameless fellow. 

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Agencies
January 15,2020

Chandigarh, Jan 15: A man, who has killed two women over infidelity over the last 10 years was arrested from a news channel studio in Chandigarh when he confessed to these crimes during a live programme, police said.

In the television programme on News18, the 31-year-old accused, Maninder Singh, who is a cab driver, confessed killing his live-in partner, a 27-year-old nurse Sarabjit Kaur at a Chandigarh hotel on New Year's Eve.

Singh, a former murder convict and currently out on bail, also confessed about his crime committed in Karnal in 2010.

"I killed her (Sarabjit Kaur) because she was having an affair with her sister-in-law's brother," Maninder told the news channel.

Confessing his previous crime, Maninder said he had killed Renu in Karnal. "She was also having an affair with a man from Uttar Pradesh," he said.

Singh was arrested while the programme was still on air as police rushed into the studio.

Haryana Police had arrested him for killing the woman in 2010. He was convicted by a trial court, but he later got bail from the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

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Agencies
February 5,2020

New Delhi, Feb 5: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday expressed his suspicion over the government using force to clear the Shaheen Bagh stretch where an agitation has been ongoing for over 50 days against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

While speaking to ANI over the phone, Owaisi was asked that there are indications from the government that after February 8, Shaheen Bagh will be cleared.

In reply, he said, "Might be they will shoot them, they might turn Shaheen Bagh into Jallianwala Bagh. This might happen. BJP minister gave a statement to 'shoot a bullet'. The government must give an answer as (to) who is radicalising."

Further speaking about NPR and NRC, Owaisi said, "Government must give a clear cut answer that till 2024 NRC will not be implemented. Why are they spending Rs 3900 crore for NPR? I feel this way because I was a History student. Hitler during his reign conducted census twice and after that, he pushed the jews in a gas chamber. I don't want our country (to) go in that way."

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News Network
March 12,2020

Geneva, Mar 12: For the global economy, virus repercussions were profound, with increasing concerns of wealth- and job-wrecking recessions. U.S. stocks wiped out more than all the gains from a huge rally a day earlier as Wall Street continued to reel.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,464 points, bringing it 20% below its record set last month and putting it in what Wall Street calls a “bear market.” The broader S&P 500 is just 1 percentage point away from falling into bear territory and bringing to an end one of the greatest runs in Wall Street’s history.

WHO officials said they thought long and hard about labeling the crisis a pandemic — defined as sustained outbreaks in multiple regions of the world.

The risk of employing the term, Ryan said, is “if people use it as an excuse to give up.” But the benefit is “potentially of galvanizing the world to fight.”

Underscoring the mounting challenge: soaring numbers in the U.S. and Europe’s status as the new epicenter of the pandemic. While Italy exceeds 12,000 cases and the United States has topped 1,300, China reported a record low of just 15 new cases Thursday and three-fourths of its infected patients have recovered.

China’s totals of 80,793 cases and 3,169 deaths are a shrinking portion of the world’s more than 126,000 infections and 4,600 deaths.

“If you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China,” said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With 12,462 cases and 827 deaths, Italy said all shops and businesses except pharmacies and grocery stores would be closed beginning Thursday and designated billions in financial relief to cushion economic shocks in its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving crisis that silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St. Peter’s Square.

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