THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It must be sheer dance of destiny. SBT won the All-India Public Sector Cricket Tournament for the first time on Friday in Goa beating BSNL in the final. The best ever win in the history of the bank’s cricket team. And a fitting tribute to the bank which breathed its last at Thiruvananthapuram, aged 72.
The State Bank of Travancore was many things to many people. Pride of the state. The state’s own bank. Icon to many. The sponsor of many a cultural, literary and sporting events and awards. The football team, the pride of the state even as many other teams faded away. The bank people loved to go to despited the lethargy that overcame the public sector banks and the advent of the new gen competitors.
The bank was the brainchild of Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer, the then Diwan of Travancore.
Born as Travancore bank in 1945 to make the best of post war reconstruction and to avoid depositing funds with foreign banks and agencies, the institution’s arrival was spectacular.
Renowned historian A Sreedhara Menon recalls the spectacle in his book ‘Triumph and Tragedy in Travancore’. “The share list was opened on October 8, 1945 and, for the first time in the history of the Madras Stock Exchange, South India alone had subscribed for over Rs 60 lakh worth of shares (on offer) in the Travancore Bank Ltd. When the public issue was closed by evening, it had been oversubscribed by two and a half times.”
The Travancore state government had already agreed to take 1,20,000 shares at a value of Rs 25 each. The appointment of Ludwik Aronson, a Polish Jew and an expert on foreign exchange transactions with the RBI, as the first General Manager was another masterstroke by Sir CP. The formation and growth of the bank, which eventually became State Bank of Travancore, became a role model to many such banks across the country.
That the bank was forced to be fodder for the State Bank of India is no secret. Shareholders, public, peoples’ representatives and of course the staff were against the merger. The concerns were best expressed by its elected Director Sajan Peter, a former Additional Secretary to the Government of India. “I was not against the merger, but against the lack of transparency in the process. I had also asked for impact reports on similar mergers of the State Banks of Indore and Saurashtra with the SBI, but was met with silence. A decision to hold negotiations was also scuttled. It is painful to see the bank vanish just like that.”
For Sajan Peter, who had also served as the Additional Chief Secretary in Kerala, the disappointment is personal as well. His father, the late V C Peter, was part of the team of officers when the Travancore Bank was formed and went on to become one of two General Managers of SBT, at a time the GMs were second only to the Managing Director.
Well, there is no turning back now. Destiny has taken the irrevocable turn. Adios SBT.