PANORAMA 9

DECCAN HERALD
Wednesday
April 12, 2023

TheNPAgame:Banksmustfine-tunetheirearlywarningsystems
BRAJESH KUMAR TIWARI crore.Atthesametime,BankofIndiaranks bank retains these provisions from its own the taxpayers’ money, on the other, the it is impossible to eradicate it entirely. This thatseniorofficersareheldaccountable.

P
ublic-sector banks have recovered
only 14% of the 7.34 lakh crore loan
amountwrittenofffromMarch2017-
2022. Finance Minister Nirmala Sithara-
man said in a written reply in the Rajya
Sabha recently that out of Rs 7.34 lakh
crore in NPAs, only Rs 1.03 lakh crore has
been recovered, and an amount of Rs 6.31
lakh crore is currently the written-off loan
amount in public sector banks, for which
recovery efforts are on. According to the
reply, public sector banks have written off
an amount of about Rs 91,000 crore in the
first nine months of the current financial
year (2022–23). The finance minister has
given information related to Public Sector
Banks(PSBs)intheParliament.
SBI has the highest NPA of 98,347 crore
as of December 31, 2022, followed by PNB
with Rs 83,584 crore, Union Bank with Rs
63,770 crore, Canara Bank with Rs 50,143
crore, and Bank of Baroda with Rs 41,858
sixthwithRs38,885croreinNPAs,andIndi-
anBankranksseventhwithRs29,484crore.
The finance minister told Parliament
that PSBs wrote off a total of Rs 11,17,883
crore during the last six financial years,
following the RBI guidelines for banks and
the policy approved by their boards. There
has also been an increase in the number of
willful defaulters in loan repayment cases,
from8,045in2017inpublicsectorbanksto
12,439in2022,andfrom1,616in2017inpri-
vatesectorbanksto2,447onJune30,2022.
NPAsarethemostseriousproblemcon-
frontingIndianbanks,affectingbothprivate
and public sector institutions. Bank NPAs
have decreased in recent years, but there
are write-off accounts behind this. Banks
wrote off more than twice as many loans
as they recovered in five years. According
toRBIguidelines,suchbadloansforwhich
banksmakeprovisionforthefullamountin
theiraccountsafterfouryearsareremoved
from the bank’s balance sheet, even if the
resources. And does so only with public
fundsbecausebanksdonothavetheirown.
Thisisalsoreferredtoaswritingoff.Banks
write off NPAs to keep their balance sheets
cleanandtobenefitfromtaxbreaks.Banks
claim that even after the loan is written off,
pressureisappliedtoreturntheloan;how-
ever,statisticsshowthatmorethan15-20%
oftheloanisnotrecovered.
Inaddition,theministersaidthatMehul
Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems is at the top of the
list of companies that wilfullydefaulted on
their obligations. Following this, notable
companies such as ABG Shipyard Limit-
ed,EraInfraEngineering,ConcastSteel&
Power,REIAgroLimited,RotomacGlobal
PrivateLimited,andmanymoreemerged.
According to information that was made
publicbytheRBI,only312largedefaulters
are responsible for more than 76% of the
entireamountofbadloans.
While on the one hand the government
is providing the banks with capital using
banks are putting enormous sums of loan
defaultersintocoldstorage.Ifaninstalment
payment from the common man is not de-
positedforthreemonthsorevenonemonth,
then the banks begin to become troubled.
Yet, the recovery from large corporations
is not taken care of, and those responsible
forbankfraudflyawaytoothercountries.
The banking system in any country
serves as the economic foundation for that
nation. Everyone in the country is affected
when there are excessive losses sustained
by banks because the money that is put in
banks belongs to the people living in the
country.Themajorcausesofnon-perform-
ingassets(NPAs)forbanksarefaultyloans
andfraudulentactivity.
AsaresultofrisingNPA,thenetinterest
margin (NIM) of the banks begins to de-
crease, while at the same time, their oper-
ating costs continue to steadily rise. NPA is
analogoustocancerinthebankingsystem:
it can be managed to a certain extent, but
is due to the fact that in order to stimulate
the economy, all governments provide the
corporateworldwithspecialprivileges,and
itisexpectedfromthecorporateworldthat
they will lay the groundwork for economic
reform, which will result in a boom in the
manufacturingsectoraswellasanincrease
inemployment.
It is essential for banks to implement
regulation and oversight over chartered
accountantsinordertocutdownonNPAs.
WhenconsideringgrantingloanstoIndian
enterprisesthathavealreadytakenoutlarge
loanselsewhere,banksshouldexerciseex-
treme caution. There is an immediate and
criticalneedtostrengthenboththeinternal
and external auditing systems of financial
institutions. While junior officers are fre-
quently held accountable for defaults, the
Credit Sanctioning Committee, which is
comprisedofseniorlevelofficers,isthebody
that is responsible for making key judge-
ments. As a result, it is essential to ensure
The workers in the loan department
should rotate quickly. This is very crucial.
Before approving funding for significant
endeavours, financial institutions ought
to establish in-house rating agencies to do
exhaustive risk assessments. In addition
to this, an efficient Management Informa-
tionSystemneedstobeputinplacesothat
early warning signals regarding business
projects may be monitored. Both the bank
and the officials from the RBI need to ex-
aminetheborrower’sscorefromtheCredit
Information Bureau (India) Limited. It is
recommendedthatthepassportsofthema-
jor debtors be deposited with the Ministry
ofExternalAffairs.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and
Signature Bank hit not only businesses in
the US, but others in countries across con-
tinents,includingIndia.
(Thewriterisanassociateprofessoratthe
AtalBihariVajpayeeSchoolofManagement
andEntrepreneurship,JNU,NewDelhi)

