Direction (Qs.1 to 10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below them. Certain words are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

At the first monetary policy statement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for 2018-19, it seems impossible to believe that the previous bi-monthly on 7 February marked a high point in the relationship between the Union finance ministry and the RBI. There was on that date a regulatory add-on of a 180-day window of forbearance for payment dues from small borrowers, and abolition of loan limits in the MSME (medium, small and micro enterprises) segment. Those initiatives followed the supportive measures for the small-scale sector in the Union budget on 1 February, through the corporate tax cut, and additional funding for the Micro-units Development Refinance Agency (Mudra).

The appearance of team play was shattered after the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud broke in mid-February. The PNB fraud has variously been placed as having been in operation since 2011, perhaps even earlier. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, speaking at the Economic Times Global Business Summit on 23 February, blamed the top management and auditors of PNB, but was also quoted as having added: “Regulators ultimately decide the rules of the game and regulators have to have a third eye which is to be perpetually open. But unfortunately in the Indian system, we politicians are accountable, the regulators are not.”

RBI governor Urjit Patel came back forcefully on the occasion of a 14 March address at the Gujarat National Law University, pointing to the lack of ownership-neutrality in the Banking Regulation Act of 1949. The act as amended withholds the RBI from imposing certain types of penalties for errant conduct on public sector banks, like firing the chief executive officer, removing directors or superseding the board. The speech lists seven of them. Patel was right to have pointed them out, appropriately in an address to young entrants into the legal profession. That kind of unevenness in the regulatory landscape clearly has to be swept away. The PNB fraud is said to have started rolling in 2011. As it happens, RBI that year appointed a high-level steering committee chaired by then deputy governor K.C. Chakraborty (a past chairman of PNB), to upgrade banking supervision to global best practices. Its report recommended that supervision be expanded in scope to go beyond a narrow focus on regulatory compliance or bank solvency, towards assessing the riskiness of a bank’s operations, and its risk mitigation strategies. Independently, an inspection of select overseas branches of Indian banks was also conducted in May 2012, the previous one having been done in May 2008, but the findings are not publicly known.

The Chakraborty Committee report was submitted in June 2012. Its recommendations were accepted, and the supervisory system overhauled on to a new risk-based supervision (RBS) platform. Training was initiated for senior officers of the major banks. The new framework went into operation in 2013-14, renamed SPARC (supervisory programme for assessment of risk and capital). An initial set of 28 banks from across the ownership spectrum, accounting for 60% of total banking assets, was covered that year. PNB may well have been among them. Eight more banks were added over the next two years, and by 2016-17, all scheduled commercial banks were covered. SPARC specifically calls for ongoing interaction between banks and supervisors, not just periodic inspections. Finally, there is a further overlay since 28 February 2017 of a standing committee on cyber security.

In a parallel development starting in 2012-13, memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed with 16 overseas regulators, which the annual report for that year says led to “substantial progress in supervisory information sharing and cooperation within jurisdictions where Indian banks are operating”. By the close of reporting year 2016-17, the number of such MoUs had expanded to 40, and there was also a statement of cooperation with three US financial regulators. Since overseas jurisdictions were another point from which the PNB fraud could have been spotted, these agreements do not seem to have led to information exchange of any diagnostic value.