Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas has written to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking urgent intervention in what he describes as a growing “foreignisation” of India’s banking sector, and he has used the case of the century-old Catholic Syrian Bank (now CSB Bank) to illustrate what he believes is a deeply worrying shift in the country’s financial architecture.
In his communication, which was made public through a post on X on Friday, Brittas argued that India’s financial sovereignty is being steadily eroded as foreign entities acquire controlling stakes in domestic banks, and he contended that these acquisitions have already begun to reshape labour practices, weaken social banking, and alter the fundamental purpose of longstanding community-rooted institutions.
Brittas recounted the history of the Catholic Syrian Bank, founded in 1920 in Thrissur, and he noted that the bank had symbolised indigenous enterprise and community capital for a century, yet had undergone a dramatic transformation after the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Government allowed 51 per cent of its equity to be acquired by the Canada-based Fairfax Group in 2018, through a Mauritius-registered holding company.
He emphasised that the same bank had, in 2007, been subject to strict regulatory intervention when the RBI directed Thailand-based NRI businessman Surachan Chawla to reduce his holding below 10 per cent, and he argued that the contrast between those decisions reflected a regulatory inconsistency that had enabled the transfer of an Indian deposit-taking institution into foreign hands.
The MP placed the CSB example within a broader trend, and he pointed to the acquisition of Lakshmi Vilas Bank by Singapore’s DBS in 2020, the emergence of Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation as the largest shareholder in Yes Bank after raising its stake to over 24 per cent, and the recently announced $3-billion agreements under which Dubai-based Emirates NBD Bank plans to acquire 60 per cent of RBL Bank.
He cautioned that reports of Fairfax’s interest in acquiring IDBI Bank added to fears that key Indian banks, including those with government stakes, may fall under foreign control, and he described these developments as alarming from the standpoint of economic sovereignty.
In assessing the post-acquisition performance of CSB, Brittas asserted that the consequences for employees had been severe, explaining that the permanent workforce had reportedly reduced from 2,906 in 2015 to just 906, while the number of contractual or cost-to-company recruits had surged and while no regular recruitment had occurred for nine years.
He stated that many employees had been forced to resign due to workplace pressures and disciplinary threats, and he argued that contract staff worked without uniform conditions, job security, statutory protections, or collective bargaining rights. He added that salaries of permanent staff had remained frozen at 2012 levels under the 10th Bipartite Settlement, even as salaries of top executives had increased sharply.
Brittas also noted that the bank had reduced its retirement age from 60 to 58 and had scaled back agricultural, MSME, housing, and educational lending while shifting towards corporate exposure, and he argued that such changes indicated a move away from social banking.
He warned that India’s earlier insulation from global financial crises could weaken if foreign ownership deepened, and he urged the finance minister to review the FDI framework, restore worker protections, examine CSB's governance practices, and ensure national control over strategic banking institutions.