That Biblical allusion is certain to serve as a red rag to the saffron bull, yet it does add emphasis to the argument that good politics may make for poor economics ~ a point which will not be appreciated by Modi sarkar. For several months now has the Prime Minister and his fawning chorus been claiming how revolutionary and empowering have proved the no-frills ‘Jan Dhan’ bank accounts. Yet now the chairman of the State Bank of India describes them as a “burden”, and says the cost of carrying it justifies the bank re-introducing a system of penalties on “normal” account holders who do not ensure the maintenance of a minimum balance. “Today we have a lot of burden, such as we have 11 crore financial inclusion or Jan Dhan accounts. To manage such a large number of Jan Dhan accounts, we need some changes. We have considered many factors, and after analysing carefully we have taken this step,” Ms Arundhati Bhattacharya told a press conference in Mumbai, after being subjected to intense questioning on the fresh levies being imposed on holders of accounts in the nation’s largest bank ~ which serves as the showpiece of the sector at large. There is no need to quarrel with the argument that “our analysis have shown that most of the account holders maintain more than Rs.5,000 on a monthly basis, so they do not have to worry about any penalty” ~ it is the principle that tends to irk. For it amounts to another instance of the government resorting to sleight-ofhand tactics to make the citizen pick up the bill for its political largesse. Like all professional bankers, the SBI chief placed much stock in analysis, so the public (or at least SBI account holders) would wish to be enlightened on the extent to which the Jan Dhan accounts had been used to “bleach” black money in the immediate aftermath of 8 November 2016. There is no political “angle” to that query: Ms Bhattacharya had adroitly projected herself as the “defender of the faith” when society was thrown into demonetisation convulsions. Have the chickens come home to roost?
The short point is that many of the present government’s initiatives have only fleshed out Arun Shourie’s theory that its expertise was confined to “managing headlines”. Not long ago Mr Narendra Modi had sarcastically referred to his predecessor bathing under a raincoat when Dr Manmohan Singh had slammed demonetisation as “organised loot and legalised plunder”. After the SBI’s dubbing Jan Dhan accounts a “burden”, will the Prime Minister at least concede the point Dr Singh had made at his first press conference after joining the government ~ “too much politics has been played with the economy”.