Banking Frauds in India and the Indian Economy.. Where to go to safeguard our hard earned money? It's the time to introspect;rather than to retrospect. We, the common people are the hardcore believers in Government financial institutions when our money and properties are concerned. Thanks to the Govt. officials or the common man's ideology that have a traditional and so called faith (actually myth) system. We know everything about the hardships a customer has to overcome right from the procedure of opening an account to deposit /withdraw money, making a demand draft, issue a new passbook, to fix a bar code, getting a loan etc. Even though a common people/citizen/consumer/customer/investor/depositor has a straight forward and long standing belief that every penny is safe with these noble institutions. 'Private banko ka kya pata;kab bandh ho jaye.' This is a common dialogue of almost every common customer in our country. But is the fact true? There are exceptions too. In my view and I am sure that you most people will also agree with me that we, the most Indians are emotionally driven followers, not the factually loaded thinkers. We have (blind) faith in govt. banking despite we see a lot of hurdles, complexities, jargons etc. If we compare public to private sector banks in every aspect, be it service, customer care, time, processing and procedures, zeal for work of staff etc, the latter one leads the race. I don't have a lenient view towards the private banks, but simply stating the facts. Frauds happen in both sectors. But it is a matter of concern when a fraud comes to light of a public bank, where there are multilayered scrutiny system, accountability, regulations and regulator, policies governing each and every aspects of banking network. Everything is prescribed, not described. In recent PNB fraud of about rupees 11,450 crore which is believed to be the largest fraud in the banking history in India, you will be surprised to know that the said bank already got awards in banking practice. Isn't it a failure in vigilance or monitoring? Now let us look into some biggest banking scams in India- According to an IIM - Bangalore study the public sector banks in India lost at least Rs.22,743 crore due to fraudulent banking activities between 2012 & 2016. In FY 2017 alone approx. 455 cases of fraud transaction of Rs.1,00,000 & above each were detected at ICICI Bank, 429 at SBI, 237 at HDFC Bank. In 2011,CBI revealed that almost 10,000 fictious accounts were created by the executives of mostly public banks such as Bank of Maharashtra, Oriental Bank of Commerce & IDBI amounting Rs. 1,500 crore. In 2014-fixed deposit fraud of public sector banks of Rs.700 crore. In the same year industrialist Bipin Vohra defrauded Central Bank of India of about 14 billion rupees using forged documents. - Bribe for loan involving ex CMD of Syndicate Bank SK Jain involving Rs.8000/-Crore. - Liquor Baron Vijay Mallya was the willful defaulter of loan amount of UBI, SBI, PNB. 2015-Scam of Rs. 200 crore by Jain Infra Project in Central Bank of India. -2015- employees of various banks involved in transaction scam for a phony Hong Kong Corporation totalling Rs. 6,000 crore. 2016-Syndicate Bank 350 fake accounts valued at Rs. 1,000 crore. 2017-fraud by Vijay Mallya - IDBI and other banks Rs. 9500 crore. 2017-fraud by Jatin Mehta of Winsome Diamonds of Rs. 7000 crore almost similar case to the Nirav Modi's one connected with LoU(Letter of Undertaking). 2017-Deccan Cronicle Holding-1161 crore rupees 2017-Ganesh Jewellery House-2223 crore rupees from 20 different banks And the latest Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi case and so on..... It affects a lot to the Indian Economy which is going through a turbulent phase at present. Investors in these banks' shares are the prime and transparent victims. Public will definitely loss faith on banking system resulting the over all slowdown of development of India. Indian banking system is a major part of service sector. Again service sector is the highest contributor to the GDP(more than 53%). So it is interlinked with the economic growth. Already most people experienced bitter taste of GST and demonetisation. Corruption in every field is already leading the race for many years. In my view the great challenge of time is corruption and compulsion(to fight corruption and to make public servant's honest and time bound duty a compulsion). We compare our India with neighbouring China. But can we really have the guts to compare us with China in this aspect? Moreover I have not yet started to discuss NPAs. (The figures are taken from ET Now Digital of 19th Feb18)