To achieve these the Banking Nationalisaiton Act has to be repealed at the earliest and bring the state-run banks under the purview of the Companies Act, he said.
Calling for a "triple-track approach" Joshi said government should force non-viable state-run lenders to become narrow banks on one hand, and radically reform governance in viable ones by limiting state control in some and quickly privatizing the rest.
"A triple-track approach would be desirable. Firstly, some non-viable state-run banks should be forced to become narrow banks. Secondly, in some viable ones, governance must be radically reformed while retaining state's control.
The emeritus fellow at Oxford also called for quick privatisation saying "there is clear evidence that the performance of public sector banks is substandard. Radical reform is thus imperative, and in this context, quick privatisation surely has a major role to play."
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Underlining the need for urgent governance reforms, he said while the Rs 2.11-trillion recapitalization will help restore capital adequacy which is needed after the significant haircuts they will have to take in the wake of the balance sheet clean-up, but the governance issues at state-run banks will continue to remain even after this large fund infusion.
He said to modernise banks and improve their overall efficiency, we clearly need large private sector banks to compete with large public sector banks.
"To achieve this, an essential first step would be to repeal the Bank Nationalization Act and bring PSBs under the Companies Act. It would give government the flexibility to reduce ownership to any extent it chooses," Joshi said.
To privatize or to cede control, government would have to reduce its stake to 25 per cent or even lower, though it could, for a short transitional period, retain a so-called 'golden share'.
Calling for competition, Joshi said, "banking is amenable to competition, and not a natural monopoly, so it is not a natural candidate for state ownership."
The poor performance of state-run banks has got worse since the 2008 global credit crisis with their stressed advances hitting around 16 per cent compared to about 4.5 per cent in their private sector peers, he noted.