Interest Rates- Privileges for the Privileged

A Correspondent writes:
NEITHER the report of the Committee on Differential Interest Rates nor the Minute of Dissent appended to it really come to grips with the problem of how the instrument of credit could be used to help the 'weaker sections' of society. The majority report aims really at maintaining the status quo. Faced with the Finance Minister's public commitment, made at one of his meetings with bankers last year, that commercial banks would charge lower interest rates on loans to certain categories of borrowers, the majority report is quite clearly concerned with making this ministerial commitment as meaningless as possible. Its attitude throughout is that of finding problems for every solution. Obviously, the pros and cons of charging low rates of interest to help the 'weaker sections' are not worth discussing if the differential is to be one or one-half per cent. What deserves to be discussed is the Minute of Dissent which has proposed a system of interest differentials ranging from 1