Canintelligencebe HowChina-Russia
allianceaffectsIndia
separatedfromthebody? R
SANKALP GURJAR

ecently, China’s Presi-

dent Xi Jinping visited
MoscowandmetRussian
India’s efforts to diversify its
weapons supplies away from
Russia will be intensified.
Second, the China-Russia
alliance is directed against the
Some researchers question whether AI can be truly intelligent without a body that President Vladimir Putin. This
wasthe40thmeetingbetween
UnitedStatesandtheWestand
impingesonIndia’sgeopolitical
interacts with and learns from the physical world Xi and Putin. The visit demon-
stratedthefurtherstrengthen-
trajectory. It will influence the
geopolitics of Eurasia as well

W
OLIVER WHANG
hat is the relationship
between mind and
body? Maybethemind
is like a video game
controller, moving the
bodyaroundtheworld,
taking it on joyrides. Or maybe the body
manipulates the mind with hunger, sleep-
iness and anxiety, something like a river
steering a canoe. Is the mind like electro-
magneticwaves,flickeringinandoutofour
lightbulbbodies?Oristhemindacaronthe
road? A ghost in the machine?
Maybe no metaphor will ever quite fit
because there is no distinction between
mind and body. There is just experience,
orsomekindofphysicalprocess,agestalt.
These questions, agonised over by phi-
losophers for centuries, are gaining new
urgencyassophisticatedmachineswithar-
tificial intelligence begin to infiltrate soci-
ety.ChatbotssuchasOpenAI’sGPT-4and
Google’s Bard have minds, in some sense.
Trainedonvasttrovesofhumanlanguage,
they have learned how to generate novel
combinationsoftext,imagesandevenvid-
eos.Whenprimedintherightway,theycan
expressdesires,beliefs,hopes,intentions,
love. They can speak of introspection and
doubt, self-confidence and regret.
But some AI researchers say that the
technology won’t reach true intelligence,
or true understanding of the world, until
it works with a body that can perceive,
react to and feel around its environment.
For them, talk of disembodied intelligent
minds is misguided, even dangerous. AI
that is unable to explore the world and
learn its limits, in the ways that children
figureoutwhattheycanandcan’tdo,could
makelife-threateningmistakesandpursue
its goals at the risk of human welfare.
“The body, in a very simple way, is the
foundationforintelligentandcautiousac-
tion,”said Joshua Bongard, a roboticist at
the University of Vermont. “As far as I can
see, this is the only path to safe AI.”
At a lab in Pasadena, California, a small
team of engineers has spent the past few
yearsdevelopingoneofthefirstpairingsof
a large language model with a body: a tur-
quoiserobotnamedMoxie.Aboutthesize
of a toddler, Moxie has a teardrop-shaped
head,softhandsandalacritousgreeneyes.
Inside its hard plastic body is a computer
processor that runs the same kind of soft-
ware as ChatGPT and GPT-4. Moxie’s
makers,partofastartupcalledEmbodied,
describe the device as “the world’s first AI
robot friend.”
T T
Chinahasset
the sealonthe
Iran-Saudi
Arabiadeal Ranjan Mathai former Foreign Secretary of India and High
The bot was conceived, in 2017, to help
children with developmental disorders
practice emotional awareness and com-
munication skills. When someone speaks
toMoxie,itsprocessorconvertsthesound
intotextandfeedsthetextintoalargelan-
guage model, which in turn generates a
verbalandphysicalresponse.Moxie’seyes
canmovetoconsoleyouforthelossofyour
dog, and it can smile to pump you up for
school.Therobotalsohassensorsthattake
invisualcuesandrespondtoyourbodylan-
guage, mimicking and learning from the
behavior of people around it.
“It’s almost like this wireless commu-
nication between humans,” said Paolo
Pirjanian, a roboticist and the founder of
