How Would Trump Deal With Our Banks?

A Trump-like unorthodox approach is called for in matters like bank mergers. Decentralised financial regulation may help

- TB Kapali

A defining feature of US President Donald Trump’s approach to any issue — be it related to economy or foreign policy — is complete unorthodoxy. Whether it is the policy stand itself or the message, medium, language, venue or setting in which his views and decisions are pronounced, the approach is completely antithetical to the conventional ways of doing things. The final effects of this unorthodox approach can be known only in due course — particularly with regard to Trump’s approach on economic issues that had long confronted earlier US administrations. It follows quite reasonably that when the approach is completely orthodox and unchanged from the past, the outcomes will also be in line with the past. Such a denouement seems to await the Indian approach to some key economic policy issues. One wonders if India should also adopt an unorthodox approach, a la Trump, in order to induce materially different outcomes. Indeed, in the backdrop of what seems a secular economic downtrend, one would have thought unorthodoxy is clearly called for.

We shall take up two policy issues here, regarding which the current approach is no different from that followed or attempted in the past 30 years.

One is the merger of public sector banks, to create what policymakers call as a few banks big enough to do big-ticket (lending) business and compete on a global scale too.

Another is the transfer of dividends and “redundant” reserves from the Reserve Bank of India’s balance sheet to the government.

Bank mergers