BS Banking Annual 2017: Arundhati Bhattacharya, leading from the front

Arundhati Bhattacharya has shown what public sector banks are capable of when they get their act together

Five days before Arundhati Bhattacharya’s three-year tenure as chairman of State Bank of India (SBI) was to have ended on October 6, 2016, the government gave her a year’s extension. And this last year would be one of the most eventful years of her career. For one thing, she became the voice and face of the Indian banking sector, taking on the mantle of communicating how banks were putting currency notes in people’s wallets after the government banned old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in November 2016, the month following her extension. For another, she will be known in