Wide disparities exist within the banking sector as far as technological capabilities are concerned: the percentage of “computer literate” employees as percentage of total staff in 2000 was around 20 per cent in public sector banks compared with 100 per cent in new private and around 90 per cent in foreign banks (Reserve Bank of India, 2002).
Data reported by the RBI suggests that nearly 71 per cent of branches of public sector banks are fully computerised. However, computerisation needs to go beyond the mere “arithmeticals”, to borrow a term from the Report of the Committee on Banking Sector Reforms (Government of India, 1998), and instead, needs to be leveraged optimally to achieve and maintain high service and efficiency standards.