Fair and Finance: The Role of Banks at IKBF 2025

🖊️Sohini Ganguly & Arpita Roy

Even though the success of any Book Fair depends majorly on how much emptier the visitors are ready to make their bank accounts, a Bank Stall beside your favourite Publishing House’s Stall may seem out of place, or even a little depressing. Who needs a reminder of all the salary that’s spent and lies under the heavy weight of books.

 

Then what are the banks doing at the Book Fair? The IKBF houses a total of four Bank stalls, Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and an insurance based outlet of HDFC. Upon interviewing the employees seated at their respective company’s stalls, we found the base of their purpose- awareness. In times where cyber fraud is a highly rising concern, the banks are serving as awareness channels to help people be well informed and cautious. The stalls are also a point to get detailed answers to one’s queries related to their accounts, loans and other facilities provided by the banks.

 

While the primary objective of all the banks at IKBF seemed to be the same, book stalls are not the sole recipients of uniqueness and creativity. The bank stalls had their own take on them. A conversation with the employees of stall no. 232, RBI, led us to the knowledge that printing India’s currency has never been RBI’s sole major purpose, rather a huge amount of importance is given to their Awareness Program. RBI publishes quite a number of booklets, leaflets, books to carry out their purpose and all of these are available at their stall. “It makes me really happy to see that not only the elderly and mid-aged but also the younger generations like you are visiting our stall to get answers for their queries related to finance and frauds from us.” shared one of the employees with us.

 

A visit to State Bank of India’s stall, numbered 208, will give everyone an opportunity to play an interesting digital Rapid Fire Quiz in which scoring more than 60% will earn them a gift coupon usable in their book purchases at the fair. A provisional officer, Ms. Laxmi Singh emphasized their primary purpose at the stall to be answering queries. Secondarily, they are gathering the invaluable feedback of the visiting SBI account holders to know how to improve their services for the better. The SBI stall has two other extensions at the IKBF in the form of the Cash Counters right beside Guild House and a Heritage Gallery.

 

A little away from RBI and SBI, we found Punjab National Bank, stall no. 362, where Chief Manager, Mr. Amit Raj, shared that their intention is to make the visitors aware of their services. “We are not opening accounts here.” he informed us, further explaining the limits of their purpose at the fair. They have also arranged an interactive quiz at their stall wherein participants can receive interesting gifts upon winning.

 

Lastly, at stall no. 209, HDFC ERGO shared with us their focus on insurances rather than other mainstream banking activities. The stall has been set up to solve the queries related to mediclaim, travel insurance and health insurance and sharing information about the benefits of these policies.

 

While looking for bank stalls might not be the first or even second in list of agendas of the visitors, just as books serve as primary sources of information, they are also sharing some valuable insights to add to one’s life. When thought from that perspective, the presence of bank stalls at the IKBF does finally fit into place.