'Politicians should be barred from running district cooperative banks'
Shishir Arya, TNN Jul 21, 2013, 11.16AM IST
Cooperatives make an important fabric of state's political system. Sugar cooperatives or district central cooperative banks (DCCBs) - key pillars of agricultural economy in Maharashtra - have also been launch pads for politicians. At a time when the DCCBs, are in news for wrong reasons, Kailashchandra Agrawal, a veteran of cooperative banking, feels it is time to bring about a fundamental change. "Cooperatives should be out of political influence and more entities should come under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) ambit," he says. The director of Maharashtra Urban Cooperative Bank's Federation, Agrawal is also a member of Task Force on Cooperative Urban Banks (TAFCUB), a committee under Reserve Bank of India, for monitoring the banks' performance.
Excerpts from an interview...
Several district central cooperative banks (DCCBs) including that in Nagpur, Wardha and Buldhana are in a bad shape. They are not having funds to even dole out the short-term crop loans, their basic function. Why and what can be done?
Except a few, almost all district central cooperative banks (DCCBS) in the state are in a poor shape. Their basic aim is to provide crop loans taken by farmers to meet their sowing requirements. The banks' sources of deposits are also permanent in the form of funds parked by village level cooperative societies. But the banks are facing financial distress due to mismanagement by those at the helm. DCCBs are used as political turfs rather than pure banking being the focus. They are important for politicians because their primary purpose is to provide agricultural finance. This gives a director or chairman in such a bank direct access to farmers who also make a large vote bank.
This often leads to imprudent lending by those at the helm to meet their political goals. There should be a rule to bar elected public representatives from becoming a director in a DCCB. This may pave way for professional management.
Would it constitutionally be possible to bar politicians from DCCBs?
I agree it is not so easy but there has been a gross misuse of DCCBs, which is a matter of concern. Their condition has brought a bad name to the cooperative sector. Under the current system, even people allegedly involved in scams are having influence in the banks' management. There has to be some criterion for a candidate to get into a bank's board of directors or even have a say in its affairs.
Nagpur has seen several banks shutting down. Don't you think quick action against erring directors could set an example?
The Maharashtra State Cooperative Act has a clear provision allowing the losses due to directors' negligence to be recovered from their personal assets. The entire board is collectively responsible for any such fiasco. However, it is true that the legal procedure is taking a lot of time for certain banks. Certainly justice delayed is justice denied. Take for example the case of Samata Sahakari Bank. A stay has been obtained under an order to recover the losses from the bank's directors, which continues till date. There has to be a time limit for a stay to be imposed on an earlier order. Moreover, since the cooperatives are run by politicians, the department of cooperatives which is a government body often goes soft on them.
DCCBs are certainly in a bad shape but what is the position of urban cooperative bank (UCBs)?
DCCBs cater to agricultural sector but urban cooperative banks, as the name suggests, have their clients in the cities. A lot of UCBs were in deep crisis throughout the last decade due to which the task force on urban cooperatives was formed. Many banks including three in Nagpur had to be shut. Now there has been a considerable improvement in this sector. Out of 493 UCBs in the state, only 20 are in very bad shape, which means they have a negative net worth. This is the situation when the bank's owned funds fall short of making good the losses.
UCBs in Maharashtra have the highest deposit base in the country. As against 2.38 lakh crore parked in these banks all over the country, Maharashtra alone accounts for Rs1.5 lakh crore. The deposits have been growing at a rate of 10% yearly. There is political interference in UCBs too but not to that extent as in a DCCB.
Is there any other area of concern in the sector?
DCCBs and UCBs quickly make the headlines if something goes wrong. There is one more category of cooperatives that has escaped both the media as well as the regulator's eye so far. These are the credit cooperative societies, which can be easily underestimated on their face value. But there are over 15,000 credit cooperative societies in the state with deposits to the tune of Rs13,000 crore. They are seen as neighbourhood banks among the lower income strat A recent amendment in the law has barred the state government's department of cooperatives from superseding its board of directors if things go wrong.
They also do not come under RBI's control. Thus, there is no systematic mechanism to monitor their functioning. Of course, their accounts are audited by the cooperatives department but the officers here do not have the required expertise. Considering the recent amendment that frees them from a major action like sacking the board of directors by the state government, the credit cooperative societies too could be brought under the RBI's control. If not the RBI there should be some systematic mode of regulation at least.
What is more indicative of the likelihood of mismanagement in some of the societies is that 2,000 have already shut down. Recently, a couple of societies from Western Maharashtra having public deposits to the tune of Rs100 crore were in news for being in distress.
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