New Delhi: From the presidency banks of the 1800s, such as the Bank of Bengal and the Bank of Bombay, to the setting up of State Bank of India, a new book by Vikrant Pande traces the making of India’s largest and most-trusted bank — the SBI.
Aristocrats, peasants, musicians, masons, cement plant owners and casual labourers, the State Bank of India has been the bank for Indians from all walks of life, striving to blend business goals with social obligations.
Published by Westland Books, The SBI Story, will be released on 2 February on SoftCover, ThePrint’s e-venue to launch select non-fiction books.
Deeply researched and written in vivid prose, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in business and economic history.
As Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser, Government of India has said about the book, “The absolutely fascinating story of Indiaʼs largest bank from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Vikrant takes us on the long journey from the colonial period, through the socialist period to the re-emergence of India as an economy of global consequence; the State Bank of India has been at the heart of it all. Written in a simple narrative style, it makes economic history accessible to a wider audience.”
The SBI is formed
The book looks back at the compelling circumstances that prompted the founding of the presidency banks, how they fared back in the day and why they were merged to become the Imperial Bank of India in 1921, which came to be the SBI in 1955.
Tracing the SBI’s deep connection to India’s economic progress, and the bank’s proactive approach to change and to reinvent itself to meet the evolving needs of a growing nation, the The SBI Story tells us how the bank has come to symbolise banking across the length and breadth of India today.
Written with the cooperation of the SBI and after discussions with former top officials of the bank, the SBI Story is about how banking emerged in the last two centuries, and how closely it participated in the key events that shaped the nation.
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