BHUBANESWAR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday accused the Congress of allowing influential individuals with political connections to access bank loans worth thousands of crores of rupees through “phone banking” before 2014, while poor and middle-class families struggled to obtain basic banking services.
Inaugurating the Reserve Bank of India's Rs 169-crore Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute at Infovalley-II in Jatni, Bhubaneswar, Modi said phone banking had benefited select individuals linked to the Congress or those close to powerful people.
“Through phone banking, thousands of crores of rupees in bank loans were extended to certain influential individuals in the Congress party or those who had connections with powerful people," the PM said.
"Poor and middle-class families needed a guarantor even to open a bank account, but under the Congress’s phone banking scheme, thousands of crores of rupees were readily available for the wealthy at any time,” Modi said.
Modi said the system had contributed to a surge in non-performing assets (NPAs), pushing the banking sector to the brink of collapse. Ensuring that the benefits of development reached every region and citizen equitably had remained a major challenge, he added.
He said banks were nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s in the name of helping the poor, yet more than half the country’s population remained outside the banking system until 2014.
Bank loans remained out of reach for much of the middle class, while poor people, small farmers and landless women could not imagine accessing them, he said. The NDA government had sought to change this approach by adopting a model of people-centric, proactive and good governance, he added, saying digital banking had now connected people to banking services around the clock.
“For us, development means balanced development of India, ensuring that villages and smaller cities also have opportunities. Our goal is to provide better connectivity to remote areas and ensure that poor families have access to facilities that allow them to live with dignity. We reassure every citizen that they will not be left behind in the journey of development,” he said.
The Prime Minister said major transformation required a broad vision and that clear intentions and noble objectives could make even seemingly impossible tasks achievable.
Modi also stressed on the need to safeguard India's banking system against “cyber terrorists". He said wars were increasingly being waged beyond conventional battlefields, with economies also coming under attack.
He said the systems established in recent years and the ecosystem developed through Digital India had extended banking services to every citizen. “Today, India’s banking sector is one of the strongest in the world,” he said.
Invoking Mahaprabhu Jagannath, Modi said Bhubaneswar was giving a new institution to “New India”.
He described the inauguration of the RBI Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute as an important occasion, adding that the institutions would benefit the people of Odisha and the country.
The data centre also reflected the changing approach to governance and the pace of that transformation, he said. “Our focus is on prioritising development, expanding its reach and ensuring that its benefits reach the last person,” Modi added.
