It is not usual for Forbes India to be talking about government-owned enterprises. In general, we believe that private enterprise delivers more innovation and creates more wealth than bureaucratically-run state-owned leviathans. But once in a while, when there is reason to do so, we make exceptions. The arrival of a woman CEO at the top of India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, forced us to take a look at the venerable institution. Fifty-seven-year-old Arundhati Bhattacharya became the first woman head of the bank last October, and ran smack into a downward spiral of falling performance: Rising levels of bad loans, poor returns on equity, a depleting top management pool (4,000 officers are retiring every year), a bloated and underproductive workforce, et al.
(This story appears in the 07 March, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
The \'learned\' Editor-in-Chief R. Jagannathan talks about the new SBI Chairperson, \"To her credit, Bhattacharya is not looking at her current challenges with KARMIC RESIGNATION (empahsis added), even when the Bhagwad Geeta strongly desists us from falling into a-karma in the name of Karma Yoga. We in the intelligentsia may need to check for our misunderstandings of and biases against our country\'s rich cultural heritage.
on Feb 23, 2014