The image of Jitu Munda carrying the exhumed remains of his sister on his shoulder to a bank in Odisha’s Keonjhar district will haunt India for a long time. Not because it was merely a story of how the poor are normally treated. What made this episode benumbing was that every institution of the State — and society itself — appeared to watch the spectacle, as it unfolded, with complete moral apathy.
Jitu Munda had walked to a regional rural bank branch seeking access to the modest savings left behind by his sister, Kalra Munda. Actually, the greater tragedy lay in what followed.
After the bank and the police intervened, he walked back with the same burden on his shoulder. No ambulance arrived. No police vehicle was offered. No local official intervened. No one in the bank also thought it necessary to arrange at least the basic assistance of arranging a vehicle for Jitu and the body to go back home. The bank branch certainly possessed discretionary powers to sanction a small amount towards emergency support. The police officer standing beside an official vehicle could easily have stepped in. The Mussorie-trained babus in the district administration could have acted. But the “system” collectively looked away.
The ₹19,000 lying in Kalra Munda’s account has now been paid to the family. Donations reportedly amounting to nearly ₹15 lakh have poured in. The system’s conscience, it appears, became active only after national and international media attention forced it to awaken.
Yet the larger questions raised by this episode remain unanswered.
RBI’s role
The first concerns the silence of India’s banking regulator, the Reserve Bank of India. Customer protection and financial inclusion have long been projected as central pillars of RBI’s institutional philosophy. One therefore expected at least a public acknowledgment that a grave systemic failure had occurred. Even a brief statement assuring citizens that the matter was being examined for redress and non-recurrence, would have conveyed that the regulator recognised the enormity of what happened.
More importantly, there is no indication whether the Banking Ombudsman mechanism under RBI took “suo motu” cognisance of the matter. Must a poor and illiterate tribal first draft a formal complaint before the grievance redress architecture moves into action? If the Ombudsman mechanism cannot proactively respond to such an extraordinary case of exclusion and distress, then fundamental questions arise about the philosophy underlying the system itself.
The issue also raises concerns about regulatory communication and institutional design. RBI regulations mandate that banks “shall” obtain nomination details for deposit accounts. If a depositor declines nomination despite being informed of its advantages, such refusal must be recorded in writing and preserved by the bank. Was this procedure followed in the account of Kalra Munda? The public does not know.
There is a deeper issue as well. Can rural India reasonably be expected to navigate concepts such as “nomination”, “legal heir” and “ombudsman” with ease? There is profound disconnect in even the regulator expecting rural India to make sense of a Scandinavian title that many educated Indians themselves barely understand. If institutions meant for the common citizens remain linguistically and culturally distant from them, “Inclusion” becomes more theoretical than real. There is need to democratise and decolonise the redress machinery.
This incident also exposes the gradual retreat of institutional outreach by the regulator. There was a time when senior RBI officials, especially from Regional Offices, regularly travelled into rural India to understand conditions on the ground. Former RBI Governor D Subbarao had repeatedly emphasised such an outreach. Won’t our system be more responsive if those on the Board of RBI visit at least one village every six months and bank branches nearby? They will then realise how “Antyodaya” works on the ground.
Western gaze
Today, the banking system’s gaze often appears more fixed on Washington, Basel and global regulatory discourse, while India’s own margins remain inadequately examined. It is revealing that no top brass of the banking or regulatory establishment appears to have visited Jitu Munda’s village to understand how the system failed and what lessons to be learnt.
The second issue thrown up by this episode concerns the near absence of institutional support structures for rural citizens dealing with official systems. Why did the village-level government machinery not intervene to help this family navigate procedures? Kalra Munda died in January. So arranging a death certificate for the family should not have been a problem. Does the State possess any effective structure to assist poor citizens in handling paperwork relating to banks, welfare entitlements and government offices?
Despite repeated claims of simplification and digital transformation, official processes remain intimidating. Ease of doing business cannot remain confined to corporate India and entrepreneurs. For the ordinary citizen, ease of doing business means the ability to deal with banks, local administration and welfare systems with ease and without endless procedural obstacles.
Admittedly, on so many parameters, the RBI remains one of the country’s finest institutions, and the present Governor has repeatedly stressed the importance of customer service. But financial inclusion cannot end with the opening of a bank account. True inclusion will be achieved only when the poorest citizen can remain engaged with the financial system without any difficulty.
For, what happened in Keonjhar, we can only collectively say “Lift a fistful of earth and pour it over our shameless heads, Bapu” (Quote adapted from an article by Gopalkrishna Gandhi)
The writer is a commentator on banking and finance
Published on May 15, 2026