Letters. Build infrastructure

This refers to ‘Structural farm reforms are key’ by BK Bhoi (February 15). Despite India being a developing economy, we still do not have proper and modern storage facilities. Hence our farmers are forced to sell bumper stock to middlemen at low rates.

The second problem is the absence of good roads to enable farmers take their produce to markets far away.

The third problem is bottlenecks in inter-State transport of goods. With free and convenient movement of produce we can arrest inflation.

Thane, Maharashtra

Waiving farm loans or providing financial help are only quick-fix efforts, not long-lasting solutions. Agriculture experts can play a prominent role in helping the farming community get returns commensurate with their expenses and physical toil.

Bengaluru

With reference to the editorial, ‘Stocks and flows’ (February 15), stress in the banking system is very high and NPAs are unusually high too. Given this, the leaner, simplified, yet stringent framework announced by RBI for resolution of NPAs vis-à-vis the resolution of stressed assets is an audacious step towards monitoring and containing loans. It is not that the earlier resolution process did not work, but a more streamlined approach was considered necessary. RBI deserves to be complimented.

Nagpur

The new RBI rules on handling bad loans are welcome; they will surely lead to a spike in disclosures of NPAs. Banks will have to report to the RBI on a weekly basis; that should not be an issue if they have proper system in place. Since in the new regime, if an account is categorised bad, it will remain so for all the other lenders, putting pressure on the promoter of that company to be top of his game. The most critical aspect of the change in guidelines is that the borrower must keep his account standard even as banks would do not indulge in any sort of divergence.

Noida, Uttar Pradesh

India has witnessed a massive financial scam after a gap. Coming at a time when Indian banking is riding on the wings of advanced technology and when robust systems are believed to have been put in place, the scam poses serious questions regarding the safety of banks. We have the right to know how such a scam was perpetrated and PNB should bring to book the real culprits.

Thiruvananthapuram

In light of the PNB incident, we realise the importance of accounting entries for any kind of financial transaction or maintaining an audit trail. In the effort to introduce new processes, many organisations have introduced Single Window Service compromising on the maker-checker or third eye concept. Is there any analysis of ‘transaction volumes and velocity’ for each type of branch? A semi-urban branch doing a single transaction of ₹5 crore on behalf of a customer should go through a real-time pop-up either for the controllers or an independent audit section as an alert so that immediate monitoring is done and action taken. Though audits are conducted at regular intervals, this is only a post-mortem.

As for SWIFT, how is it all the maker-verifier-authoriser processes in PNB, did not look into the details of approvals? How can “unauthorised messages” be transmitted through SWIFT? All messages are system authenticated, except if they are free format. And if free format messages were sent, how the receiving bank acted upon them is another mystery.

Bengaluru

How anyone can be so bigoted as to take offence at romancing by teenagers defies comprehension. Thankfully, Muslims in Kerala and the majority outside the State dismiss the row over Oru Adaar Love as an unnecessary controversy.

Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu

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