Bank pass books were updated only after repeated requests. Banking stopped being an industry, but worked like a government department. Even the entrance of most banks resembled a central jail, with heavy iron grills and an armed guard, leaving a narrow gap through which customers could barely enter. Things are changing now. Reluctantly, the government has opened the banking to the private sector and almost overnight, services have improved.
Bank drafts take less time, tellers are more courteous, and banking hours have been extended.
The public sector banks too have been forced to change themselves as they began to lose business in a big way. Nationalisation and after B y opening up the banking industry, the country has come full circle. Before 1947, banking was entirely the preserve of the private sector. Readers would be surprised to know that even the Reserve Bank of India was set up in 1935 as a private shareholders bank. Banks were controlled by a group of industrialists who used the bank deposits to build industrial empires.