India, Sept. 4 -- Now that employees unions have become almost toothless and the present government with big mandate is bold enough, they have done it. It will take years to make the merged entities work smoothly. The government and RBI have to take great responsibility to ensure smooth resolution of software issues and that it doesn't result into job loss. In the current international banking scenario where huge provisions are required to be made even for standard assets and capital adequacy norms as per Basel getting stricter and stricter there is no way but to merge weaker banks with stronger ones without the government having to pump in taxpayer's money frequently.

Talk of mergers was going on since Congress regime but they couldn't ...