For the last few months, we saw students fight it out against the quota or reservation policy in higher education. It seems the UPA government has done it again. The RBI has now included minority communities in the list of weaker sections for the purpose of priority sector lending by banks. All domestic banks are supposed to lend 10% of their total loans to these weaker sections.
First let us get into what this new regulation would mean. It would be the banks which will decide who the beneficiaries of this scheme would be. This will be done based on the demographics of the state. So, in
Now, according to The Times of India, a senior banker has told them that he measure will help banks find better customers as the definition of weaker section has been widened. If we go a little deeper into this statement, we will know where the problem lies. With this new regulation, banks can now easily target the economically well off sections of the minority communities and can still meet their priority sector lending targets. The poor and economically and socially backward people will once again be marginalized as banks will first look at giving out secure loans. It is once again like the quota system in education where the creamy layer will once again take away the benefits of a scheme which is supposedly made for the benefits of the ‘weaker sections’.
Here is what I fail to understand. Why do our governments come out with schemes like these where it can be very easily seen that the benefits will be taken away by the creamy layers of the society, and does not solve the very problem that it has been formed for. Is there a conscious attempt at not trying to solve the problems, complicate issues further and still make people believe that they are doing something? Every party plays the vote bank politics, and we as a nation fall into the trap of this politics again and again, election after election and never learn our lessons. That is the saddest part.
