The two-day eleventh triennial conference of the All-India Nabard (National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development) Employees’ Association (AINBEA) has concluded at the Vijay K Bhosale Hall in Bengaluru. The meeting unanimously elected Jose T Abraham as President; Rana Mitra as General Secretary; and V Rajesh as Treasurer, of the association.
Against privatisation
General Secretary Mitra said the conference discussed threadbare challenges faced by public sector financial institutions in general and Nabard, in particular, in an environment where the Centre is going ahead with its core agenda to privatise these institutions. “This will totally destroy the carefully constructed edifice of public sector financial institutions, LIC, banks and Nabard. It will have immense negative implications for the economic sovereignty of the country.”
Working class fight-back
The conference decided to join mainstream trade unions and the democratic movement in the country to strengthen’ the fight-back of the working class against the neo-liberal policy regime’ being followed in the country. The triennial conference also featured a seminar titled, ‘Problems faced by public sector financial institutions and role of trade unions.’ Speakers included Debasish Basu Chowdhury, General Secretary, Bank Employees’ Federation of India; Amanullah Khan, Editor, InsuranceWorker; and Rana Mitra, General Secretary, AINBEA.
Reverse merger
The meeting also demanded that privatisation of public sector institutions and banks be revoked; the development financial institution (DFI) status of Nabard be reinstated with concessionary fund flows from the Reserve Bank/ Government of India; links between Reserve Bank and Nabard be strengthened through, if possible, a reverse merger between the apex bank and Nabard, broadly following the principles of the Committee to Review the Arrangements for Institutional Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development (Crafticard), in order to save peasant agriculture in India.