As the majority shareholder in the bank, the government probably has every right to run the show in the way that it deems fit. But this is not just a simple matter of the will of the majority shareholder (the Government) prevailing on a matter of stewardship of the affairs of a company. To shackle the bank’s commercial freedom and sacrifice its interests at the altar of political expediency is a great disservice to the interests of the minority shareholders and the bank’s own future.

While there is some merit in the proposition that the repayment atmosphere has been vitiated by the Government’s farm loan waiver announcement leading to wilful default by select borrowers, there is no question that non-performing loans on tractors, running at 17 per cent of the credit portfolio, are abnormally high. The roots of the SBI’s tractor-loan problem may well lie elsewhere. The bank, for instance, needs to introspect on whether it had gone overboard in its agri-loan drives and whether it gave away too much to too many with a propensity to default. In an atmosphere where managerial performance in public enterprises is measured, more often than not, in terms of adhering to the agenda of the political masters, it is entirely possible that conventional yardsticks of credit appraisal had been given the go by. It may be instructive for SBI to look at the experience of some other banks as well as of a few micro finance institutions that claim a better track record in this respect. That may well be a beneficial outcome of what has become an embarrassing episode in its history.

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