Navratna Lottery

The Kerala cooperative bank employees are considered to be a lesser group and they never measure up to their counter parts in nationalized banks where a hefty sum is dispersed as monthly salary. The cooperative bank employees by their customer friendly attitude attract money to the bank and thus it is sheltered. However the Government of Kerala is in no mood to protect the cooperative sector.

The major crisis in State Cooperative banks is mainly due to the failure of State Government to repay the Rs 495 crores it had taken as loan. And when the Finance Minister is thinking of availing another 2000 crores from elsewhere the repayment will likely to never happen. The Cooperative banks have to wait more time to tide over its fiscal problems and I presume it will not meet the fate ofthose 16 banks in the US.

Though, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development and the Reserve Bank of India had banned the cooperative banks from extending loans to the State Government the Government is pressing the primary cooperative banks by directing them to deposit their funds in the treasury. In addition the bank employees are asked to sell ‘navartna lottery’ through bank branches. As all lotteries are unproductive the government decision to introduce it in State Cooperative banks is intolerable. The clients will likely to abandon cooperative banks as it has turned in to a lottery selling stall. Making Cooperative Bank employees State sponsored beggars is a licentious act by a Government which boasts in the high. The Navtatna lottery would meet the same fate of the lucky dip introduced by economist turned Finance Minister Thomas Isaac for every purchase of 1000 rupee or above. Introducing lottery to every sphere of life is the only kind of development in Kerala. Are those economists behind this utopian idea eligible for Nobel Prize in Economics?

K A Solaman