Embodied. “You literally start feeling it in
your body.” Over time, he said, the robot
getsbetteratthiskindofgiveandtake,like
a friend getting to know you.
Researchers at Alphabet, Google’s
parent company, have taken a similar ap-
proachtointegratinglargelanguagemod-
els with physical machines. In March, the
companyannouncedthesuccessofarobot
they called PaLM-E, whichwas ableto ab-
sorbvisualfeaturesofitsenvironmentand
information about its own body position
and translate it all into natural language.
SCAN THE QR CODE AND READ ONLINE
he Western drive to cut oil consumption, and US
blunders in alienating the Saudi Arabian leadership
gave China an opening which it grasped
Commissioner to the United Kingdom
Thisallowedtherobottorepresentwhere
it was in space relative to other things and
eventuallyopenadrawerandpickupabag
of chips.
Robots of this kind, experts say, will be
abletoperformbasictaskswithoutspecial
programming.Theycouldostensiblypour
youaglassofCoke,makeyoulunchorpick
youupfromthefloorafterabadtumble,all
inresponsetoaseriesofsimplecommands.
But many researchers doubt that the ma-
chines’ minds, when structured in this
modular way, will ever be truly connected
to the physical world and, therefore, will
never be able to display crucial aspects of
human intelligence.
Boyuan Chen, a roboticist at Duke Uni-
versitywhoisworkingondevelopingintel-
ligent robots, pointed out that the human
mind — or any other animal mind, for that
matter — is inextricable from the body’s
actions in and reactions to the real world,
shaped over millions of years of evolution.
Humanbabieslearntopickupobjectslong
before they learn language.
The artificially intelligent robot’s mind,
incontrast,wasbuiltentirelyonlanguage,
and often makes common-sense errors
thatstemfromtrainingprocedures.Itlacks
adeeperconnectionbetweenthephysical
OldPension
Schemeis coming
backwithvenge-
ance. Stopit!
ingoftheChina-Russiaalliance.
Graham Allison has described
the deepening China-Russia
strategic relationship as the
‘most consequential unde-
clared alliance in the world.’
Last year, just before the
Russian invasion of Ukraine,
these two countries signed a
joint statement in which they
declared that they have built
a ‘no limits’ partnership that
will have ‘no forbidden areas’.
For India, the deepening
strategiccooperationbetween
China and Russia is an omi-
nous signal.
ThefalteringwarinUkraine
andthelacklustremilitaryper-
formance of Russia through
the year have increased its de-
pendenceonChina.Moscowis
nowajuniorpartnerofBeijing
and is dependent on China for
politico-economic support.
A bulk of Russian energy ex-
ports are going to China, and
the Chinese yuan has emerged
as an alternative currency for
the payments to Russia. There
were reports about likely Chi-
DH ILLUSTRATION: DEEPAK HARICHANDAN nesemilitaryexportstoRussia.
However, the US has warned
and theoretical, Chen said. “I believe that China to refrain from sending
intelligence can’t be born without having weapons to Russia.
theperspectiveofphysicalembodiments.” The growing Russian politi-
Some experts, including Pirjanian, re- cal, economic, and military de-
cently conveyed concern in a letter about pendenceonChinaisbadnews
the possibility of creating AI that could forIndiaforthreereasons.The
disinterestedly steamroll humans in the first and most important prob-
pursuit of some goal (such as efficiently lem is that of China. India and
producing paper clips), or that could be China are locked in a border
harnessed for nefarious purposes (such standoff in Ladakh, and the
as disinformation campaigns). The letter border in Arunachal Pradesh
