Letter to BS: FM should say something clearly fixing responsibility on RBI

This refers to the erudite article “Financial sector stability & our cook Lilu-tai by Tamal Bandyopadhyay (October 7) in which he has pertinently raised the question, “Was the banking regulator sleeping all these years?”. It is about the collapse-cum-crisis of the PMC bank. For several years, this bank was violating rules and its beneficiaries were enjoying in the most ostentatious manner. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had done an audit but could not detect anything. Millions of depositors are in the lurch. Yet the RBI issued a release on October 7 saying that, "the Indian banking system is safe and sound". The biggest joke of all, my country men! This has now launched cartoons in newspapers about the RBI as the watch dog, showing a dog watching as the bank was collapsing on the head of creditors. 

The RBI cannot argue that the control is divided because the job of audit is to be done by the RBI. Like the bank officials who have been taken into custody, some auditors also deserve the same treatment. Governors who went about lecturing about the independence of the RBI and freedom of speech, should come out in the open now to explain if lecturing was their job or they were also supposed to do their normal routine work. The finance minister should also say something clearly fixing responsibility on the RBI for its failure.

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay , via email

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