One of the many things that came under the scanner after news of the Syndicate Bank scam broke recently is the disparity in the salaries of senior executives in the private and public sectors. Top executives in public sector undertakings (PSUs) are paid only a fraction of what their private sector counterparts earn. And with private companies going out of their way to reward employees, that difference is only getting wider. The banking sector perhaps best epitomises this disparity. ICICI Bank CEO and Managing Director Chanda Kochhar’s total pay in 2013-14 was in excess of ₹5 crore, while most of her PSU peers were paid ₹20-30 lakh. HDFC Bank paid its MD Aditya Puri ₹6 crore. State-owned Bank of Baroda’s Chairman SS Mundra, on the other hand, earned just 4 per cent of that, or about ₹26 lakh.

The country’s largest lender, state-owned State Bank of India, paid its Chairman Arundati Bhattacharya just about ₹9 lakh for the October 2013-March 2014 period, which works out to about ₹18 lakh annually.

Read the Hindu Business Line news report here.