In the limelight: (L-R) India Today Group CEO Aroon Purie, Citibank's Sanjay Nayar, SBI's A.K. Purwar, Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, HDFC Bank's Aditya Puri, HSBC's Niall S. K. Booker, and Shaw Wallace's Vidya Chhabria

The survey has matured with age. Since 1993, the annual BT survey of India's Best Banks, conducted in association with KPMG Consulting, has come to be regarded as the best yardstick for banks in India to weigh themselves against their peers. The sign of a survey that has attained operating saliency, they say, is when top managers consciously or unconsciously use it as a measure of their progress.

No wonder then, when the time comes for the year's Numero Uno to step into the spotlight to receive the accolade, the hall fills with not just applause, but power applause. All those clapping hands belong to people who know just what it is to emerge on top. People who would more than thumb merely through the special Best Banks issue of BT that carries the analysis down to its minutest detail. For a sector that has always complained about lack of intelligible comparative data, the issue serves not just as a ready reference, but also as a thought stimulant.

So it was at the Regal Room at The Oberoi, Mumbai, at the award-giving ceremony staged in association with Shaw Wallace's Antiquity. And so should it be with any serious award. As Sanjoy Narayan, Editor, Business Today, put it, the award ''gives the survey greater longevity and appeal, but the bigger reason is that we're hoping it will spur more competition among banks''.

Aditya Puri, Managing Director of HDFC Bank, the year's Best Bank, will have to watch his heels. But at the ceremony, he had all the right to bask in the glow of a well-deserved victory after a very good year for the bank. In his acceptance speech, Puri thanked his customers, employees, employee's families and God, and ended with a quip on banking. This is the one sector, he mused, where bankers not only expect to get back their product after it's sold, but want it back bigger.

Chief guest of the evening: Chandrababu Naidu urging India Inc.on

Numero Uno: Aditya Puri (L) accepts the Best Bank award from Naidu (centre)

The moment: Aroon Purie (L) and Naidu releasing the Best Bank issue of BT

There were some other awards too. A.K. Purwar, Chairman, State Bank of India was asked on to stage to accept the award for India's biggest bank. Sanjay Nayar, Country Head, Citibank NA, received the award for the most productive bank. And Niall S.K. Booker, CEO, HSBC Bank India, got the award for the safest bank.

The overriding issue, however, was development-to which Aroon Purie, Chief Executive of India Today Group and Editor-in-Chief of Business Today, devoted a large part of his speech. ''I believe the entrepreneurial spurt of the last decade would not have been possible without the active support of our bankers,'' he said, describing banks as ''the lifeline of commerce'', the institutions that ''make the notion of wealth multiplication possible by bringing together people with money and entrepreneurs with ideas''. Pointing out the importance of intangible factors such as credibility, customer understanding, service and efficiency, he said that banks should evolve as partners in business and ''cannot afford to pass on their inefficiencies to their customers''. While offering public sector banks (12 of the top 20 banks in the BT ranking) a warm pat on the back for their performance, Purie mentioned the current challenge of tackling Non Performing Assets (NPAs). ''It's a problem the banking industry has to overcome not only for their own sake but for the sake of the economy.''

The BT special issue was then released by the chief guest, Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a man widely seen as a rare politician-protagonist of the reforms process. He took the opportunity to reiterate his support for economic reforms, and make a case for nationalist optimism by referring to Goldman Sachs' BRIC report (on the future powerhouses of Brazil, Russia, India, and China) that projects the Indian economy to become the world's third-largest by 2050.

Citing the success of companies like Hero Honda, Bharat Forge, and Tata Steel, Naidu encouraged banks to help India Inc. become 'world class'. ''I see no reason why India's banking sector should not emerge as a world-class player,'' he enthused. ''With our knowledge of financial markets and modern commercial banking married with our strength in it, we can certainly become world class.'' On what banks could do straightaway, the chief minister recommended a further reduction in interest rates. ''You are getting low cost money and naturally you can reduce further. I entirely agree with Mr Purie-you have to use technology, best practices and everything possible to reduce the establishment cost.'' Wonder what the RBI governor Y.V. Reddy thinks about it.