The Many Cheques & Balances

The moment you walk into a bank, know that the charge meter has been turned on

- Saye Sekhar

By the time you begin flipping through the pages of this issue of the Finapolis, you will already be under a new tax regime – One Nation-One Tax. In every sphere of life, from attending to daily chores to paying for what you bought — be it a utility item or a service, everything is under the new regime of Goods and Services Tax (GST). So are banking services, which have been raised from 15% to 18%.

Banking services too are an essential part of daily lives. The advent of newer schemes bought more and more people — who had hitherto stayed away from banking — into the fold.

Banking has indeed become very complicated. If someone says, “Oh, no! It is simple. Just follow the steps and there you go,” it’s just a run-of-the-mill statement that bulldozes the doubts and flattens them. But, it cannot remove the doubts. You can’t brush your doubts and, at times apprehensions, under the proverbial carpet and indulge in self-deception that all is hunky dory.

Banking is indeed knotty now what with the customer being fleeced from all sides. It’s not just the GST that is going to pinch the pockets of an average middle-class person –salaried or self-employed or whatever; a whole gamut of cardinal issues pertaining to banking have been made chargeable. It’s not as simple as it looks.

Nobody seems to have a thorough knowledge of complete info to disseminate to laymen on what service is chargeable and what is not. Bankers, even those at the helm of affairs, have indeed politely refused to respond to queries sent to them by Team Finapolis without citing reasons. A mail to Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank, also remained unanswered at the time of going to print. As it appears, there seems to be no clarity on some of the pertinent questions, which were raised.

That anonymous deposit