Kerala - Alappuzha   

VS for single window system for bank loans

ALAPPUZHA: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan has called for a single window clearance system and district-level monitoring arrangements to ensure that students, farmers and micro-level business enterprises are given loans without hassles.

Inaugurating a public session in connection with the 10th State conference of the Bank Employees' Federation of India (Kerala) here on Saturday, Mr. Achuthanandan said such a system was becoming inevitable with complaints galore over banks denying loans to students for higher education, to farmers and for small-scale entrepreneurs.

The flawed policies of bank managements were to be blamed for this, but instead, bank employees were getting the flak from the public.

Calling upon bank employees to be cautious against such erroneous decisions of their managements, Mr. Achuthanandan said the employees would also have to unite in protest.

The Chief Minister said he found it ironic that the Reserve Bank of India was giving licences for new private banks, when an RBI report itself had noted that several private banks that were given licences after 1996 had failed to take off. The Union government was trying to merge existing public sector banks and at the same time, supporting licences for new private banks, which meant that there was some corrupt deals at the back of it all, he said.

Mr. Achuthanandan also said one had to read between the lines to understand the actual intentions of United States President Barack Obama's visit to India.

Mr. Obama, he said, was in India to sell arms and thereby find solutions to the economic slowdown that was still plaguing the U.S.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the United Progressive Alliance government, despite India having survived the impact of the slowdown, were trying to replicate here U.S. economic policies, the same that had led to the present situation in the U.S. The UPA government, which had surrendered the country's sovereignty to the U.S. through the nuclear deal, was all set to leave India at the first position among the world's most corrupt nations by the time the UPA government's tenure would be over, the Chief Minister said, pointing to the controversies of corruption that had erupted recently, right from the 2G spectrum scam, to the Commonwealth Games controversy and the Adarsh Housing Society storm.

Mr. Achuthanandan also said Congress president Sonia Gandhi had talked much about communalism and terrorism at the recent AICC meet, but not a word against corruption. Devaswom Minister Kadannappally Ramachandran; LDF convener Vaikom Viswan, BEFI general secretary Pradeep Biswas; CPI(M) district secretary C.B. Chandrababu and others also spoke.

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