The Rot Inside Public Sector Banks: A Culture of Circulars, Calls, and Zero Accountability

The Rot Inside Public Sector Banks: A Culture of Circulars, Calls, and Zero Accountability

In today’s public sector banks, fear flows downward and excuses flow upward. From Head Office to FGMO, FGMO to Zones, and Zones to Branches — everyone is busy giving directions and issuing threats. Circulars rain like confetti. Targets are revised every week. Yet actual work? Nowhere to be seen.

Walk into any branch and you’ll find managers who behave like old-school babus. Ask them about the latest interest rate, a fresh RBI guideline, or even a simple circular — and they’ll pass the buck: “Sir, let me check with someone else.” and the officers in lateral entry cadre, directly in scale 2 or 3 ,  the god can only manage them. 

Scale I and II officers, who should be the backbone, are either guiding their own zonal bosses or running behind them. Why? Because they have no time to study or update themselves . Their days are consumed by back-to-back video conferences, preparing defensive slides on why targets were missed, and answering endless data calls from above.

Chief Managers in Zonal Offices spend their entire day on phones, extracting branch data only to forward it upward — DZM to FGMO to HO. This is not banking. This is a reporting bureaucracy dressed in banking uniform. No one has the bandwidth, courage, or incentive to motivate the team below. Leadership has been replaced by compliance theatre.

Compare this with private banks. The difference is glaring: superior IT systems that reduce manual drudgery, aggressive marketing that brings business, strong legal teams that protect the institution, and robust compliance frameworks that prevent disasters instead of reacting to them. Private banks empower people; public sector banks bury them under layers of process and fear.

The result? Demotivated workforce, stagnating business, and customers quietly shifting to private players. The few capable officers who still want to perform are drowning in this sea of meetings and upward reporting.

Public sector banks don’t need more circulars. They need accountability at every level, reduced bureaucracy, real empowerment, and leaders who inspire instead of inspect. Until then, this cycle of “threats from top, excuses from bottom” will continue — while private banks keep eating our lunch.

Time to wake up. The balance sheet is bleeding, and so is the morale.

Disclaimer:- This is my personal opinion and you have all rights to disagree with.

Writer shailendra kr Pandey