The financial reforms launched during the early 1990s have dramatically changed the banking scenario in the country. New prudential norms, such as capital adequacy prescriptions, identification of bad debts, provision requirements, etc., were enforced; and interest rates were deregulated. As a sequel to these reforms, new private sector banks were allowed entry into the market. Many of these new private sector banks have brought with them state-of-art technology for business processing and service delivery, besides being efficient in catering to the customers demands. Yet, the failure of Global Trust Bank made Indian depositors to question the sustainability of private banks. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to undertake SWOT analysis and other appropriate statistical techniques, to rank 30 private sector banks from the financial data collected for the three years2002, 2003 and 2004. The study has, using four parametersefficiency, financial strength, profitability, and size and scale, ranked the banks independently for each year.

Private sector banks have existed for over a century in India. Formation of the State Bank Group in 1955/1957 and two nationalizations in 1969 and 1980 have led to the dominance of Public Sector Banks. Economic reforms in 1991 and banking sector reforms in 1997-98 have changed the banking scene totally. People generally rely on nationalized banks backed by the Government. Change in the mindset of the customers forced the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allow new private banks to come into existence a decade back. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and globalization initiated more foreign banks to add to the competition and a proper, level playing field.

It is pertinent and appropriate to mention that the Imperial Bank of India was a large private sector bank that handled all the commercial banking business as well as treasury-related work of the Government until the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was formed in 1934. It was in the post-independent era in 1948 that RBI itself converted it into a fully state-owned bank, followed by the formation of the State Bank of India in 1955. The debate about RBI being fully autonomous or not is inconclusive even today, as it operates as the country's central bank and also advises the Government on monetary and fiscal matters; and yet, implements welfare-oriented policies as far as regulating the commercial banks are concerned, irrespective of the fact whether these banks are in the public, private, cooperative or foreign sector.