The total amount written off is Rs 2,02,781 crore for the year 2020-21. However, the RBI’s RTI reply to The Indian Express revealed that a whopping Rs 11,68,095 crore worth of bad loans, or non-performing assets (NPAs), were written off in the last ten years with most of the write-offs coming in the last seven years. This is almost 10.54 per cent of total non-food bank advances of Rs 110.79 lakh crore and very close to the government’s gross market borrowing of Rs 12.05 lakh crore projected for FY 2021-22 in the Union Budget.It is indeed a very sad to note that out of the total write-off over 11.68 lakh crore in the last ten years, as much as over Rs 10.72 lakh crore were written off by the Modi government since 2014-15 when it assumed power. This at a time when the banking sector in India has been suffering its worst crisis in the last three decades, infested with numerous bank frauds in which big corporate borrowers, bank and government officials and big politicians were found hand in glove in the nexus. Many of them even fled India, and some of the willing defaulters’ bad loans were even written off.Why such a huge writing off was resorted to by the Modi government? There might have been two reasons – first to help the banks to whitewash their bad loan portfolio and show the country that the government has overcome the banking crisis, and second to help its corporate friends and favourites. Then there is also a political compulsion. The government also needed the people to be happy with it, so they were provided with some pieces of bread to feel that Modi government is also working for them and providing means for subsistence. Should we not think such an act on the part of the government is merely shrewdness, a game played on common ignorant people in favour of corporate? Banks wrote off Rs 2,34,170 crore in FY2019-20, Rs 2,36,265 crore in FY2018-19, Rs 1,61,328 crore in 2017-18 and Rs 1,08,373 crore in 2016-17, the RBI has said.
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