“The Tirumalla Tirupati episode is not an isolated case. It comes against the backdrop of repeated cooperative bank failures in Goa and elsewhere. Depositors here still remember the collapse of urban cooperative banks that left savings frozen for years and, in some cases, wiped them out entirely. Every new regulatory action, even when described as precautionary, reopens those wounds. The result is predictable. People panic first and ask questions later. What makes cooperative bank investments particularly unsettling is their fluid and opaque nature. Unlike scheduled commercial banks, many cooperative institutions operate with weak governance structures, inconsistent audits and limited professional…