calledforatemporarypauseinthetraining has also seen skirmishes. The
of models more powerful than GPT-4. bulk of India’s military arsenal
Bongard, as well as a number of other consists of Russian weapons.
scientists in the field, thought the letter China is also receiving ad-
calling for a pause in research could bring vanced Russian weapons and
about uninformed alarmism. But he is technologies. The deepening
concerned about the dangers of our ever Russia-China alliance means
improvingtechnologyandbelievesthatthe whatever advantage India
onlywaytosuffuseembodiedAIwitharo- may have enjoyed in the past
bust understanding of its own limitations along the frontier may not ex-
is to rely on the constant trial and error of ist anymore.
moving around in the real world. Given Russia’s dependence
Start with simple robots, he said, “and on China for political and eco-
as they demonstrate that they can do stuff nomicsupport,itwillbeunwill-
safely, then you let them have more arms, ingtoputpressureonChinaor
more legs, give them more tools.” eventakeasupportivestandto-
Andmaybe,withthehelpofabody,areal wards India in the border con-
artificial mind will emerge. frontation.CoupledwithIndia’s
The New York Times erodingmilitaryedgeoverChi-
na due to the similar weapons
deployedbybothsides,thiswill
push India farther away from
he Centre is on the horns of a dilemma. It has
refused the demand of states reverting to the OPS Russia and closer to the West.
to return the accumulated NPS corpus The military-technical rela-
Subhash Chandra Garg former Finance & Economic Affairs Secretary, and author of tionshipbetweenIndiaandthe
‘Explanation and Commentary on Budget 2023-24’.
West will also deepen further.
astheIndo-Pacificandpresent
difficult dilemmas for India.
India is a member of Eurasia’s
premiersecurityorganisation,
the Shanghai Cooperation Or-
ganisation (SCO). It is also an
enthusiastic participant in the
US-led Indo-Pacific initiatives
liketheQuad.Sharpeninggreat
power rivalries and strength-
ening of China-Russia alliance
will force India to perform the
difficultbalancingactbetween
EurasiaandtheIndo-Pacific.It
will mean recalibrating India’s
diplomatic as well as strategic
priorities and posture.
Finally, as the host of this
year’s G-20 summit, India will
notwanttoseeaconfrontation
between China and Russia on
the one hand and the Western
countries on the other at the
summit. The sharp divisions
and the confrontationist dy-
namic will directly and, more
importantly, negatively im-
pact the planned outcomes of
the summit.
IndiaisalsothechairofSCO
this year and will be expected
to ensure that the organisa-
tion tones down its anti-west-
ern rhetoric. Iran, another
anti-Western country, will be
added as a new member to the
grouping, which will further
complicate India’s tasks.
In the last two decades,
the balance of power in the
China-Russia alliance has
reversed. China is now the
senior partner, whereas Rus-
sia is further diminished by
the quagmire in Ukraine.
For India, despite the wide-
spread public sympathy and
decades-long strategic rela-
tionship,Russiaisnolongeran
attractive partner. It is heavily
sanctioned by the West, exces-
sivelydependentonChina,and,
asseeninUkraine,isnolonger
a military great power.
The Russia-China alliance
and their competitive relation-
ship with the West are reshap-
ing the world around India,
and it is being forced to adjust
its strategies. While the dilem-
mas that India faced owing to
the China-Russia partnership
wereapparent,XiJinping’svis-
it to Moscow has accentuated
those dilemmas.
(The writer is an assistant
professor at the Department of
Geopolitics and International
Relations,ManipalAcademyof
Higher Education, Udupi.)

