Rajya Sabha MP ne sansadiya jaanch maangi hai. Itne bade sauda ki sansad mein charcha kyun nahi? Bahas se dar kaisa? 🎤 #IDBINotForSale #SaveIDBI

Read Prof. Arvind Panagariya's piece in ET today, "Pivot to Privatisation 2.0". With all respect to the Chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, I did not need a single outside fact to answer it. His own article does the job! He says there is "enormous wisdom in transferring the bank to private hands now, when its healthy books enable it to attract buyers". Healthy books made by whom? By his own figures, gross NPA fell from 21.25% to 2.32% and CRAR rose from 10.7% to 26.65% while LIC and the Government owned the bank. So the "healthy books" are the proof that public ownership worked, not a reason to end it. He says it is best to close or sell PSBs "that regularly drain government finances". His own article says IDBI made a record profit of ₹9,513 crore in 2025-26. By his own test, IDBI does not even qualify for sale! He says repeated support "amounts to throwing good money after bad". His own numbers: GoI put in ₹27,441 crore and LIC ₹26,367 crore. That money did not go waste, it built a bank earning ₹9,513 crore a year. Good money after bad is when the patient dies. Here the patient walked out of the hospital, and we are selling him at the gate. He says GoI and LIC, with 15% and 19%, "stand to share in the benefits almost certain to accrue". If the benefits are almost certain, why sell 60.72% of them? And the sale brings ₹52,879 crore against roughly ₹53,800 crore of public money put in. Where is the fiscal gain? He says worker and wage concerns "lacked empirical support", citing a study of 14 Vajpayee-era privatisations. Not one of them was a bank. And if he is so sure employees will be better off, the government should have no hesitation in giving IDBI staff written statutory protection. The union is asking for exactly that. He compares it with Air India, sold with ₹61,000 crore of debt settled at taxpayers' expense. IDBI carries no such burden. One was bleeding, the other is earning. His subheading says "non-strategic PSBs", yet his own last paragraph lists "banking, insurance and financial services" among the four strategic sectors of the 2021 policy, and his own caveat says "provided national security or strategic concerns are not at stake". So we must ask, who examined that before handing an Indian bank to a foreign group? In 2018 I wrote about "अश्वत्थामा हतः" and how nobody hears "नरो वा कुंजरो वा". Today also, "biggest FDI" is announced loudly, while the turnaround under public ownership is said softly. And in December 2003 Parliament was assured majority ownership would stay. "रघुकुल रीति सदा चलि आई। प्रान जाहुँ बरु बचनु न जाई॥" Keep 51%. @DFS_India @narendramodi @nsitharaman