Nationalisation - Free Essay Example

]Nationalisation The RBI was nationalized on January 1, 1949 in terms of the Reserve Bank of India (Transfer to Public Ownership) Act, 1948 (RBI, 2005b). [Reference www. rbi. org. in] By the 1960s, the Indian banking industry had become an important tool to facilitate the development of the Indian economy. At the same time, it had emerged as a large employer, and a debate had ensued about the possibility to nationalise the banking industry. Indira Gandhi, the-then Prime Minister of Indiaexpressed the intention of the GOI in the annual conference of the All India Congress Meeting in a paper entitled Stray thoughts on Bank Nationalisation. The paper was received with positive enthusiasm. Thereafter, her move was swift and sudden, and the GOI issued an ordinance and nationalised the 14 largest commercial banks with effect from the midnight of July 19, 1969. Jayaprakash Narayan, a national leader of India, described the step as a masterstroke of political sagacity. Within two weeks of the issue of the ordinance, the Parliament passed the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertaking) Bill, and it received the presidential approval on 9 August 19 69. A second dose of nationalization of 6 more commercial banks followed in 1980. The stated reason for the nationalization was to give the government more control of credit delivery. With the second dose of nationalization, the GOI controlled around 91% of the banking business of India. Later on, in the year 1993, the government merged New Bank of India with Punjab National Bank. It was the only merger between nationalized banks and resulted in the reduction of the number of nationalised banks from 20 to 19. After this, until the 1990s, the nationalised banks grew at a pace of around 4%, closer to the average growth rate of the Indian economy.