OUR PAGES OF HISTORY OASIS LASYA SHASHIMOHAN

50 YEARS AGO: APRIL, 1973

Delhiemissary’sfirm‘no’
25 YEARS AGO: APRIL, 1998

toGujaratrebels
Gandhinagar, April 11
The AICC General Secretary, Mrs.
Maragatham Chandrasekhar, today
ruled out any change the leadership of
the Gujarat Congress Legislature Party.
“There is no room for change in the
leadership. This is the unequivocal deci-
sion of the Central Congress Parliamen-
tary Board and the Gujarat Congress
would have to abide by it,”she said
shortly after receiving a joint memoran-
dum from 62 dissident MLAs demand-
ing a change in leadership. Speaking to
newsmen, she said the Congress Board’s
decided not to change leadership at the
organisational and Government level.
BJPsoftpedalscontentious
S
issues
New Delhi, April 11
Outgoing BJP President L K Advani
today called upon his party to adopt a
new approach and devote the coming
decade to nation-building. He justified
leaving out contentious issues that
formed part of the BJP’s ideology from
the National Agenda for governance
on the ground that the need of the hour
was to arm India with a strong, stable
and honest government. In his opening
remarks on the first day of the party’s
national executive meeting here, Mr
Advani admitted that in the general
elections the BJP had secured a near
mandate but not a clear mandate.
ometime in 2018, I started
following a raw vegan diet and
meditating seriously. A few weeks
into meditation, I started feeling a
pleasant tingling sensation between
my eyebrows. The tingling would be
most intense during meditation, but
would arbitrarily persist throughout
the day.
During this period, when in the
hazy zone between sleep and wake-
fulness, I had what could be labeled
as two vital epiphanies. Deep inside,
I was aware that this knowledge that
had dawned on me had something to
do with the sensation I experienced
between my eyebrows.
I started researching my “symp-
toms.” I learnt that Hinduism/Bud-
Gatewaytodivinity
dhism recognized 7 primary chakras, spiritual practices like yoga; medi- intuition to guide stalwarts in their
which are energy centers corre- tation et al. Non-spiritual practices respective fields. Coming back to my
sponding with different organs of the like extraordinary absorption in one’s own experiences, the prickling sensa-
human body. work can cause the third eye to tion stopped as soon as l became too
The ajna chakra or the reopen. I have heard of legend- busy to meditate. I had interpreted
“third-eye” chakra lies ary chess players and mathe- the tingling as the ajna chakra trying
between the eyebrows; it maticians who claimed that to open.
corresponds with the pin- new moves and solutions to Whether or not the chakra actually
eal gland, the activation mathematical problems, re- opens following tingling or throbbing
of which is associated with spectively, dawned on them is a topic for speculation. Incidentally,
intuition and wisdom. It in their sleep. Initially, I had the tingling sensation has reappeared
is said to be the gateway be- assumed that sleep bridges the after I resumed meditation.
tween humans and divinity. gap between the conscious and the However, this time I didn’t fixate
It is said that as children, we subconscious making such insights on the sensation or try to understand
are born with an open “third eye.” possible. it. Like spiritual guru Deepak Chopra
However, years of calcification causes However, after learning about suggests, I let the sensation pass
its blockage, thereby reducing our chakras, I considered the possibility and got on with my work just as I
intuitive abilities. However, the ajna of the ajna chakra being activated by would with a mild shoulder or
chakra can be reopened through exemplary focus, further allowing elbow ache.