Twitter morcha stokes hashtag rage against ‘tyranny’ of banks

Hundreds post tweets in protest against ‘unfair’ bank charges

Mumbai, 04/07/17: (3rd, R) Sucheta Dalal and hundreds of participants tweets during Tweet morcha 'Bank se Bachao', protest against the unfair fees levied by banks at Ravindra Natya Mandir Prabhadevi.
Photo: Emmanual Yogini

Hundreds of tweets tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official handle @narendramodi were posted on Tuesday in Dadar as part of a Twitter morcha by consumers and civil society members against the ‘tyranny’ of big banks.

The silent morcha stoked a hashtag rage against the ‘unfair’ charges levied by banks on daily transactions, and the ease with which big defaulters got away by just paying a pittance as fine. The morcha, organised by the Congress party and the non-profit Money Life Foundation at Ravindra Natya Mandir, trended on Twitter with the hashtags #TweetMorcha and #BankSeBachao.

Some of the popular tweets included, “Paying for our own cash? Is this what we get for going cashless?

@narendramodi

@PMOIndia

@arunjaitley

#BankSeBachao ,” and “If manufacturing has moved to robots, why is banking needing human beings? And who needs service? Cut frills.

#BankSeBachao

#TweetMorcha .”

The Money Life Foundation had started a petition on the website

change.org titled ‘Banks stop fleecing depositors’, which received about two lakh signatures. But they decided to take the cause to Twitter when they failed to get a response from the Union Ministry of Finance.

Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam said, “The Prime Minister is active on Twitter so we chose this platform to address the issue. We want him to hear the plea of the common man who suffers daily due to the unjust practices of the banks. We hope this plea doesn’t go unanswered and appropriate action is taken against banks.” The organisers said the hashtags were trending on Twitter through the day and they hoped the PM would take a note of their complaints. Author Sucheta Dalal said, “Earlier, we approached the Reserve Bank of India and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. However, the pleas went unheard. But there is nothing like the unity of common people.People came together and tweeted to the Prime Minister expressing their views and disappointment over the issue. This protest not only aims at bringing to the fore the prejudices of banks but also to show them the strength of the unity of the common people in this country.”

Lalita Joshi, Joint Secretary, All India Bank Employees Association, said, “The burden of big loans should not be passed on to customers, especially in the case of public sector banks.” Abhay Datar of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat said the bank charges levied were ‘unreasonable’.